Olive's dh is doing his yearly "this country is rubbish lets go to Australia" speach - am being swayed

[oliveoil]

His brother lives in Perth and loves loves loves it there, has been in Australia for about 4 years or so.

Dh is always going on about emigrating there, espeacially when the weather is crap here (ie most of August ).

I am scared thinking that by the time immigration is sorted, I will be nearing 40 and it is a big move to make - am 36 now, girls are nearly 4 and 2.

Pros and cons please from those that have done it and those that thought about it and didn't.

Thank you!

xx

My sister lives in Australia. Standard of living does appear to be better - they have a sizeable house with pool, but her dh is basically doing manual labour and she works part time as a HV...

When I visited her though I was struck by how crappy and hicksville her lifestyle was - she lives in Penrith (about an hour from Sydney) and the it seemed so utterly small town.

I don't get why people rubbish this country. The only things which I regard as crap here are:

• the weather
• the traffic

Hyacinth - the small town mentality is definitely here
and some of the small towns are terrifyingly small but then it's a big country.
I was only remarking to Mr Wong the other day as we watched the rural tv network (which covers an area 3 times the size of France) that in some ways Australia is pitifully backwardand that all the talent goes abroad to cut it's teeth and then comes back to live the lifestyle. DH is a prime example (designer). But what with the interweb and all the experience of the Outside World, and people in their late 30s coming back to settle and raise their children yet maintain and intergrate Big City/Rich Cultural standards and references - there is a buzz and a thrust in many aspects of Australian culture and thinking that is pretty impressive.

The Hicksville element is certainly alive and well, and what we have to remember is that this country was founded and forged by hicks and what a bloody good job they did too. (Indigenous people's rights being trampled on notwithstanding). We can't squeeze them out of the National picture and get all glossy because we still owe them a lot.

Just for interest, to give foriegners an idea of how big and undeveloped most of this country is there is a landmark on the map of Western Australia named "Len Beadell's Burnt Out Truck". It's the only salient feature for many hundreds of miles. That's the scale of things we're dealing with, And the further you go from the centre of the cities, your sister's suburb is a good example, the hickier and remoter and empty it becomes.

It's a big place with diametrically opposed cultures - the modern and the phenomanally ancient, 80,000 years, and a vast area with a sparse population inbetween.

There

I'm going to use that essay as part of my application for citizenship.

sorry, bad grammar, pesky kids nagging me for breakfast

hicksville is more like the town that gave me my name. I lived there for two years - not many people, everyone knew everyone's business, large indigenous pop but unlike other places in QLD lived as part of the community rather than separate. Learnt a lot about indigenous culture that a city girl would never have learnt. Two hours drive for decent shops, and any clothes shops!!!! And only 3 1/2 hours from Brisbane, 2 hours from Bundaberg.

But you meet some characters and it is fun.

to put it into perspective - australia has approx 19 million people - spread over a landmass the size of the continental US.
Most of Europe would fit into Australia.

Suzy lives in the largest state - Western Australia. I live in QLD - not far behind WA in size. 80% of Australia's pop lives in urban areas - so a whole lot of hicksville going on over a whole lot of land.

It would take me 6 hours flying time to go and visit Suzy - almost the same time it would take me to fly to SIngapore and a couple of hours short of TOkyo.

Hyacinth,
yep, Penrith is Hicksville. Every country has suburbs like that though.
If you feel like
teasing your sister at all, you can tell her she lives in The Riff. So named because people from Penrith are not eactly known for thier perfect diction, and generally pronounce it Penriff.
Be careful if you thinky you might offend her though!

pmsl

Ummm - I might just do that!