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!

Everyone who emigrates there says it's because of the warmer weather and the 'outdoor' lifestyle. I've never quite understood what is so appealing about relentless hot weather and being outdoors a lot of the time. But that's probably just me. From what I can gather from TV and reading about it,Australia is the home of all sorts of horrible insects and wildlife. No thanks.

My dsis moved to Australia about 8 years ago with her dh and young ds. Her husband wanted it much more than she did, lots of talk about more money, better lifestyle, trips to the beach and bbq etc.
4 years into it he left her for another women, she had no real skills so has had to retrain. Her and her ds live in a small flat as it's all they can afford. She's in no way better off, she has struggled finding friends etc. She's staying because her ds thinks of it as home now.
They never go to the beach in fact I think I went to the beach more last year than she did and I live in sunny Wales.
I think a lot of people on this show have high expectations and have a bit of a shock when they realise that they won't be much better off at all.

Not wdu but escape to the country. Quite a lot have been filmed in our area and the presenters (researchers though probably) come up with some wacky ideas, especially about the commutability of local towns. "Oh, yes, x town is only 20 miles away, an easy commute for you", whereas anyone local knows that in rush hour it would take you an hour and a half to two hours each way. I have seen properties shown that I know in passing, and there is no mention of the busy main road (that you can hear in the background), the railway line or the noisy local pub.
They even came to our village and showed them a house that was virtually unsellable as grossly over priced, very peculiar in design and had been on the market for FOUR years. Unsurprisingly they didn't buy it.
On wdu the families seem to live in cloud cuckoo land generally. Surely if you are unhappy at home, moving somewhere simply because the weather is perceived to be better isn't going to improve your life. And some of the houses they look at, well they are just plug ugly.

The houses seem to be so drab in Australia or is it me ?

My absolute favourites are the people on Escape to the Country or Location Location Location who want a house in the country with no road noise but excellent transport links. Ummm....

And space for a pony. You’ve just moved from camberwell so I’m pretty sure you aren’t really used to keeping ponies. Twonks.

I've been surprised this week to see "I escaped to the country" showing people who ACTUALLY bought! I thought no one ever did.

The Oz programme seems to just be people who have pinned EVERYTHING on Australia being the answer to everything that is mildly wrong with their lives. There is always one who wants to go more than the other and their puppydog insistence to the other about how Oz is their DREAM and they've wanted it all their lives is nauseating. For most of them the new start they want with outside and beach and more space could easily be done by moving to another part of the UK but it never seems like this has occurred to them

I do love HUTH though, but not the new woman.

I agree Dunedin girl. NZ is not just the UK with sunshine. One of the reasons we picked NZ was the cultural element. I've learnt a lot here and really value living in a place with a strong Maori, Pacific Island and "Asian" presence. I have a lot of European friends here who know very little about non pakeha (NZ Europeans) which can be quite frustrating.

NZ must have a been a paradise 15 years ago when you could buy a beach side house in Auckland for 400k nzd and the exchange rate was 3.8 to the pound.

EggsonHeads If we were uneducated etc. I would pick Australia over Britain but that place has nothing for us.

And did you find your spiritual home?

Let me guess - I suppose it would have to be Edinburgh, "the Athens of the North" as you're about 2 500 years too late for the heyday of the original Athens.

Although I suppose that you are 200-300 years too late to experience Edinburgh in its full glory.

Thanks for link ThumbsWitches

The family on today's WDU went all the way to Oz to .... play crazy golf and wander through a maze on their family day out

spangles one of the reasons I emigrated was because of the weather and outdoor lifestyle. The weather isn't relentless, we get six months of mostly beach weather, and plenty of rain and storms and other weather mostly during the other six months. In fact the local aboriginal people recognise six separate seasons, all with their associated weather pattern. I bloody love the sun and I think our summer isn't long enough, and I'd probably die if I had to go through a cold dark British winter again! You're more than welcome to that weather really, but its horses for courses I guess. But give me sunny beach picnics over hiking in the rain any day! I actually decided to emigrate one particularly pissy day when the rain was horizontal and it was just the last straw!

Agree wholeheartedly about the colonial attitude. I live in NZ and hear "like the UK with beaches" and "like the UK in thr 50s" from people who choose not to see the incredible Maori and Pacific Island heritage and culture, as well as the other cultural elemnets you discover when you just open your eyes. Embarrassing and inaccurate.

Yes the Uk in the 50s didn’t have 25% of its population Māori, Asian or Pacific Islander I think! Or huge volcanoes, Glaciers and earthquakes.

I completely agree. The people on the show generally live in a crappy small 3 bed semi, worth jack shit, and us badly decorated. EA goes around, values it, they end up with a DM sad face as it’s not worth what they thought.

They get to Oz, thinking they’ll buy a huge house with pool, by the sea. Well, no because just like buying near London, the price rockets the closer you live to the sea. And quite frankly, who wants to sweep fucking sand off the driveway every day, have the thought of maybe being bitten by some beasty, and then fly season arrives 🤢 nothing more glamorous than having a fly sit on your face when it previously landed on a turd.

Anyway, I digress. Then they find out how much they earn, compared to the UK. Which can be fun, when they realise it’s less, and the other partner earns a fortune doing their job out there.

It makes me laugh even more because I’ve been there, though we kept the house in the UK and rented whilst there. So, I already know the score. We did BBQ regularly, but used the pool less. It cost a fortune to keep clean and maintained, it wasn’t worth having one. The beach was kept for the weekends if we could be bothered with the rigmarole if removing sand off everything.

I watched WDU Revisited last year and if I remember correctly about 3 or 4 families had made the move and had managed to find nice properties and good jobs whilst other families were in the process of visa applications and then others hadn’t moved. The family that sticks out to me was the Para Olympian, her husband who I think worked in IT and 2 dc who had a bit over £1million GBP to spend. Now that one had some nice properties and locations!

Everyone who emigrates there says it's because of the warmer weather and the 'outdoor' lifestyle No, not everyone. We moved here because we wanted to be closer to dh's family, because mine are shit and offered us nothing in the way of anything!

The houses seem to be so drab in Australia or is it me? WDU always seem to show the modern build/renovated homes that are lifeless & faceless. The older, more traditional homes look beautiful, but they take up precious real estate so they get sold, knocked down and 6 faceless/lifeless homes get built in their place.

I’m watching for the first time in ages.

Also the large, character, inner urban, period properties are $$$$ and completely out of the price range of your average suburban Brit so they’re never shown. They just show them shitey characterless boxes in soulless estate ex-urbs 30km out of town which is all they can afford.

It baffles me why they always put them up in a really nice house for the week and then get shown far pokier houses that invariably they don't like. Put them up in somewhere nasty and then they'll like everything they're shown!

Also can't understand why/if Nicki Popidol is even actually there. She says the same thing in every single episode, just occasionally has a different brightly coloured sundress on or her hair parting has moved slightly.

ETTC I find baffling. There seems to be a bizarrely high number of couples on the show who want to run a llama farm.

Is Nicki Popidol on Twitter? If so, could someone tweet her and ask? I'm convinced she pops on some fake tan and a summery frock and does a few pieces to camera whilst she's filming Escape to the Country in Devon or Cornwall.

I occasionally watch WDU and think a lot of comments on the thread are missing the point a bit and are a bit overly negative.

People poo pooing the urge to emigrate for sunshine and outdoor lifestyle like its trivial:

Actually a fair number of people find their mental health significantly declines in the UK winter. Even those less affected experience negative moods. Its said in the UK that there is a serious vitamin D deficiency. People with common conditions health conditions or pain find an improvement in their health in sunnier weather (some). In any case nothing wrong with wanting to wake up to sunshine everyday.
And yes you can go out in the UK. But the weather can affect how much you enjoy and how much you can do.

And I have seen a fair few episodes where couples find they would be far better off and find their vastly over-inflated tiny UK 3 bed will buy them a brand new modern spacious house with a pool in NZ or Aus.

About a 3rd go on to emigrate.

I daresay some find it works out. Frankly Britain has become very depressing for the JAMs and having been born here I too am beginning to get fedup. Which is a shock as I have always said I'd never see myself leaving the UK.

It’s true about the weather, it’s not everything. however I used to become quite depressed in uk winters with SAD. I simply don’t suffer from it anymore.

What are "the JAMS"?

Just About Managings

My medium term plan is to winter in Spain as I can't seem to get my Vit d levels up enough to help my fibromyalgia in the UK winter. BUT, we're taking several years to build up to that, trying out different areas, AND we have no intention of buying until we're absolutely sure it's the right place for us.

I did look into a move to Aus some years back, as DH was interviewing for a role there, but the finances didn't stack up -he wouldn't have had a big enough salary to let us live close enough to work to be able to see him during the week, and we'd have had issues with schools/Home edding/being back in the UK in time to qualify as a home student for uni fees. Why people can't seem to think about these things in advance of "oh we want to move to the other side of the world" amazes me.