Moving Pains

Relocating countries with your family is not unlike divorce and I’ve no doubt can potentially end in one!

There is a LOT of stress. There are tantrums and tears and children struggling with difficult choices. And there are reams and reams of the worlds most boring, confusing and frustrating paperwork to fill in and send off. Not only can you not understand a good deal of it, it’s imperative that you do not get any off it wrong or the UK Border Agency will ban you for life (or so it feels as you fill it .)

There is just no sod out there to help you with the whole catastrophe of finding out what to do to move countries. That is to say there’s holiday info and migrating info, but if you just want to do it for a bit, well, sorry but its not on. OR they say- “Oh, is it for work then?” No, we’re choosing to do this.

Oh...er...

From every area we’ve had to look into – school, passports, visas, renting- we’ve had a difficult time finding information and in most cases, getting wildly varying advice. To add insult to injury, this advice sometimes came at $3.50 per minute.

And of course all your pain is self-inflicted so you can’t really offload to anyone and you know they’d be bored out of their brain hearing about it more than once anyway. Theres pretty much there’s only your stressed-out partner to vent upon. Sorry sweetie!

PRACTICAL STUFF- Only read if desperate enough to consider doing...

Advice to anyone considering this: Begin 6 months beforehand. You could do it faster but you’ll need a script from the doc for blood pressure medication first...

Contact the embassy of the country you’re planning to go live in. Visit in person whenever possible and do it a few times until you feel you’ve sussed out all the help they can give. Borrow or buy books on the subject- for the UK there is books on moving but they are a fairly broad overview and don't help much with all the daily nuts and bolts of getting it all together.

School. Ours had absolutely no advice bar asking us to tell them when we were leaving and suggesting we contact the Education department. The Dept. of Education suggested we contact the British Embassy and vice versa. Eventually one person put us onto the right people.

If you have kids, getting school sorted is quite imperative. Our eldest is in Year 10 and this caused a great deal of our problems. Whilst schooling in the UK is similar to ours, the school term and ages and corresponding years are a bit different. Alex who is in Year 10 now, would need to go to a separate ‘college’ that is like an equivalent of year 11 and 12. Because the HSC in Australia begins last term of year 11, we thought he would be in good stead to do his HSC upon return and had planned our stay around it. NOT SO. The Dept of education expect you to complete two full terms of Year 11 in order to sit the HSC. This means Alex will have to do his Australian school work via distance education (Karrabar). We feel this would be socially isolating and a rotten way of doing practical subjects, so we hope to negotiate a drop from full-time schooling in the UK to part-time, so he can do his Australian work and still be with kids his own age. We can only hope the UK school is open to this idea.

Picking a school? Like Australia there are catchment areas for schools, however they all state this is no guarantee you will get in. This makes picking and corresponding with schools very difficult. Of course we plan to get there early enough to go see the schools in person before the school year ends and in time for the boys to have a look around and sort out enrollment, but it’s all tentative. We’ve picked school we like the look and sound of and hope to rent in the catchment area but there’s no guarantee a house will come up in there at the right time, and that even then we’ll get into the intended school! What we’ve been told so far is that we need to send school reports over in order to apply. Egad no!

 Unfortunately the official reports from the boy’s current schools are usually not handed out till last day of term. We shall have to enquire into getting ours a little sooner if allowed.

Fees. We are applying for public type schooling ie, the free type like the ones the boys attend in Sydney. To qualify for this you have to have Visas (the right ones) or a British passport.

Visas are a personal thing in that everyone will have there own requirements and qualifications. Getting the right type of Visas sorted has been very confusing with a lot of conflicting info. Reading up on it online is a nightmare; ringing and paying for advice is good when the person you talk to knows what they are on about. If in doubt, ask to speak to a supervisor as you cannot afford to get this wrong. Eventually you have to go into the city to give your application, photo and fingerprints and then post it all off WITH your passports and possibly other people’s important documents, hoping to god it comes back in time. DO allow yourself the maximum time to get this stuff back- it would be less stressful! Initially we looked way too early, got caught up with selling our house and then realised time was short.

Passports. If you qualify for a passport to the country you intend to live in do so. Our family was split down the middle so I opted out so the family wasn’t separated at airports, but this meant I had to go the Visa route. As an Australian citizen you can stay in the UK for up to 6 months without any of this hassle but if working during that time you probably need a visa.

Selling your house. This was the option we chose because renting out our home would not cover our mortgage repayments and, frankly the idea of a year or so with no mortgage sounded like heaven and a true way to have an adventure. We renovated most of the house and garden over a six month period so the house would sell quickly, which it did- sooner than we anticipated. Then again you could get stuck, so faster was better than slower. There were still some hair-raising moments that we thought we would have to go back onto the market because the string of buyers couldn’t line up. It all got sorted in the end but not without a great peak in our blood-pressures! Before we sold we sorted out a lot of our gear and sold or gave it away or chucked it. This made the house look a lot better anyway. We decided to keep only the things we were fond of and enough for a basic house-set-up when we return. We are currently looking into storage and removal’s. We could leave a few things with friends and family but on the whole it seems much less hassle for everyone to store most of it.

Pets. One thing you might leave behind and we will be, is pets. We had two dogs but one of them passed away last year leaving behind one little lonely doggie. We did consider taking her but with our intent to travel as often as possible, it was just not viable. My brother and sister in law have very kindly offered to have her and we are extremely grateful. Thanks guys!

 Our dogs did not exactly lead the “My Dog’ lifestyle of pampered pooches but they were indoors dogs and getting someone to have one of them in their home is a big ask. Several people did offer but we felt we needed to find someone who was home more often and had the room. I don’t know what we’d have done if my brother hadn’t put up his hand. This is a tough one. Your pets are part of the family, but when the humans have a rare opportunity, I guess you’ve got to weigh things up.

 We also have guinea pigs belonging to my younger son. Difficult though it was to decide, we are seeking permanent new homes for them. Being tame and healthy, new loving homes seemed the best thing though they will definitely be missed.

As for our dog, I am not looking forward to the day we say bye to her and I have no way of knowing how she will cope, but we’ll research how best to go about everything and make the transition as kind as possible. Envisage some daft Skyping here!

Jobs: Obviously the best way to do a long holiday is a working one and heading over to a waiting job is the ideal, but one we have yet to make a reality. Fil sought relocation through his current job but found only work intended for someone staying longer. He has applied for a dozen jobs via the internet but most people probably don’t take us seriously as we are out of the country for now. He has had a few leads that have fallen through and it is all quite frustrating. If nothing works out before we leave we will just apply when there and are confident that will make things a lot easier however, you can’t apply to rent a house until you have a job...

Housing: Once again the chain of events to get yourselves sorted living overseas is complicated. Technically we could apply to rent from here if we were willing to pay a years rent in advance or get a guarantor who earns twice the yearly rental in wages per annum. Neither of these things appeals in the least. We used to enjoy looking at Winchester rental properties on-line, and it is still a valuable thing to do in becoming familiar with areas and pricing, but until we get a job, we probably can’t seriously look at housing - lets face it, Google street view aside, you can’t tell much about your picked home unless you are there.

We will probably have to find a self-contained holiday rental until everything is sorted. And, this will probably cause hassles with our intended schools, but what can you do but hope it all sorts itself out in the end?

Transport. The UK seems to have a pretty good public transport system but undoubtedly we will need a car during our stay. Good news is cars seem to be cheaper though fuel is pricier. You can drive in the UK with an Australian license I think for a year. Alex having turned 16 qualifies for his ‘L’s here but we need to investigate his continued learning in the UK as I think you must be 17. This news if true will not go down well but having to use public transport is not a bad thing and will hopefully be part of the adventure (I tell myself some hopeful beauties!).

Well, it’s now less than a month before we head off. We’ve yet to pack our stuff for the UK (mostly clothes) or our house, and parting with our home of ten years is less than three weeks away.

Our flights are booked (after careful consideration of leg room for the tall among us) and we live each week marking things off THE LIST (and adding things we’ve forgotten). Every now and then a thrill goes though me as I contemplate the nearness of our goal, but most of the time its heads down and lists ticked just trying to continue regular life with school and work and family and friends.

I can feel though this kind of thinning feeling however as we drop our ‘sandbags’ overboard as we get closer and closer to taking our big step over the ocean. Farewells and goodbyes have already begun.

 If only my poor mum weren’t already crying!