G’DAY and festive greetings from Down Under, where the sun is shining, the surf’s up and life’s a bowl of cherries.
I gather it’s pretty grey back where you are. Cold temperatures and a bleak outlook — harbingers of gloom and despondency.
Expats Teresa and Mike have developed a large following in the UK for their vlogs about what it’s like to migrate to Australiainstagram/teresamikedownunder
Perhaps your miracle cure of Brexit is taking time to work.
So much so that many of you want to migrate here, encouraged by images of yearned-for perfection, depicted on I’m A Celebrity . . . or by popular video bloggers.
Be careful what you wish for. The Australia you see on I’m a Celeb might not turn out to be what you get when you land.
This is true in both positive and negative senses.
The positive is that while, yes, we might have the world’s most venomous snakes and spiders that can kill you in one bite, they generally don’t.
Celebs might be tested by being forced to sit in cages with biting insects or drink cocktails of macerated bull penis and snake eyes, but these little nasties don’t really bother us.
True, we did find a nest of redback spiders under the trash bin in our kitchen the other day, but none of them bit us.
And — don’t tell my wife — I saw a big brown snake and a slightly smaller red-bellied black snake in the garden at our country retreat.
Nothing wrong with that — they keep the mice in check, rather like the huntsman spiders in the Celeb dunny keep lethal funnel webs at bay.
As to sharks. Yep, they’re out there, but not many people get eaten very often.
So, please don’t get the idea that if you come here, automatically you will die.
But equally, please don’t be deluded into thinking everything here is perfection.
It is, of course, most of the time, but there are negatives that should be acknowledged.
Benefits and pitfalls
The video bloggers and expats Teresa and Mike have developed a large following in the UK for their vlogs about what it’s like to migrate to Australia; what are the benefits, the pitfalls, and the necessities to make the move?
They’re a lovely couple and they say the most wonderful things about us.
First and most important, they nominate the weather as the greatest positive difference between home and here.
They watch the sun come up, marvel at the clarity of the light, drool over early morning swims and delight in the general cleanliness of the nation.
Yeah, the weather can be nice. But sometimes it can be nasty, too.
The Celeb jungle camp in northern New South Wales was almost washed away by record rains and floods this year, but other areas are in desperate drought, with folks eyeing the horizon fearing smoke and bushfires. Christmas can be tense at times.
The average cost of a house in Sydney these days is around £800,000
Mark Day
Teresa and Michael discuss the cost of living. They say eating out here is cheaper than at home, citing a pad Thai and free drink for $13 (that’s £6.50 back in the UK).
Fair enough, but you won’t get that at the many restaurants that charge about £100 a head for dinner.
Other vloggers make the same comment about costs being high but add the crucial counterpoint that wages are also higher here — much higher.
But it’s never enough. I also haven’t seen the Aussie-is-perfection vloggers wrestle with the most fundamental question young people here are asking: how on earth can I afford a home?
The average cost of a house in Sydney these days is around £800,000, with Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane all a million-plus.
That’s great if you’re now a millionaire because you own a home, but what if you don’t?
Come on down
Unless the kids can access the bank of Mum and Dad, they’ll be forever locked out of the Australian dream of home ownership.
With our continued strong migration program and a national shortage of 750,000 houses, home affordability is not about to go into reverse.
According to the vloggers, another area to get your head around if you migrate is understanding the local language.
Sure, we call petrol stations servos, car registrations rego, the local bowling club the bowlo, and family relations rellies, but that’s not as hard to understand as, say, Geoff Boycott chatting cricket.
The truly interesting stuff comes when we adapt a local version of Cockney rhyming slang. Such as: “I hit the frog and toad in my jam jar and headed to Steak and Kidney so the cheese and kisses could spend our bugs bunny on Chrissy prezzies.”
Of course, no one (except my mate Steve) speaks like that.
We simply say we hit the road in our car and went to Sydney so the missus could spend our money on Christmas presents.
So, relax. Come on down. Bring your skills, enjoy our laid-back lifestyle and stop worrying about snakes and spiders.
You’ll be welcomed with a smile and a cold beer, the Aussie way.
Many of you want to migrate to Australia, encouraged by images of yearned-for perfection, depicted on I’m A Celebrity Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
