Have a read of this. As posted by a member of the British Expats web forum. I’ve run a few paras together to save space, but it’s otherwise exactly as she typed it:

Appox 2 years ago we came up with idea of emigrating to Australia, we researched loads of areas, from both the internet and friends who are/have been there. We had our rose tinted glasses firmly attached. Thinking it was the best thing for our family, moving to the sunshine, beach lifestyle with friendly auzzies, better education, etc.

We went to court to get permission to remove our kids, promising the judge that Australia was the promised land, where we would all benefit from moving to, going to the beach at weekends, and doing more family stuff. We got our visas after 12 months of waiting and decided we would validate by taking a 2 week holiday. We had already spent approx £10,000 on getting up to the stage of visa grant, we then paid an additional £3500 for our validation trip.

We were so excited on the plane wondering if our expectations would be reached. How wrong we were.

Everything about the place is the opposite to what we had been told. The aussies we came accross were racist, as soon as they heard a non aussie accent they didnt want to know, taking all their effort just to crack a smile. Hubby went on a building site where there were 8 brickies building a garage, and out of the 8, the only one to acknowledge him was a brit. The guy had heen there for 5 years and had been in melbourne. He moved to Birsbane for work, but there is nothing about. He told us that he was earning $15 and hour, $20 if he did alot of work. They are awkward, en example we went to a zoo, my kids had waited 20 mins to hold a rabbit, which they did, they went back 5 minutes later,the woman was still in the pen, and no other kids in sight, my kids asked if they could hold a different rabbit and were told 1 hold per child, how petty.

EVERYTHING is expensive, meals, drinks at bars, general shopping at woolworths, a pack of mushrooms was $6! clothes are expensive. We were told that if we got PR we would get free medical care, wrongo! i got ill and had to get some antibiotics, it cost me $65 just to see the doctor, and then $15 for tablets, even with medicare. you can claim back half apparently.

Schools – you have to pay for books approx $200. Hubby got arrested for breaking up a fight, the police told him to go, and because the argument had been settled and they were going for a drink, he got arrested for not following a direction. he was the only one of 4 to get arrestedm even though 2 of the others started the fight and hit hubby. the officer took great delight in abusing him, calling him a pommie prick, and making sure the handcuffs were extra tight.

Yes it is sunny, but it is also very humid, it was uncomfortable to walk around in, never mind working outside in it, and it wasnt even summer. houses are expensive, gone are the days where you can get a massive bungalow with a pool, and loads of land for peanuts, all you can get now is a static caravan coated with wood on stilts for £150k in a decent area.

We hated the place, and people so much that we begged our airline to get us out, even though we had paid for our hotel in brisbane, we booked a hotel in dubai and spent the last 4 days there in instead. I cant believe it had cost us so much and the country/people left us so disappointed. We hurt family and friends with our decision to emigrate. Spent £14k, and almost gave up our home and everything.

I am soooo glad we only went one way, the moment those plane wheels left australian runway was the best part of the trip. ADVICE – It is not the promise land where you can stroll along the beach all day, if you have never been go for a holiday first, we found out the hard way.
Everone has their opinion, some love it, others such as ourselves hated it. This is our opinion based on our personal experience.

I have to say that the first time I read this, I thought it was a wind-up. There are, after all, plenty of knob-wits on that forum who’d post something like this just to get a rise out of people. But no, it soon transpired that the lady in question wasn’t actually a troll, but a real person.

I tried hard to imagine how anyone could have set the bar of expectation for Australia so high that after 10 days they’re on their knees begging a travel agent to get them off this god-forsaken continent and whisk them away to fair-minded Dubai. But try as I might, I couldn’t do it. I mean, I was keen to get to Oz, but I didn’t think it was “The promised land.”

Have you noticed how many “We were tolds” there are in that post? This woman seems to have sat at home every day and gorged on a non-stop diet of Wanted Down Under and New Life Down Under, followed by official tourist literature and the odd chat down the pub with an ex-expat sharing hazy recollections of Australia. She says she was waiting two years for her visa and you’d have thought that at some point during those two years she’d have Googled the weather in Brisbane.

There’s so many funny things about that post. I love the fact that her husband based his job reconnaissance on feedback from one random brickie on one random building site. How does her old man not know that the British brickie he spoke to wasn’t feeding him a line because he didn’t want another bloody pom in town fighting for a diminishing number of jobs? 

And as for the ‘rabbit incident’ – well, who can imagine the horror. Your poor children deprived of a second cuddle with a rabbit. I can picture the scene, the look of outrage on the lady’s face – she turns to her husband, “That’s it darling – I knew these Australians were monsters, but this takes the biscuit – we’re leaving!” Don’t let the door hit you on the way out love …

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