I grew up on a farm in rural Australia

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Ask away (even if it's vaguely interesting!)

Were you close enough to a school to attend? If so, how big was it? If not, were you lonely?

Thanks!

Are the farms in rural Australia so big that farmers have airplanes to fly around their property?

Is it lonely being so rural?

Do farmers benefit from young people working voluntarily on the farms?

Do the volunteers get paid?

Do you like being so rural?

What happened when you got sick? Ever need the flying doctors?

How did you cope with the heat?

Have you ever read The Thorn Birds?

Tell me about the spiders/local wildlife!

Sorry for the absence, I'll answer as best I can 😊

I'm from rural Victoria, so not the outback. I attended a small primary school with combined years (same one my parents, some of my grandparents and even great grandparents went to, we've lived in the area since 1864). The vast farms where they use planes and helicopters to get around are more outback NSW/SA/NT/WA.

Yes I grew up with lots of spiders (red backs, not funnel webs), tiger and brown snakes (some of the most venomous in the world), and even scorpions! The Huge huntsman spiders are the ones you want to hang around, as they eat flies and the nasty spiders. It's just something we're used to so I've never really thought about it that much. That being said my first summer in the UK I was shocked to see people walking through long grass with bare legs! 😁

As for the heat I have no trouble coping with it. While my parents now have air con, I grew up without it, with little insulation and a corrugated iron roof. With the weather here currently I've been showing DTDs how to sleep in the heat (
Damp flannels etc). The hottest I've experienced is 48C. That being said it also gets pretty cold. It snowed on the mountains nearby the other day. Aussie houses are not designed to cope with cold weather!

And yes getting sick was a worry when younger - but nowadays the ambulance is only 30 mins or so away. Earlier generations very much had to fend for themselves. (The house I grew up in wasn't connected to mains until the mid 50s).

Haha Scrowy, yes of course! 😁

I've also not known anyone volunteering to work on a farm. There have been plenty of awful stories of exploitation of those on working holiday visas but not from where I'm from, as far as I'm aware.

Did you always yearn to leave? Or if life had taken a different turn do you think you would have been happy to stay there?

An Australian farmer told me that once the temperature passed 37 ° -body temperature- it didn't make much difference how hot it got as you couldn't really tell - do you agree? What is it like at 48°?

Well it was always expected that we'd need to leave at some point (I'm one of 5 kids). I went to university in Melbourne, worked there a while then came to the UK. However, we're planning to move back after next summer (well, back in my case, it'll be a big difference for English DH!). All of my family still live in the area except one sister, who's in Melbourne so not too far away.

Was it a 'nice' childhood? As in, did you enjoy 'the great outdoors'? Or did the wild animals and snakes etc mean that it wasn't safe to go wandering around?

My parents now live in rural Vic, in the Gippsland region, is that where you are from? I love visiting them but can't imagine I would have enjoyed being a teenager growing up there though!

We are moving back this summer to Melbourne, have been practising not leaving the house without suncream and hat for my dd's as we've got a bit relaxed with just enjoying the heat when it does come to the UK!

What do you miss about Aus and what will you miss about the UK? What's your plan if your dh doesn't settle?

Not sure about the temperature thing, 48C was hot! English DH went out in it while us wusses were inside with the lovely air con! Unfortunately those sort of temperatures combined with high winds are when bushfires tend to happen...

I had an idyllic childhood, we had so much freedom. I grew up with my cousins and grandmother on the farm next door, so we used to go on great 'journeys' between the two (a whole 2 miles at most!). My great grandmother was still alive until I was 12, so I used to spend a lot of time with her and my nanna (her daughter). My great grandmother had a pet sulphur crested cockatoo which could talk, and many other native birds. I learnt to drive when I was 10 (soon as I could reach the pedals in the ancient ex army land rover), I had a little 50cc motorbike at 11 (and the gravel rash to match!). I was never really into horses but one of my sisters had a lovely black quarter horse. I was in Brownies and then Guides, so we went camping in the mountains nearby quite a bit.

Mindmyown, I'm from the western district, so other side of Melbourne 😊. I think DH will be fine, his dad was in the RAF and so he's lived abroad for some of his childhood (in a hot climate so the Aussie weather doesn't bother him). I've been desperately homesick ever since my DTDs were born, they're almost 7 and we've taken them back 3 times (first time they were 18 months, most recently last Christmas). There's a lot I'll miss of the UK, definitely! The beautiful green countryside (though not so green at the moment!), National Trust and English Heritage properties, galleries and museums, Waitrose! (Nothing really like it in Oz, I wished there was!), proximity to Europe.... we do intend to visit every couple of years as we have done with oz.