| We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| One year later... | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: 13 Oct 2008, 12:35 PM (288 Views) | |
| nee | 13 Oct 2008, 12:35 PM Post #1 |
..like a Britvic'er....but weirder...
|
I meant to do this on Friday, but totally forgot! We've been here a year now and thought i'd write a bit about how the whole journey has been for us. I am intending to keep it brief, but i have a feeling it might end up epic!! lol The lead-up to Aus With me having an Australian wife, we had always talked about living in Australia...and with Ambers Mum moving back to Geelong it gave us a good excuse to go there for a month with a view to emigrating. We took a months holiday in Geelong in Jan 2006, leaving behind the cold winter of the UK, and it felt like heaven! It was very difficult to try and imagine living in Australia, as it was always going to feel like a holiday no matter how hard you tried to look past it. When we arrived back in the UK we knew we were going to make the move there. Maybe the fact that it was -5 when we landed? We decided to start the whole process after Christmas 2006 as it would give us a cooling off period and be level-headed about it all after what effectively was a "great holiday" We went through the whole of 2006 thinking about Aus, and in Jan 2007 i applied for my visa....which arrived a lot faster than we expected in March! Then there was telling my Mum about the forthcoming move :( Not easy!! With the visa sorted i prepared the house for sale....and thankfully i had 3 weeks of the most amazing weather in April to re-paint the house / fence / etc before the rain came in May. The house sold at the end of May for a great price, but didn't complete until September. We thank our lucky stars that everything worked out as we booked the flights for Oct 8th thinking that we'd be settled in June / July!! We moved in with my Mum for the last month in the UK, which was great as it gave her a lot of time with the kids before our departure. The moving date was getting ever closer, but no-one really mentioned it...as i knew my Mum was going to be really bad on the day and it wasn't something i wanted to dwell on. Needless to say, the month went so fast...and before we knew it we were saying goodbye to everyone and heading off to London to fly out. In Aus.. Even though the kids didn't really sleep much, i'd say we had a good flight....very non-eventful anyway! Ambers Mum and other relatives were there to meet us at Tullamarine which was great, and the nice thing was that i felt the same as i did when we arrived here in 2006. There's just a feeling about being here which i can't put into words. Ambers Aunt was kind enough to let us stay with her until we found a place to rent. The day after we landed it was Toms 5th birthday. It did make us a bit sad that there were no other kids his age to help him celebrate it, but he enjoyed the trampoline we got him! 2 days in and i'm straight on the case to get the important things sorted....a car! lol Amber gave me a budget, but somehow we got sucked in and ended up getting a new car. Well, it's probably the first and last time so what the heck! We were not 100% sure where we'd end up settling... We'd looked briefly at Belmont during our visit in 2006, but i spotted a town called Lara on Google Earth and wanted to go and have a look as it was close to Geelong, and a short train journey to Melbourne. We fell in love with Lara as soon as we drove into the town. It's not for everyone admittedly, but it was quite 'maverick'...almost tumbleweed in places, but it's what we were used to in Cornwall, so it felt very homely! We managed to get a rental sorted within a couple of weeks, and by November we were moved into our 1st Aussie property. The rental place was quite new, with floor to ceiling glass, modern white units and tiles etc.....everything we thought we wanted in an Aussie house. But the one thing it lacked was soul...so within 2 months of being there we were searching for a place to buy and in Feb 2008 we moved into our own place. Our belongings seemed to take forever to arrive from the UK. We shipped them early Sept and finally got them this end Jan 15th. One thing we didn't bargain for was the Xmas shutdown that happens here. Most of our stuff from the UK was fine, but we had a few boxes split open..plus my beloved records didn't appreciate the 43 degree heat and a lot of them warped :( It's funny to think back to how i felt when we first arrived....like we were so much different to everyone else and stuck out like sore thumbs because of our accent etc. I know i was totally wrong now, but that's how i felt! Also during the first few weeks it gets annoying as you can't help comparing EVERYTHING to the UK. The speed limits...the driving....the cost of living... and i must admit that 1 year on we don't do that at all now. I think to begin with we may have just seen Aus as a "hot UK"? But i will admit that when i ceased to compare Aus to the UK is when i really started to enjoy Australia to the full. We wanted to get Tom back into school here as soon as we could. Unfortunately he wasn't able to join as a prep until the end of Jan 2008, which meant he was off school for a total of 4 months....but at his age (5) it wasn't too much of a big deal. We were a bit shocked to find out that Maddy wasn't able to start kinder until she was 4. In the UK Tom went to a funded playgroup aged 3 1/2, and that was for 3 afternoons a week...whereas here Maddy has to wait until she is 4, and then we have to pay for 1 afternoon a week :( We feel that she is more than ready to start too, but she'll have to wait! Tom loves his school! Never forget seeing him in his new uniform, complete with shorts and sun-hat, and thinking how much different it is here compared to the UK where he was forever having to wear his jacket, even in the summer. He quickly made a lot of new friends and settled into a routine really quickly, which was a relief for us. I must admit, the thought of all the spiders / snakes here did scare me a bit! I remember a mate of mine asking why on earth would we want to live in a country "where everything wants to eat you?!" :rofl: Needless to say, in typical "Neil fashion" i just HAD to be allergic to mosquito bites didn't i? :realmad: I can laugh about it now, but i remember when the doc told me i was allergic to the bites, thinking "great...now i have to spend the rest of my life dealing with this".... But actually it's not that much of a big deal, especially with Aeroguard spray as my best friend! Spiders.....hmmm, horrible! The rental place we had was full of white tails. I got myself into a paranoid state living there as i was finding about 5 or 6 a week, and in places like the bed, piles of clothes, in the kids room. Plus there was a spider living in a hole outside the back door. Enough already!!! Since moving into our own house i have to admit that we hardly get any spiders here at all, and certainly not indoors.....which is odd as this house is really old and was unoccupied for 9 months before we moved in. I have chilled out a lot now about the spiders! The amount of flies and ants still annoy me, but i can live with them as they only appear during the summer months. There's probably loads of bits i wanted to say but have left out. I think i'll just keep adding to this as and when i remember them! So there you go......1 year down and feeling very happy and settled :) There have been a few little wobbles along the way, but you get them no matter where you are living! I can't believe how fast this first year has gone, and looking forward to many more to come! Many thanks to the Britvic'ers for putting up with me and for all the help and advice :) |
 |
 
|
| « Previous Topic · Update Section · Next Topic » |
6:21 AM Sep 5
