Hi everyone! You have all been incredibly helpful to me in my earlier thread, and I would love any perspective that you would have, as DH and I consider a life changing move for our family of three. This will be a long one.
I was born and grew up in Australia. DH and I met in Sydney after I started my graduate career. He came to Sydney after being seconded from the UK for two years as part of our company. Ultimately, we ended up dating and getting married within those two years. I requested a two year secondment to our respective London office at the end of his time in Sydney and we packed up and left Australia together.
We had our only daughter in London two years after leaving Sydney and stayed for her stability. She has dual UK and Australian citizenship, as I am an Australian citizen and she is British. Now that she is 11 and has a year left before finishing primary school, we are seriously considering packing up and moving back to Sydney permanently. We aren't in contact with DH's family due to long term conflicts and while DD has lots of friends, there aren't many children who she has formed very deep friendships with. While we have incredible friends in London (where we still live), DD's cousins, grandparents and our other friends all live in Sydney, so she will be very well supported as she starts secondary school. She loves going to visit Australia every few years to see my family, but she also loves her life in England too and at times, has expressed a desire to live here forever.
We love Australia's lifestyle and have been considering a move for a few years, but never as seriously as we are now. DH and I feel ready to take this step. Our companies are prepared to relocate us in our respective Sydney offices. As DD is a dual citizen, she has access to universal healthcare, interest free university loans and her standard of living will not change. We currently live in a two bedroom apartment in central London and it is rather cramped, but we hope to move into a small home with a backyard in Australia.
If we're going to do it, next year would be the time. However, I worry about how DD will take the move. I remember leaving Sydney by choice and being so sad at 26. This is the only home she's ever known and I fear destabilising her. She is our priority, but this is it for us and we need to decide now before she changes schools and becomes very firmly rooted with education and friendships. She will be 12, if and when we move.
Any perspective, advice, questions or thoughts would be extremely helpful in allowing us to see the bigger picture. I don't want to bring it up with DD, until we're reasonably sure that we will do it, can incorporate her perspective and give her a good space of time to get used to the idea.
I feel a little confused about her school too - we plan on moving in August 2018 and her grade will be year 7, unless she repeats the final term of year 6 in Australia. The Australian school year starts in January.
I'm so sorry for the length of this post, but thank you for getting through it 