Lifestyle and Leisure
Reasons to move: Recommendations
According to 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, 1,153,264 – or almost 6 per cent – of Australia’s total population was born in the United Kingdom, making Britain by far and away the largest source country for overseas-born residents of Australia.
What's more, in the past five migration years 106,241 people have emigrated from the UK to Australia. No other country has supplied Australia with more immigrants in this period – New Zealand is second with 102,303.
It's little surprise, then, that many of you will have either friends or family members living Down Under. Even less surprising is the fact that, largely because of this, you are looking at joining them.
According to an Institute for Public Policy Research survey conducted in 2006, having family or friends living in a certain destination is one of the key reasons Brits contemplate emigrating.
Indeed, in last year's Emigrate Australia readers' survey 'someone I know has emigrated' was selected by 23.1 per cent of respondents as the major motivating factor behind their decision to emigrate Down Under – the second-most popular choice behind the 'UK being too expensive'.
Moreover, when it came to choosing where in Australia they should settle, having family already living in a particular place was the number one reason behind their choice of where to settle, while friends living there was the third most popular reason.
Now, this either means that there are a lot of people missing their friends and relatives so much that that they simply can't bear to be without them anymore and so decide to emigrate so they can be close to them once again (the romanticised view), or (more likely) they've become so terribly jealous of hearing story after story about Australia's fabulous lifestyle, that they've decided they want a piece of the action for themselves.
"One of my brothers lives in Newcastle, New South Wales, and he has always spoken in glowing terms about life in Australia," said Nick Cardew, who now lives in Ballarat, Victoria, in the October edition of this newspaper.
"My grandfather also lived out here in the 1960s, so it's always been a dream of mine."
Earlier this year, Melissa Drury told us how having a sister living in Brisbane had influenced her family's decision to move from the UK to Queensland, and how it helped them settle once they were there.
"We stayed with my sister for one week while we were waiting for the house which we are now renting to become available," Melissa explained. ""Having my sister and her husband out here has certainly been a great help for us."
As regular readers of Emigrate Australia will know, stories like this are far from rare.
So, if you do have family living the life of riley in Oz and are fed up with hearing about how great life in Australia is, then it is understandable that this is helping to fuel your desire to make a similar move.
After all, as the old saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them.
Related articles:
Reasons to move: Beaches
Reasons to move: Holidays
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