Not sure if this is the correct category for this rather long post, but it is to do with wellbeing - emotional wellbeing and some points that people migrating here may not think would ever affect them (and I certainly hope it does not!)...

Chasing the great Aussie dream is a brave thing to do, no harm in seeking a brand new start here in the sunshine...heaps of us finally get the go-ahead, sell up, say our goodbyes and jump on the plane ready for our new beginnings. Most of us come out here with our spouses and try to settle into it before having our babies & raising them as little Ozzies.

Some couples come out with toddlers or school-age kids ready to start afresh. If like me, you are in just a young couple when you emigrate, only the two of you to worry about and you have no family or close caring friends out here already - please do try and have a plan B in the background somewhere - I implore you keep a door open in the UK at all times.

Here's my sorry tale:

It took my husband Mike and myself about 10 years to finally get here from the Bognor area in West Sussex. He finally decided, suddenly one miserable Xmas, sick of sitting in front of the gas fire in misery, with the cold rain beating down. I hurredly got the paperwork happening and that was it...

We couldn't afford to visit first, so just sold up all we had at car boot sales - which wasn't much, and did it within the 5 months we were given to get here by. We sadly had no living kids, all had died pre-term, and we had been married since 1986 but all was well with us. We we so looking forward to the great adventures ahead!

We arrived in Brisbane on 22nd Sept 1995 and stayed with an old friend of Mike's on the Southside. I'll never forget it. No provision was made for our arrival at all. Not even a bed to lie down on after the marathon flight. Nothing to eat either...we just collapsed in a heap and slept on the dirty carpet with the cockroaches. Not quite what we were expecting...but you have to be eternally grateful for any assistance when you take the plunge to come here. It's not like home.

We had just $12,000 to our name. The first thing after a mattress, was to buy an "affordable" car (an experience in itself - there is no annual MOT test in Qld - so watch it, an old bomb is exactly that - but with a very high price tag by comparison, not cheap, late models like back home, which you know have been maintained each year for their MOT's).

The next 10 years were spent working tails off to pay the mortgage & juggle bills, run the home, move house & upgrade each time, trying to have a life, and me getting taken for a ride by a well dodgy business partner (I was a funeral director). All my family have passed away in the UK and my only sibling has never stayed in proper touch despite me trying. The only people I had left was my beloved hubby and his parents (UK).

In 2005 I had the shock of my life. Mick had been having an affair with a dancer he met while he was in a band... (stupid me just thought he had rather a lot of practise nights!) but I never suspected a thing. It'd been going on a year, while I was out working, as I was on-call 24/7 including weekends. Then she had told him to get rid of me. So he did, as if I was a stranger.

I was sick with leukemia at the time and the pair of them made life hell. He moved her and her kids into our dream home - a 5 acre farmlet near Tamborine, complete with guest house and resort pool, and I was left with our little holiday shack up a mountain in NSW. The shack had no power, no running water, no fridge, no toilet, no generator and was very isolated. I was totally devastated. We'd been married 20 years...

Soon, his lover was pregnant again and he divorced me - actually on our wedding date, so I have interesting certificates! I could not afford a lawyer (he left me with $60) and was so sick they pretty much got away with the lot. Everything we had worked for and created together. It's as if I never existed...his parents stunned me when they said they must support his happiness and were very sorry, but goodbye, they had a new grandbaby on the way and were so excited! I was left bewildered by all this and very very hurt. I spiralled into a deep depression and still suffer from it...

I did get a small settlement 2 years later. They still live in the dream home, worth close to $1m now. I lived alone in the mountains, cut off from the world. I stayed in bed there for the next 2 years until I was in full remission, even though I prayed for death to take me, to end the misery. Centrelink looked after me and the local soup kitchen in the nearest town 20klms away. I am eternally grateful for that help. Glad we paid our taxes!

I then sold the humble shack to some hippies for peanuts and rented a house on the Bay Islands as it's still really cheap there and only an hour to Brisbane & the cancer hospital. Now I'm back on the mainland, renting, still alone (despite a recent failed engagement) and all I want to do is go back to the UK, but there is no home there, no family, nothing. What's to go back to? Memories? History? Beautiful countryside? I have two freinds here in Brisbane who visit sometimes and I rarely leave the house due to depression and frailty (serious osteoporosis fractures) and I can no longer work.

The internet is my lifeline. That's what happened to my great Ozzie dream, with my husband and all the wonderful things we would do and places we would go in the sunshine. I want people to really think hard about the possible consequences if you have no family outside your spouse and no kids or friends to busy yourself with. If you depend on your spouse and he or she is your whole world, just take care and be aware...no matter how long you've been with them or how deep the trust. Look after you! Please don't end up like me, alone in a foreign country with no ties to anyone or anyplace. It's just not how it was supposed to be...

I know this is depressing and there is no miraculous fix it for this. It's the personal side of what can happen when you emigrate anywhere and you are a hell of a long way from the UK and any familiarity. It's what happened to me. The question is, where to from here? More Prozac cocktails? Remember your emotional wellbeing - no one else will...

Thanks for reading this. Blessed be.

 

hiya
thanks for sharing your story, i have replied to you on our other forum and my offer of tea and a chat still stands if ever you want to.
Take care and look after yourself, Karma is sweet and your ex will be bitten on the bum one day!
Cal x

 

Thanks

Thank you - I just replied there too! A bit confusing with the 2 forums... I'll get the hang of it soon... :wink:

Yes, I'm sure he'll find the grass wasn't greener and was nothing more than astro-turf! It's not the fact that he wasn't into me at the end of the day - that I can deal with. It is the total overkill and the way it was done with no conscience whatsoever after all those years (that's a lorra laundry, cooking & cleaning up if nothing else!lol) ...it's all quite bizarre!

 

A bag of pool salt accidently knocked into a water tank could cause sooo many problems,lol, not that i would ever suggest you took revenge,lol !!!
Cal x

 

LOL. It's a bit late now! The most evil revenge I ever took on that rat was to throw his brand new chain saw into our pool when he demanded it back, along with our DIY tools that I'd had at the shack...leaving me with an axe to chop wood with (the only form of cooking fuel) and one old screwdriver...oh, well, as they say, karma baby, karma...

I would love to have been one of those women who could sprinkle alfalfa seeds on my, I mean their marital bed, soak it with the hosepipe, draw the curtains and whack the heating up! The thought is the deed I guess... (sniggers).

 

LOL, Gary is cringing as im reading your message out,lol, his chain saw is a prize possesion too!!lol, Would have loved to have seen your ex's face!!!
Cal x

 

The reaction was...not good.

LOL. He flew over to the pool (the quickest he'd moved in years) and peered into it... "What did you go and do that for?" he yelled, stupidly.

"It was dirty," I said. "Just like you."

I actually started to head for the shed to grab his new lawn mower too, but he stopped me.

He was heartbroken. "You've totally f*cked it up!" he cried... "It's salt water! You've completely ruined it!"

"Good", I said, realising he was more cut up about the darn chainsaw than ruining my life...

Men...grrrr. :wink:

 

LOL, maybe you should have shoved him in the pool with it,lol
Cal x

 

Hello Cal, I have just been reading some of your posts, you seem like a really nice person. Looking forward to reading some more. Better and better, Peter