A Land Down Under

I have always loved Australia and always will. It is a country I have been lucky enough to have lived in for a couple of years in total. For that reason I know what the good and bad elements of living there are.

The lifestyle is amazing, with the weather allowing you to be outside, generally on the beach for about 9 months a year, and the opportunities available to children in terms of sports and other pastimes are better than they are in the UK.

On the other side of the equation is the very high cost of living with food costing a lot more overall than it does in the UK. Supermarkets have much higher prices and the smaller shops like greengrocers are very pricey even by those standards. To make things worse, unless you have a high level job the wages don’t pay enough for you to find a place to live comfortably, although that’s the same over here and in any other country of course.

So, what would I do if I lived over there after retirement? Well, I could only go over if one of my children go over and settle, so I would have a support system. I would be going to as much sport as possible, as that is way cheaper than the UK.

I love the WBBL and Women’s sports in general and I would love to follow them live rather than on TV. I also support the Baggy Greens, yes even in the Ashes, and have done since the late 80s. My wife is a bigger sports fan than I am so she would be very happy about that.

I am not a beach lover but I enjoy walking along the coast and I would let my wife lie on the beach while I do that, as I always have! Ordinarily I don’t enjoy fireworks but I absolutely love the New Year’s Eve fireworks over Sydney and was lucky enough to see them from a boat on the harbour as 2024 ticked over to 2025.

So there you have it. Will I ever get there permanently? Almost certainly not. Will I go there again for an extended holiday? I really hope so.