My Road to Oz

I'm glad to report that I've now arrived in Australia!

Currently I'm stuck in Sydney, New South Wales rather than the desired destination of Brisbane, Queensland but I'm basically next door, in Australian terms. The road to get here has been as sinusoidal as the poisonous snakes I hope don't bite me.

I started this blog in June, around the time I untethered myself from a comfortable life in Manchester, UK. I purged a portion of my possessions gathered over the previous 16 years, packed up my chosen valuables and sold my house. Since then me and Lydia have been living in Birmingham with my lovely mom (yes, I spell it the Midlands way which happens to be the same as the American way).

Our decision to emigrate has been many years in the making. The first seed was planted when we visited Lydia's brother in Vancouver in 2013 and an enjoyable holiday morphed into "we could imagine living here". Her brother was only there temporarily and we had no strong connections to Canada so it didn't germinate. The first Australian-borne seed was sown when we visited my sister in Brisbane in 2016 and then again in 2018.

The first yellow brick in our road to Oz can be traced back to circa July 2018 when we contacted a migration agent. I applied for a skilled independent visa, points-tested. We didn't have much hope for success when the agent said:

I've worked in the migration field now for over 30 years and I can honestly say that the current climate is the most difficult in which to try and secure entry into Australia.

The visa granting process is a bit of a mystery and I won't bore you with the details. We estimated that the maximum points I could get was just on the limit of being granted, 80 points. I was 31 at the time and would lose 5 points once I was 33. This felt like our only chance so we went for it.

The visa process went smoothly and we were elated to be granted the visa in February 2020...one month before COVID-19 rendered the UK locked down. We hadn't planned on emigrating until 2021, but the main concern was getting there for our "Enter before date" to validate the visa, which was February 2021.

We booked a flight to validate the visa and visit in October 2020, which turned out to be right around when the second COVID wave was kicking off. A few days before the flight, we decided the risk of getting stuck outside the UK was too great (ironic in retrospect!) and moved the flight to Feb 2021, just in time to get there for our entry date.

Then our flight was cancelled. It was expected given the COVID situation at the time. We rebooked again for October 2021, this time with a reassurance that we definitely had a space reserved in Australian hotel quarantine, so long as there were no further changes to the government restrictions. Then Delta happened.

The highly virulent Delta strain knocking at Australia's door, low vaccination rates and near-zero cases meant public opinion favoured Fortress Australia. The government responded in July by halving the passenger cap for international arrivals: from 500 to 250 passengers per week for Queensland. This translated into about 10-20 people per flight (normally an Airbus-full)! We figured we now had a 50% chance of our October flight getting cancelled.

We shipped all our possessions, said bye to our friends and family and started the final prep for our flight on 1st October. Lo and behold, eight days before our flight we got the dreaded message that it was cancelled. Gutted. Bear in mind at this point I had started a new remote job and was waking up at 5am to get some overlap with my Brisbane-based team. In a desperate bid to get another flight secured, we booked the next available flight...12th January...business class! We justified paying 5x the fare to ourselves by thinking it would be a one-off treat which would begin our migration on a relaxing note.

The prospect of spending an unplanned winter in limbo in the UK - instead of being able to follow the British summer with the Australian summer - was depressing to say the least. Inspired by my globally distributed colleagues, we came to the conclusion that a tour of Europe was in order! It was the perfect antidote to our gloomy outlook in the UK. I'll save the details for another blog.

During a bleary-eyed 5am start in Croatia, I roused to the news that New South Wales would effectively reopen their international border in November and more flights were now available. I had a few hours before the rest of the UK would be awake and so got to booking another flight! We now had a 3rd December flight to Sydney locked in, with the very real prospect that Queensland would open their border on 17th December, the estimated date when an 80% vaccination rate would be achieved. What's more, we wouldn't have to quarantine in NSW at all, we just had to wait for 14 days before we were allowed to cross into QLD, provided they opened the state border as planned.

The government also allowed immediate family to visit as well as permanent residents. My mom would be able to visit my sister and her two young kids for the first time in nearly two years. The three of us would get the flight together for a proper family reunion - amazing!

Upon returning from Europe, we hunkered down in Birmingham doing our best to avoid catching COVID before our flight. Then Omicron happened.

I got that 2020-esque sinking feeling when they announced two cases were discovered in the UK. Would this mean reintroducing quarantine and therefore passenger caps? The flight was so close, it would have been a truly cruel twist for this to happen again. NSW introduced 72-hour self-isolation for arrivals...eek...then delayed opening the border for certain visa holders...getting nervous now. Fortunately for us, this delay meant more flights opened up and so we made the snap decision to move our flight forward by two days.

This left us one day - instead of three - to do the final prep for emigration. In an out-of-body feat of sheer will, we managed to rearrange everything including accommodation, COVID tests, selling my car and packing our 90kg of luggage! The alternative was waiting two more days and potentially being locked out again for weeks or even months.

But we did it...and here I sit on day three of self-isolation from a hotel next to Sydney airport feeling relief, excitement about the adventure I'm embarking on and now the catharsis of telling my story.