To emigrate to Australia?!

[DarlingDuck]

DH and I are 30 and have 3 DC's, we've wanted to emigrate for a long time. It would mean me re-training and doing a midwifery degree but I would earn twice the salary in Australia as I would here in the UK. The only cons we can think of would be missing our families and all the huge spiders/snakes!

I realise it will be a huge upheaval and our eldest will be around 10 years old when we plan to go which may be hard for her. Ideally we would like to do it sooner but we want to make sure we can earn a good wage.... AIBU?

Not being funny our house is worth about 270k we live in London is a 3 bedroom and is tiney on a street with controlled parking my cousin has a 5 bedroom is Halifax in yorkshire and that cost 275k and she has 136 ft garden

You are not going to buy a house of that price in London unless its falling down and even then you would have to be very lucky

As for grand parents my oh is a nurse and I can tell you if I wasn't a stay at home mum grand parents would of been invaluable you can't really train or work as a nurse unless your partner is

A- a sham
B- works flexi time
C-have a really fab family

Their are loads of times when my oh should have been fished by a certain time but hand over were delayed or had to see to a patient before he left of some one was passing away and he could just leave.

And to be quite Frank as someone who is married to a nurse who really loves seeing people get well I don't know how ok I would be with a nurse who is only in it so they can move house its hard graft being a nurse and not really something your last very long in if your not doing it for the right reasons

Very sad indeed

lulalullabye

We looked into IB schools & the fees are way over what we (and lots of people) can afford

Bloody hell, you cant get a 5 bedder for less than 500K up here.

Im confused over the working tbh. We both work and have no parental support . We use child care.

What as a nurse, worrying shivs two .nurses can usually manage as they work opposite shifts but a banker say and a nurse grand parents are usually involved,

Many of the female nurses at my oh work do pt but if immigrating I doubt the op would have that choice s would need to work full time very few of the women nurses do this useless their partners work flexi time or they are heavily using their grandparents for support with the kids

I really dont Understand you. Ive worked in hospitals for 20 years and with many many nurses who work 9-5. You dont have to do lates or nights.

DarlingDuck yanbu if that is what you and your dh really want, BUT as most other posters on here have said, you do need to do your research. And does it have to be Australia - have you thought about moving to other countries overseas, even if for no other reason than to have a comparison?

As well as looking at what midwifery qualifications and experience are expected for certain rates of pay, I really recommend you look into what exactly the work will be like - roles and responsibilities - as I rather suspect it's quite different over here compared to the UK.

As well as the British Expats forum you could try looking on www.pomsinoz.com/. I spent a fair bit of time on both of those sites before we moved over.

We moved over to Sydney 6 months ago and I can't say I'm completely settled yet but that is due to many factors. The biggest difference in terms of our life is that prices are very expensive, as other people have said. And there are loads of things that we took for granted in the UK but have to pay for over here (like kids' dental treatment, ambulance cover, school stationery, gym lessons at school etc. etc.) Rents are very high where we live but you can check them out on domain.com.au so you know what you're looking at. Just be sure to check out travel times as well so that you know how long it would take either of you to get to work. And my dp earns a pretty good wage but we really still have to watch what we're spending it on.

The biggest worry so far is that ds1 hasn't settled in very well. Everyone says it will take time, but it is one of the largest factors in making us wonder about whether we want to stay permanently, or might move back at some point.

I don't know if you've posted on Living Overseas yet but, as someone else pointed out, there's loads more info on those threads. And if you put specific queries on there you're likely to get some good answers.

Yanbu. And when I look out the window at the horrible weather today, in the middle of summer, I can only think YABU at anyone who ISN'T emigrating. (including me!)

By the way, I did two degrees in Oz, paid for by Australian taxpayers, before moving to the UK, and have paid UK taxes for many years, so there is a certain amount of give and take there. Swings and roundabouts.

She is not going to be able to do placements 9-5 is she it takes neigh on 3 years to train.

Also I don't know about Australia but here its very difficult to get a 9-5 job when you first start out especially when she wants to be a midwife and even my sister who is a sexual health nurse and is working during the day often someone will come in at 4.45 and you still have to see them and you can't just say at 5 well half way trough your check up but its five so get dressed lol you should know it's not like working in a office

Even though the doors close at 5 my sister often still will have 4 or five people who still need to be seen who had been waiting

I don't know you seem to have done it but many nurses do need a lot of help with child care and it really dose depend on what your oh dose for a living

I really dont understand you at all maypole. Thats what normal people so. Thats whay we use child care.
I work and cant guarantee getting off at 5 and have a 1 hr drive home, my husband works shifts and is on call. We dont have family to help. We use child care. You just do it.

And if it is a problem, you are eligible to put a family friendly request in. The NHS has a flexible and family frienly working policy.

Really people need to organise their clinics better. Anyway, tangent, sorry.

Buts thats my whole thing the op has no clue what the childcare is like their .

And nhs is very family friendly but she is moving it oz and it might not be the same, who no what the shif patterns are, and like I said your oh has a flexi job hers might not

differentnameforthis. DD's school is a public IB school and the fees are the same as any other public school, ie $300 a year. All schools have some fees to pay and dd's are probably the same as your dc's.

And maypole, DH works in the city 8-5 and I will be starting work as a nurse next week, full time and we are using childcare, so it can be done

www.churchie.com.au/

this is where ds will go hopefully

My parents are not living here in Aus with me and I have been able to balance working and children. I wouldn't expect my parents to devote their retirement to being at our beck and call for child care and babysitting.

My kids have a great relationship with my family despite not living round the corner from each other. It is possible if you are committed to making it work.

I'm Australian.
We've lived in Australia, Hong Kong and currently the UK. We're thinking about our next move now, and in an ideal world would do so very 5 years.

Our children are just starting school now though, so we'll need to suck it and see how moving effects them once they have social groups and will likely settle for longer while they are.

Obviously for me personally moving OS is something I would grab the chance to do with both hands {we do get relocation costs covered though which makes it financially a lot easier}.
As some posters have said for others, it doesn't work out though. I think looking at it as say a 5 year plan and you'll return to the UK if all things considered, might make it easier than looking at it as a permanent emigration. If you love it there then it likely will be.

As for costs, I have found that as others said it's a lot more expensive in Australia these days. Like anywhere it depends on where you live and what type of work you do though.
Living in the outer suburbs of Sydney and commuting to the city to work, is going to be more expensive than living in Adelaide for example.
I've lived in Adelaide, it's only 1mill people {ish} so naturally not the same sort of job opportunities {if you work in a head office say}, but the lifestyle is great, there is a lovely arts / culture / restaurant scene in the inner city. If it suits you it's affordable to live near the city too.

As others said try expat boards for specific questions as you get nearer to the crunch and making it happen. The key thing, as pointed out will be being able to get visas as a starting point.

Anyway good luck with your plans, sounds great. :)

lulalullabye. Good luck your gonna love it, and never forget you part of a very special bunch of people

thank you maypole, I have been a nurse for 20-yrs but have had a years break so ready to get back into it.

lulalullabye

Would be interested in which one that is, as the only ones we found are completely private at over $4k a yr.

In our area there are, Rose Park, Burnside, Linden park with Glenuga High school all being IB public schools. The first three are primary and are all zoned.

We don't have many friends to miss as we had our DC's young and so lost touch with most of our old friends, we found it hard to make new parent friends where we moved to because most of the parents where a lot older than us and had their close knit friendship groups already.

We don't see much of our respective parents a sthey are all busy with their own lives and don't have a lot of time for us of DC's.

I suffer terribly with SAD, I find Winters very hard and obvioulsy this effects the whole family.

We aren't looking to get rich or expecting it to be a bed of roses, we would be quite happy living in a quiet town near a beach. DH loves surfing, he grew up in Cornwall and surfed every day, it's something he really misses.

These are our main reasons for wanting to go.

Darling, in relation to your SAD, we still get winter here...in fact, it has been a pretty miserable one!

lulalullabye

All way out of our area. I have done some googling & found a few more, but again, private or a good trek. Anyway, as you say most are zoned too, so wouldn't accept us.

If you're trying to avoid SAD, consider north Queensland then (Townsville, Cairns sort of thing) as they don't have the same cold grey stuff that we do lower down.

Lula - whaddya mean, $300/y, same as all public schools? I thought public schools were free and of course all my local Aussie friends are in bed at the mo (which you probably are as well) so I can't ask them, and it says nothing about paying fees on the NSW schools website - are you paying because your DC are not Aussie residents/citizens? Or is this a fine point that I have so far missed?
Not that it matters that much, it's not a huge sum - I just wasn't at all aware of it.