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 :(

I'll swap with you! I adore Australia and would kill to live there, I have family there, my uncle moved to Australia from the UK 56 years ago. I've been to Australia twice, most recently in 2018 and it was the happiest I've been ever in the 6 weeks i was there, I didn't want to come home, I hate the flipping UK, it just doesn't compare, if I could go to Australia tomorrow I would!

@strugglingwithlife
I adore Australia and would kill to live there

Didn't Lord Lucan do that?

Lol I have no idea 🤣

@strugglingwithlife

I'll swap with you! I adore Australia and would kill to live there, I have family there, my uncle moved to Australia from the UK 56 years ago. I've been to Australia twice, most recently in 2018 and it was the happiest I've been ever in the 6 weeks i was there, I didn't want to come home, I hate the flipping UK, it just doesn't compare, if I could go to Australia tomorrow I would!

But you can. I don't understand why people don't go if they want to go. You can live there. There are multiple ways of doing so and you don't have to kill anyone.

... it was the happiest I've been ever in the 6 weeks i was there, I didn't want to come home, I hate the flipping UK, it just doesn't compare, if I could go to Australia tomorrow I would!

Believe me, a 6 week vacation is nothing like living there permanently!

When we moved to California, I really thought we knew what we were doing, having spent extended periods there, and elsewhere in the US - and absolutely loved it.

Long story short, but I am just so, so happy to be back where I belong. Which happens to be London.

YMMV. You just never know. But emigration, i.e. immigrating to an alien country, is rarely easy and often extremely stressful. And potentially irreversible - for lots of reasons.

What's stopping you moving back to the UK? (Or anywhere else). Surely this is not an insurmountable issue. Easily resolved.

The only upsides I can think of are long hot summers and bigger square footage for property, i.e. on an average income you can live in a nice 4x2 or even a 5x3 with a large garden in the suburbs with 2 cars etc., IF that's your vibe. Sounds like it's not though.

I think that ship has sailed for anyone without family money. Basic ex housing commission homes in not particularly desirable outer suburbs are north of $1m in Brisbane. When you factor in the absolutely horrific cost of child care it’s very tough to get on the ladder.

OP, how long were you here if you didn’t take up ILR or citizenship?

@Oblomov22

What's stopping you moving back to the UK? (Or anywhere else). Surely this is not an insurmountable issue. Easily resolved.

The UK is surprisingly hard to migrate to unless you have professional skills in very high demand (eg nursing) or can transfer with your company. If you don’t have ILR/citizenship, once you leave it’s very difficult to return.

By comparison, close friends migrated home to Australia & she was awarded permanent residency before she’d even set foot in the country. The same path (married to a citizen) in the UK takes around 6 years.

OP, the UK is a very tough place to live now. Very different from how it was pre-pandemic. There are stories of ambulances taking 4 hours to arrive that would have taken 10 minutes, people lying around in hospital corridors unattended for 24 hours in A&E. Fuel and food prices have rocketed. The obscene price of housing and rent is not coming down but wages are not going up.

If you want to be cold, cramped, poor and crossing your fingers for health, come back to us. We are quite near Europe and we have good culture still, if you can afford it. Only £350 a ticket.

Oh I agree there's a big difference between holidaying somewhere and living there.
Lol I wouldn't literally kill someone to move there. The reason I don't/can't is because I can't afford to, it's so expensive to emigrate to Australia nowadays and they have certain requirements I probably wouldn't meet in order to live there

It might be along shot OP, but do you or your DP have an Irish grandparent (as many Australian's do)?

If so you could claim an Irish passport which would mean you could live in the UK, although the process is supposed to be long and costly.

The irony of the public/private excellent Oz health care system is because half the staff have been trained in the UK. “Ramping” of ambulances is not uncommon in Oz in my experience so no difference there apart from compulsory ambulance insurance cover.

I always think that if something is meant to be, it will.
Why not apply for jobs etc, and see how you go ?
If you can’t get here, you have your answer.

Healthcare isn’t great here just because of the Drs and nurses (although I have found them to be excellent) - the whole system just works really well, from how you find a GP, how you make appointments to how well hospitals are run, combining elements of public and private.
For example, my son injured his finger playing football. We took him to A &E and they triaged him straight away and then we waited for a while.
Nurse came over and apologised, said that more serious patients had come in and if we wanted to we could go over the road and pay for an X ray (of which about 80% would be refunded) or equally we were welcome to wait and have a free one.
It helps that we are just a much smaller population of course.
Anyway, it wouldn’t be a reason for staying or leaving a country but compared to my experiences in the U.K., Australian healthcare is miles ahead.

How long have you been back in Australia, OP? I moved back to my home country after over 25 years in 2019, and the one piece of advice I was given by someone I met who'd done the same thing a year or two earlier was 'Don't think about anything for the first two years' -- and I think that's right. It can be difficult re-integrating after a long time away, and you can easily make snap decisions too quickly. I'm fairly sure that were it not for having a homebody DS (10) who really needs to put down roots for years to come, that I'd have given it up as a bad job and moved countries again, but now, after a little more than three years, I feel it was the right decision.

@Porridgeislife

The only upsides I can think of are long hot summers and bigger square footage for property, i.e. on an average income you can live in a nice 4x2 or even a 5x3 with a large garden in the suburbs with 2 cars etc., IF that's your vibe. Sounds like it's not though.

I think that ship has sailed for anyone without family money. Basic ex housing commission homes in not particularly desirable outer suburbs are north of $1m in Brisbane. When you factor in the absolutely horrific cost of child care it’s very tough to get on the ladder.

OP, how long were you here if you didn’t take up ILR or citizenship?

Well I did it with no family money. We came here with no jobs and not much cash in 2013. We now have the 4 x 2. with pool , 5 mins from the beach. Perth is cheaper than the east coast!

For what its worth, debating where is better is a bit pointless, both countries have pros and cons. I lived in London for ten years and loved it, it was bloody amazing! But it wouldn't suit me at all now I'm in my 50s, I prefer the more laidback lifestyle, sunshine and as someone mentioned above, better medical services. I am also now very grateful to have solar panels! i've been reading on here what people are paying to heat their houses and its crazy, I only pay about 80 ukp a month for gas and electric (although admittedly my water bill is higher).

The only thing I do miss about the UK and Ireland, except for family and old friends, is the proximity to Europe, I miss minibreaks to places like Barcelona and Budapest! But the weather made me miserable for at least half the year in the UK, so I will take the trade off.

Anyway, everyone likes different things and thank god for that. So I suggest, if you cant move again, try and embrace the positives of living in Oz, because there are many!

Do you have kids OP? I am living in the 'wrong' country. My plan was always to find an amazing job in mainland Europe and be married to a German or possibly Danish man. But I am glad I live near my family. For me that's really important, especially as I have got older.

Life is very comfortable in Aus but not very exciting or dynamic. It's more affordable for me than London and there are definitely things I value, like not having to use the NHS, the fact that everything is generally cleaner and the outdoor lifestyle is nice.

I do have a British passport and I will return for another stint at some point.

I get you, OP, I couldn’t live in Australia. I have family there and have spent some extended time there but after the novelty of the weather has worn off, I'm always desperate to get back to the UK. I lived in the Med in my 20s and got bored of the sun I used to pray for rain. I’m an outdoorsy person as well but I love the seasons so very much (and as we all know, there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes!)

I will agree with the PPs who has suggested giving it time. Good luck.

@strugglingwithlife

I'll swap with you! I adore Australia and would kill to live there, I have family there, my uncle moved to Australia from the UK 56 years ago. I've been to Australia twice, most recently in 2018 and it was the happiest I've been ever in the 6 weeks i was there, I didn't want to come home, I hate the flipping UK, it just doesn't compare, if I could go to Australia tomorrow I would!

I'm pretty sure the convict migration program ended over 100 years ago.

@Porridgeislife

The only upsides I can think of are long hot summers and bigger square footage for property, i.e. on an average income you can live in a nice 4x2 or even a 5x3 with a large garden in the suburbs with 2 cars etc., IF that's your vibe. Sounds like it's not though.

I think that ship has sailed for anyone without family money. Basic ex housing commission homes in not particularly desirable outer suburbs are north of $1m in Brisbane. When you factor in the absolutely horrific cost of child care it’s very tough to get on the ladder.

OP, how long were you here if you didn’t take up ILR or citizenship?

What suburb is that? The only places you'd pay those sort of prices are trendy or in highly placed school catchments. I live on the Bayside, around 30mins to Brisbane and 4+2 in good nick is under 1mill. The average price across all Brisbane is about 800k. Still crazy, but not that bad!

@Oblomov22 I'm not sure if we can get work sponsorships to return to the UK - I couldn't for my profession and not sure my DP's profession is on the skills shortage list. We don't have British/Irish ancestry which would be a pathway to citizenship either.

@DorritLittle No kids! I do appreciate being close to family too but I'm conscious of what we've given up for it.

I know you feel OP. I’m Australian but often feel like I’m really not cut out to live here. The summers are the worst part of living here for me not the best!

I’m in one of the cheaper cities (Adelaide) but the housing situation here is ridiculous. Getting a house to rent is like the hunger games. My place is a very modest 2 bedroom, detached bungalow but I could probably sell it and buy a decent place outright in a smaller UK city with the equity. For people buying their first home it’s incredibly hard.

@GreenestGrass this is my biggest fear too. I’ve lived here in the UK for nearly a decade but husband & I have decided to move to Aus at the end of the year. He is definitely more keen than I am on moving despite me being the Aussie.
Yes the UK is expensive but Australia is even more expensive, plus the housing market is crazy. I honestly have no idea how we’ll afford a house in Sydney. We’ve said we’ll give it a minimum of 2yrs because it takes that long to get settled somewhere. We’re lucky that we have the option to come back to the UK.
Have you looked at if either of you could get a Tier 2 visa to come back? It’s much easier now since Brexit to meet the criteria