When former teacher Rebecca Frith swapped Northants for Australia’s Sunshine Coast in 2007, she not only changed careers but tied the knot, too, as she tells Richard Webber
“When I reflect on why I moved to Australia in January 2007, it wasn’t because I was particularly fed up with the UK. It was more the way my life was going. Having worked for a long time as a primary teacher in deprived areas, I was feeling a bit jaded by some of the social problems I came across, and that was all you heard about on the evening news, too.
The chance of moving to Australia had arisen years earlier. My husband David and I first dated in 1999, just before he decided to emigrate. He asked me to move with him but I turned him down. We lost touch but bumped into each other at a mutual friend’s wedding in 2006. It was two days before he was due to return to Australia and I decided to visit on holiday. It didn’t take me long to realise it was a lovely sunny country, boasting happy people and a laidback culture.
Within a year, I’d moved out under my own steam and before long we were dating again. It was a big move and understandably a little frightening, but I felt a sense of excitement more than anything, safe in the knowledge that I had plenty of support from home and could go back if it didn’t work out.
Arriving with no firm plans to stay indefinitely, I kept my belongings in storage in the UK. But what I fancied doing was some IT training to see if it would lead to another career – and it did. I’d been looking for an excuse to retrain for years and moving Down Under gave me that opportunity.
I completed a Masters degree in IT at Brisbane University last year and have been working for a local web development company ever since. David, meanwhile, is a jeweller and designs his own products.
Initially, I came over on a student visa, which was easy to arrange. Since David and I got married, I’ve moved onto a temporary spouse visa, which will last two years until it can be made permanent. There was a lot of paperwork involved with that one, and it cost about $2,000. We considered hiring an agent to help, but the guidelines are reasonably straightforward, so we completed it ourselves. Interestingly, you can apply for a de facto spouse visa after you’ve been living together for a year. If you’re married, it’s the same application process; there’s just one less piece of evidence required.
Read more about Rebecca's move in the January issue of Living Abroad magazine.
