Hi, all- reviving this a bit!
5 years ago, I came back to the UK after 15 years in Oz. I now have Oz citizenship, an Aussie DH and 2 dual nationality DSs!
I lived, whilst younger, in Melbourne (rubbish winter weather!), Sydney and 'settled' in Brisbane for several years before moving up to the Sunshine Coast near Noosa.
DH was the one who wanted to try his hand in the UK in his new career, IT. He got a year's unpaid leave from his govt job in Queensland- but has now quit altogether. He's pretty keen to stay for the time being, anyway! He loves being able to go out walking just about anywhere, a history, English pubs, the Continent a short hop away, a robust media, a wider divergence of political opinion and a wider circle of friends of differing views. He's not particularly sporty, either, and finds the Australian attitude to sport a bit objectionable- the 'win at all costs/winner takes all' attitude as opposed to the English one which tends more towards the gracious victor congratulating the efforts of the sanguine loser! Not "Loooooser!", making an 'L' shape on one's forehead. (You'd've laughed at the Australian media's FURY when Team GB was in 4th place in the Olympic medal tally- and we all maybe remember how John Howard, the then-prime minister THREW the winners medals at our cricket team a few years ago? Graceless. DH was ashamed to be Australian at those times!)
We owned a big, 4 bedroomed, study, 2 internal garaged house on 2500 sq m with a pool in suburbia. But you know what? I don't miss it! There's practical reasons to 'whinge about the sun'- it's lethal to baby skins! I spent hours slathering sunblock onto the boys, slapping hats on ALL the time, long sleeves ALL the time. The beach was a 10 minute drive away but we simply didn't go there between 10-4pm, which, when you consider the latest it ever gets dark on the Sunshine Coast in 6.45pm, doesn't give you long! the winters are cold in the mornings but turn into clear, cloudless, still, featureless days. For weeks on end. Sunset at 5pm.
I'm a keen gardener which was great in that things grew in super quick time but I did tire of the wildlife amongst the tropicana- the snakes, vast spiders and centipedes 6" long- all in the undergrowth of a suburban garden, mind!
Educationally- well, 36% of Oz kids go private. Fine, but a couple of factors: That leaves 66% of kids ON AVERAGE which, to call a spade a spade means perhaps not the most 'aspirational' offsping in your local secondary. Also, on The Coast we had a choice of SIX private secondaries costing around $4-5K a year BUT they were ALL church schools from Christian Fundamentalism x 2 (complete with a Creationist doctrine!), Lutheran, the (expensive) Anglican, a Methodist (!- didn't allow raffles til recently!) and Catholic. There's also no OFSTED so you have to rely on local gossip!
I think Oz WOULD be a great place to bring up a certain type of kid- one passionate in sport, mainly, who really wanted to spend every waking hour outside (complete with sunblock..). But I had a friend who's DS was openly called 'gay' by other boys at his private school (to the smirks on the faces of passing teachers) for choosing music practise over cricket!
As for adults, just an interesting observation: I worked in a large district general in Brisbane for 8 years. I was amazed at the extent to which I discovered that the British-born porters and cleaners who'd emigrated to OZ never, never wanted to even set FOOT back in the UK whereas the doctors and more senior nursing staff, (for example,) from the UK were all quite wistful about the reality that they had kids in school/uni in Oz and had forged their non-transferable earning capacity careers in Oz thus weren't in a position to emigrate back to the UK. Much though many would have liked!
Now what do I hate about the UK?
The sheer number of PEOPLE here! The rubbish summer we just had (though Brittany saved the day...), the way in which the motorist is fleeced at every opportunity (but I must say I'm thinking of how we WEREN'T in France rather than Oz to be fair!). I dislike the way one's income is increasingly becoming a measure of one's worth in the UK (though don't go imagining there's no class system in Oz! It's just more based on cash than culture!- go to Sweden for less of that!).
Anyway, I could bang on but I have to go wake up my slobby bil from a small rural town in Queensland who's just spent 5 weeks snoring on my sofa, waking just long enough to complain about how everything is better back home...!