To think the families on Wanted Down Under are a bit spoilt/delusional?

[Hatchinganegg]

Almost every episode involves a family with pretty average jobs living in your average 3 bedroom semi detached. They go to Australia and turn their noses up at massive houses because they don't have pools and walk in wardrobes. Or they're 10 minutes from the beach rather than right across the road

They never seem to want to start off a few rungs down from their eventual goal, it all has to happen right away.

They all want identikit houses too- those shiny kitchens and acres of cream carpet. I'd like to see one where the family was after something a little different personally!

SPOILER ALERT

Good one today. At last we have a family who have done it and seem to be doing well.

I have the same issues with people who go on the Escape to the county, they always want a 'cottage' but with a large kitchen, 3 receptions rooms etc or downsizing. And then when they are see the 'cottage' it's always "oh isn't it small" and when told the price again "oh I didn't think it would be that expensive". Why don't these people who want to make big moves do they their own research on the cost of living/job availability and salary. I'm mean it isn't rocket science it's common sense. They all seem to spend more time planning their next meal then do making these big lifestyle choices.

I was just talking to a colleague who has family in Australia - they were telling him that the coat of living - and particularly fruit - has got really expensive there and that bananas are a treat for the kids. He says that it’s an expensive place to live and yes, you need to work your socks off to manage.

dh and I love Escape to the Country. We're going to go on and ask for "Small, pokey kitchen, please. And low ceilings. Remote would be good. A bit of road noise, too. No need for any community nearby. Oh, and if you've got a spartan converted chapel sitting on a plot of gravel - bring it on!"

@mytoesaregettingfatter

Here I can access a doctor anytime, see any specialist I want, go to a private hospital a&e under my health cover if I don't want to go public/wait (though the children's public hospital's are brilliant)

How is that financed? Does your employer provide cover or do you pay for insurance yourself? What health services are free?

They never cover useful stuff this on WDU!

You get reciprocal Medicare if you are from Uk so you can access free docs for kids and free emergency hospital in the public hospitals but there is a gap between the docs and what Medicare covers so you have to pay. You have to pay whatever the prescription costs and you have to pay dental even for kids. So it is advisable to get medical insurance which like all insurance is expensive and doesn’t always cover everything. It is very difficult to just get dental cover. So yes the doctors is a much more pleasant experience but it costs.

bananas are a treat for the kids Not always. They are very cheap at the moment. Around $2 per kilo. The problem comes when the banana plantation gets wiped out in a bad storm. Then they go up to anything around $15 a kilo. I have lived here 12 yrs this year, that's happened twice.

Fruit isn't too expensive actually. I know people moan about it, but I can't! I also like that kids get to choose a piece of free fruit from most supermarkets, that's great for when we pop in after school & they are hungry!

you need to work your socks off to manage. Depends what job you have I guess. I work part time (because I want to, not because I have to) and dh does a regular 38hr work week (except for recently as work has been mad busy)

It is very difficult to just get dental cover. So yes the doctors is a much more pleasant experience but it costs. I have extras only, as do a lot of my friends. It has been a godsend with dd2's therapy appts.

I'm in the much derided on here Perth, and for us it's been a fabulous move. We'd been to east coast before, but never this way before we made the move, but all knew as soon as we landed it was the place for us. If we'd been on this you'd all have been howling with laughter, we picked Perth based on the number of average hours sunshine it has.

House prices here have been on a bit of a decline, and cost of living has definitely stabilised compared to when we 1st moved.

We definitely do not work harder than in the UK, I work a 9 day fortnight and leave at 4 every day. We both work in IT, and the wages are significantly better than we were earning in the UK (north of England). Even assuming $2 to the pound I earn 4 times what I was on back home. In 5 years we've not had to scrimp, have had nice holidays both abroad and in Margaret river, which is for me the most beautiful place I've been and have still managed to save enough for a deposit on a 2nd property down south as our holiday home / retirement property.

There always seems to be this fallacy that there's no seasons, and it's same hot weather all year round, which is definitely not the case. Winter is cold, spring and autumn tend to be absolutely beautiful, mild sunny days and summer hot and dry. It's a nice dry heat over this way, and there's a lovely sea breeze that makes it much more bearable, so beach is fab, even on 35 + days.

Agree with previous poster, we have decent insurance and the service we get is fantastic. Easily get same day doctors appointments, they're open till 8 most nights and Saturdays. Have had a number of trips to emergency, thanks to my son's love of scootering, and treatment has been free. Recent broken leg cost us nothing about from the hire of crutches.

So it's not all doom and gloom, and can definitely work out, even for people like me who make decisions on weather charts, pictures of beaches and very little else.

Fruit and veg aren’t dear in Australia, you just need to buy food seasonally, or go to markets. People in the Uk would rather have very poor quality fruit and veg year round flown in from god knows where wrapped in plastic, rather than high quality local veg and fruit in abundence, when in season.
Most regular fresh fruit and veg on sale in supermarkets in Melbourne comes from local farms between 20- 100km away.
Most people in most countries (yes even in the USA ) buy seasonally, due to availability and price fluctuations. The UK is virtually alone in the world with its mantra that e.g we must have cheap cherries and Blueberries in December from Chile at the same price as local ones in June, and hang the air miles or the quality. Availability, appearances and price are valued over quality - as with so many things in the UK.

Julie I agree...we buy our meat and some veg at the farmer's market every week and even then...our garden is full of it.

We have peaches, loquats, apples, strawberries and limes.

Also a big vegetable patch...and chickens! All this is because not only of the weather but the space.

We nevery buy eggs and swap fruit with neighbours for things we don't have.

This week I bought mangoes at 45c per mango.
Bananas at $1.19 per kilo.
Brocolli $0.49c for a large head.
Iceberg lettuce $1.60 each.
Organic blueberries $3.99 for 500g (there weren't any normal ones in, non organic is about $2.50 for the same).
I didn't buy any strawberries this week but they're anything from $1.79 to $3 for 500g,
Chillies were the most expensive, at $10 for 100g (7 chillies) Veg and fruit is cheap and plentiful especially if you have a local market (I've lived in both Brisbane and the backend of nowhere in rural Queensland - always had a market)
It's also fucking amazing to be able to say that everything you spend goes directly to people within 50km (change as appropriate) of where you live. Rather than some random country a few hours flight away, it helps the environment and the economy. Anyone who's so much as been in a Woolworths or Coles here will see the proudly displayed "MADE IN AUSTRALIA" or queensland/Bundaberg/other city name on all products.
Maybe the UK ought to learn a thing or two.

Side note though: a lot of convenience foods are very expensive. The cheapest "value" pizzas you'll ever find you're looking at about $4.50-$5 each (vs tescos 60p for the same thing!) I've never bought a ready meal here but they seem to be in the $5-$11 range for a single person meal.
You can get them so much cheaper in the UK.
It doesn't seem to have done much for Australias obesity statistics; but it's something that's definitely noticeable and hard to adjust to (when you come from the UK where a tesco value pizza is cheaper than a mango).

I hate all this UK is better than Oz no Oz is better than UK.

I have to disagree slightly re. the fruit and veg situation where I am, in NSW. We do have fruit from other countries, especially grapes. We do have strawberries and blueberries year round, all from Australia though, but price can vary from as little as $1.99 for a 250g punnet up to $5 for the same in Coles and Woolworths.
Green beans in particular have very obviously been kept in storage, as they rot very quickly indeed once out of their bags, or just in the crates in the supermarket. Mandarins (Aussie name for every orange citrus fruit that isn't actually an orange) too, I'm sure.
Maybe it's different in different states, or maybe it's different in different areas of different states, but your experience is different from mine.

We did find NZ gave us a better quality of life, the weather, the opportunities to participate in sports for the kids, shorter working hours, bigger house (with a pool, that cost not much to run/maintain) proximity to the beach, good local schools etc etc Whilst it may not work out like that for everyone, you can’t make sweeping statements that these things don’t exist, because they do and we lived it for 4 years and loved it.

Yes, groceries are more expensive but the solution was to eat way less convenience food and eat fruit and veg seasonally. Since being back in the UK our kids have been shocked that people eat strawberries all year round, especially as they tasted shit out of season

Electricity and household bills are generally higher, and houses are less sturdy (generally to adhere to earthquake regulations) but you manage because generally speaking you’d be an idiot to uproot your family 18000km without doing at least some research into life out there.

NZ and Oz aren’t the UK just a few miles away, they’re foreign countries and you can’t compare them unfavourably with the UK, because they’re not the UK!

As an ex-pat myself I am always very careful not to slag off the UK. I love the UK. I also love where I live. There are things in the UK that annoyed me and there is a lot that annoys me here too. There are pros and cons to both places and I think this is the same with almost anywhere.

I find a lot of ex-pats make the mistake of continuously telling people how much better where they are now is than the UK and it just winds people up. It winds me up to hear ex-pats slagging off the UK here. Its almost like they are trying to continually justify the decision they made to move.

But to be fair ski there were about 7 or so pages pretty much putting the downer on Aussie and NZ I think the discussion has become more balanced now.

Did anyone see today's episode? Single mum, working PT and topped up with benefits who wanted to go to Oz to have more time with her kids. Except she was going to be working FT in Australia. She was sick of her kids sitting in their bedrooms in England and upon arriving at a potential house she said "you see, we've been here 10 minutes and they are playing together, being children. This is the life I want"

What if the teens don't want to go? Surely they cannot be compelled to, hell, you cannot compel them to receive medical treatment they don't want.

I saw today's episode and I really hope the mother watches it back and realises what selfish person she was/is being.

expatinscotland

The teen didn't want to go. She wanted to stay here and do her GCSE's this year and then go to college to do her A levels and all the mum kept going on about that she would pay for her to do it Australia. The teen was telling the mum that she could not afford to do it, but the mum would not listen as SHE wanted to move to Australia.

I caught some of it today and it was almost harrowing. The mother just wanted to be loved and her teenage daughter was tearfully begging her not to choose Down Under because her whole life was in Britain.

Her ?nana kept saying "I hope they have a HORRIBLE time and that it ALL GOES WRONG so that she'll come home. She belongs here."

Definitely running away from her problems.

I watched it today and it was so sad to see such a split in the family. On the one hand, you could see that the mum was really trying to make a better life for her kids but I don't think she realised that she'd be going from a place with a complete support network and family to a new place with no support network or friends.

I'd love to see a follow up with her to see what she chose to do finally.

It was all just projecting: that the shit things in her life had happened in the UK so all she needed to give her children a perfect life was to emigrate.

The mum clearly has a lot of unresolved issues; crying about her dd saying that she is selfish and then saying "I can't believe she could say that about me". She did seem rather immature too, I was very surprised to hear that she is a SW. I loved her saying that she hated the house because the tiles weren't straight and the stairs outside were dusty.

I don't know why they say they don't like a house because of the carpet colour or the wallpaper is dated. Surely you could just change them if you didn't like it?

I too found the mum in yesterday's episode quite immature.

I kept getting her & the daughter confused as she seemed more of an adult, more sensible than the mum.