I regret moving (back) to Australia

[GreenestGrass]

DP and I are both Australian. We did the typical young person thing of living in the UK and had the opportunity to extend our stay through work sponsorships and make it a more permanent move. For various reasons we decided to come back home to Australia, but as time goes by both of us feel increasingly regretful of our decision for a few reasons:

-Lower cost of living. I'm not saying living in the UK is cheap but my goodness, Australia is expensive. It really hit home for us when we moved back and were hit with prices for things.
-Lifestyle - we absolutely loved being able to travel easily and the access to different parts of the world. Australia feels so far away from everywhere and again, travelling internationally from here is super expensive. Cities in Australia also feel quite 'samey' and lacking character in comparison to the UK.
-Professional opportunities - with the much smaller population size, professional opportunities here in Australia just can't compare to what we had over there.

These are just a few of the reasons but overall we just preferred living there to here, and now there's not much we can do about it as it's unlikely we'd be able to start over again and also get the work permissions we'd need to legally work in the UK again.

Has anyone ever felt similar regrets? I'm doing my best to enjoy the things life in Australia has to offer but it does feel like we missed our chance a bit here :(

It’s also less cultural in an international sense

What does that even mean?

I know what you are saying. I love visiting Australia but I would not want to live there.

Why don’t you look into coming back to the UK, maybe it’s impossible and maybe it isn’t, but you will only know if you try.

No, most people do not hate the UK. It punches above its weight and is a vibrant and central part of the world.

If you think the UK punches above its weight, what does that make Australia? Second highest GDP per capita and HDI in the G20, despite having the lowest population.

Australia’s sharks, horrendous snakes and horrific spiders would make living there an impossibility for many.

Oh, please. If no other sentence in your dullard post shows you have no actual clue about Australia, a more urbanised country than the UK, this ludicrously hyperbolic stereotype would nail it. (Watch out for the magpies though.)

It’s also less cultural in an international sense.

Nearly half of all Australians have a parent born overseas, and more than a quarter were born overseas themselves. And it's got the oldest continuous culture in the world. What culture are you talking about, exactly?

The lack of fly screens was the thing I found hardest to adapt to in the UK, having had SHUT THE SCREEN DOOR drilled in to me from a young age. I can't imagine not having them in rural Australia! My sympathies.

@SquirrelG , I’d have thought it was the other way around - far more MNers slagging off the U.K. than the other way around.

To be honest Jassy, I was very jealous of all those with fly screens as they keep more than flies out on a farm. But then again, we survived.

It is quite eye opening to see these types of posts, isn't it. And then some Brits wonder why Australians don't show their 'fascinating' sides.

Australia’s sharks, horrendous snakes and horrific spiders would make living there an impossibility for many. It’s also less cultural in an international sense. Basically it’s big, on the periphery and duller because of that.

Hilarious! Fucking hilarious.

I see these posts time and time again. Oh my god! How do Australian's survive the sharks, snakes and spiders!

And culture? Meaning what? A Euro-centric view of 'culture'?

Duller? Again, that is a reflection on you and your choices, not of the places you find 'dull' and 'less cultural'.

Fuck me, if I didn't have many UK friends and I took this ignorance as being typical, I would have very low expectations.

As it is, I am laughing because I have read this and other threads that follow this line and have wondered just where these posters live. Because I have met just as many 'uncultured' people (by some of these posters standards) here, who are born British, as anywhere else I have lived and travelled.

As people have said, it really depends what you like. If you are an outdoorsy person who likes sport (i.e a bit of a 'jock') then Australia is perfect. The personal space also appeals to me. The thing I hate most about the UK is the overcrowding. There are too many people jammed onto this small island. Also, the houses are too small, squashed together, and overpriced. Light and space - those are the best things about Oz compared to Britain.

But I find the UK a far more interesting place than Australia. Intellectually, it is one of the most stimulating places on earth. For example, I remember wandering around Oxford last October and saying to a friend "there is literally nowhere on earth I would rather be." Over that weekend, we saw the pub in which Tolkien and C S Lewis used to drink, the college where Oscar Wilde was a student, and then the Ashmolean Museum (one of the most amazing buildings I have ever visited). I get such a thrill when I walk around Oxford or Cambridge. Just thinking of the people who lived and studied there, from Darwin and Newton to Stephen Hawking and W H Auden and Wittgenstein and Nabokov, and so on. Then there is Bath, with its Jane Austen connections, or the Moors, where the Brontes wrote, or the Lake District where Wordsworth lived, etc. Not to mention Glastonbury, or Shakespeare's Stratford, or the Cavern club in Liverpool. And that's before you even get to London. Bill Bryson writes about this - the layers and layers of culture and history you can plug into.

It's a shame that we take so little pride in our literature and cultural history. It's the best thing about living in the UK (compensation for the grey skies and lack of space). I'm sick of smug, woke bullies sneering at Britain's past and doing all they can to make us reject it. In my experience, Aussies, Americans, Indians, Canadians, and so on, appreciate our history and culture far more than we do. Personally, I'd like to kick out every sneering British woke bully and replace them with Australian and North American anglophiles.

As for the weather. Well, yes, I hate the UK in November and December, but this summer has really shaken me. I came down with heatstroke at one point - literally vomiting and passing out. I utterly loathe the heat and cannot wait for Autumn.

A friend of ours has just bought a land and house package in Australia where you are crammed in like a sardine literally. it’s like a one storey 3 bed semi has been laid out flat. Of course you’ve still got a larger square footage but its a court yard not a back garden. And the neighbours are right up against your fence.

I think the space in the livable suburbs is diminishing

The cost of buying a house on a large block is very expensive in major cities, just like in the UK. The house we live in here in UK has a court yard sized yard and it has small rooms.

Not quite sure why people expect buying in large cities to be different between the countries to be honest.

Is there a perception that living in Australia is cheaper? Why?

Neighbours v Coronation St?

Tbh anyone who has the choice for of emigrating across the world is pretty lucky in the scheme of things

My family English (plus French) and parents moved to Aus in 70s, some dc moved back in early twenties

Loads of friends did the same move, some have stayed in London some have moved back

Both Aus and U.K. offer great things, there’s not much to say other than choose what suits you - some will prefer Aus others U.K.

My two cents' worth.

Out in the Antipodes suburbs were built with a much lower population density. Mostly bungalows and detached on much larger plots of land than the average UK house and not many flats. The result is big, sprawling cities and a bit of a problem finding extra space in them as their populations increase and very expensive houses jammed in any old how.

But aside from that my reason for not living in Australia is that I guess it will become mostly uninhabitable in the next thirty years. I guess the solution for them all to move to Tasmania or perhaps New Zealand if the latter will have them. Not the greatest options: perhaps that explains the strain of climate denialism in Australia.

I know lots of people who split their blocks they had so much land surrounding their house they could literally build another one in the garden and still have a decent property with a nice standard of living.

that option certainly has an available to most of us in the UK.

but if you only go back as far as the year 2000 you could go out to Australia with $1.7 to the pound people to house then in the suburbs in Melbourne or even Sydney you literally were living the dream.

Yes, block splitting / subdividing. A very good way of making money if you have a big enough block.

But when it happens to a neighbourhood on a big scale, you end up with houses staring in each others windows, panhandles taking up what should be gardens, no segregation of cars from people. Less liveable than the classic English terrace and (now) much more expensive in my view.

I guess it will become mostly uninhabitable in the next thirty years

Can I ask what you base this on please? What changes do you you believe will make it so much more ‘uninhabitable’ in 30 years?

But when it happens to a neighbourhood on a big scale, you end up with houses staring in each others windows, panhandles taking up what should be gardens, no segregation of cars from people. Less liveable than the classic English terrace and (now) much more expensive in my view

And there are also plenty of suburbs that don’t allow this. Complain about the cost of housing, it is high in both countries, for sure. But there is quite an assortment of accommodation available in large cities. Including quite a number of suburbs in each capital that are ‘classic’ English terraces if people want to live in them too.

year 2000 you could go out to Australia with $1.7 to the pound

And those days are well past.

I remember three dollars to the pound!

Me too. We went back when it was this when first got together

It was so good.. lived like kings for the holiday

I guess the solution for them all to move to Tasmania or perhaps New Zealand if the latter will have them

No need to be rude.

There are about 700,000 Kiwis living in Australia, you know. And treated shamefully in access to services I should say.They come for the jobs.

All Australian citizens can live and work in NewZealand.

I remember my first time in the UK realising that my 'cheap' 30p can of coke cost me nearly a dollar. My AUD didn't go far that trip.

I've returned to Aus after a decade in London and I love being home. Dh and I both have fantastic jobs with global companies. My DC are settled a d we're close to family. I didn't realise how much I missed that until I had it all again.

@JassyRadlett my dh is not Australian and he has settled so easily. Maybe your dh would be ok with a change?

@Helleofabore

@Helleofabore your description of some housing estates is accurate, however they are just as livable as terraces in the UK! They are just ugly. As are some areas in the UK 🤷

Violettoes

The point is that there are posters on this thread making out how terrible the new subdivisions are, like they are the only option. There are some really bizarre takes on this thread.

We travel a lot throughout the UK and I see new subdivisions here too. And they are just as cramped. Just as ill planned. And from being in them, just as many building issues due to poor workmanship and cost cutting.

It almost like the British I used to meet in Sydney. The ones complaining how expensive it is to live there when having to earn Australian wages, how they thought they would live the wonderful life by the beach but are out in the Western suburbs where they can afford, commuting for an hour each way to work. And the very long work hours expected to earn that salary…..

The thing is, I also known just as many British people living in Sydney, a few who I count as good friends, who accepted the good along with the bad and made it work for them and stayed. I know quite a few who have moved back and forth as they needed to for family or health too.

Just as I have heard the stories from Australian’s complaining about when they lived in London and how they hated the cramped living, the grime, the unfriendly locals with peculiar habits - but the travel… well the travel to mainland Europe, that was great…

I’ve heard the worst from both sides.

I don’t know. If a country doesn’t measure up to my expectations, I look at what my expectations were to start with.

Excellent post, Helleofabore, especially the bit about expectations.

I lost count of the number of people who said we'd be able to get rid of our cold/snow/raingear on moving to Melbourne. As if.

The other was advice from one Pom to my DH after being in the country for a few months: don't compare.

I know! It was great!

I was happy to arrive back in UK where my lettuce only cost 45p a head this month though.

And cabbage ain’t no substitute for lettuce on a burger.

Global warming. Australia will be even less bearable soon…