Being away from home alone

[eleonore21]

Hi Everyone,
My name is Helene and I am a French citizen living in a remote area in Australia. My husband is Australian and we have a 6 months old baby boy.
I cannot get over my feeling of depression, of loneliness and of remoteness. I am raising our child on my own as my husband is always at work. I dont have any family here nor friends as since we live on an island, people tend to keep to themselves a lot for some reason (maybe they are afraid to get too close to anybody in fear of being bothered all the time as we all live 2 minutes from each other). Anyway, I wonder everyday what the point of getting up and getting the baby ready and myself ready is.
I feel really bored and lonely, numb in a way.
Please if anyone is in my situation, I would love a chat!
Thank you so much in advance,
Helene.

Hi eleonore21

I'm not exactly in the same situation as you, but I didn't want to read this and run - wanted to say hi! I live in Asia and miss my friends and family in the UK a lot.

Whereabouts in Australia are you? Its tough, especially with a young baby. Can you go and knock on a neighbour's door and introduce yourself?

Hi sarah,
Thank you very much for your message, it is very kind.
We live on an island in Queensland called Hamilton Island. I know a few people but I cant say I consider them as friends, they are more like associates so I dont feel any closeness with anyone and I look back at what I have left behind when we were in France a few weeks ago with our baby. I miss my family and I miss the closeness that our baby boy had with my family.It is really hard! Living in Asia away from your home and your family, what do you do in order to cope so well?

are there any young children near by?
Is there a toddler group?

Message withdrawn

If there are young children and no groups why not put a notice in the local shop inviting mums with babies to your house one morning. Then sugest you do it at someone elses the next week and so on?

Dear Suzy,
Thank you for your message,
It warms my heart big time!!!
How did you manage to get by? Where abouts are you in France?
I am originally from Compiegne, near Paris.
Please tell me more about your story!!

Dear Auntymandy,
many thanks for your tip, I may put an add in the local paper to organize a play group..
It is a very good idea, thanks a lot!

well I wish you luck!
Start with a coffee morning and build up!

Hi Eleonre

Much sympathy but I have it much easier than you do - we moved to Townsville (also QLD) in July and are only here for a year. Have you heard of the Playgroup Association? You have to call the QLD branch (google it - sorry can't remember offhand) to get details of local groups but they all seem really friendly. Trying to think of other things...the Yellow Pages was quite helpful in terms of flicking through and spotting random things. Babies are taken to at least weekly swimming lessons here from 3mo so that could be another route into at least getting out of the house and hopefully meeting mums with similarly aged children. Also music classes - the one here is called Kodaly which is a national organisation and again starts from really very little (that's how I met my first friend here and she introduced me to both Playgroup and a book group). Churches often have playgroups and you don't have to either believe or attend the church to pitch up - the more the merrier adn it's a great way of meeting people. Often you have to take a turn every so often of doing something (making the coffee, clear up time etc) so you are in a sit where it's easy to get chatting (appreciate that initiating conversation is not always the easiest and 3 months on I really hate the whole life story speech!). Keep in touch. It does get easier...

hello

elonore21, i haven't posted before but ggglimpopo told me you are feeling lonely

I am in Perth, moved from the UK last year, have australian DH too.

if you want to CAT or get on MSN with me, we should be on similar, time frames let me know

Thank you very much to you all for trying to cheer me up! I really appreciate every comment you have made! It is so lovely to know that you are not the only one feeling the ups and downs of being expatriated and I will keep in touch with the progress I make. It is just so hard leaving on an island as it is so small and there is hardly anything to do! Maybe we need to move to a city!
XXX

Hi Eleonore

Just checking in to see how things are. We're just back from 6 days on Hamilton Island and whilst we absolutely adored it I can see why it could be tricky living there fulltime. Do you really have to go all the way to Airlie Beach for your supermarket shopping? I guess you just get good at buying in bulk or getting people to do messages if you know they are going. Do you have a golf buggy? We found them to be just the best thing ever in terms of transporting children and acoutrements. I think it's a trend that would solve many city transport problems! Is it easy for the local community to identify each other and be a real community in the midst of such a peripatetic population with the tourists and presumably second-homers? What does your dh do? Is there scope for you to work? Hope all is well.