Home…
… If you think of it, it is a bit of a weird concept. Home… You can’t touch it, you can’t measure it, you can’t give it to someone and you surely can’t take it with you…
Home… My home country is The Netherlands. I lived here all my life, and I admit, The Netherlands is a great place to live. It is wealthy, has good education, is extremely safe and the weather… ahhh… the weather, it is not that bad after all, is it? And as a bonus we’ve got quite a lot of nice countries around us. You get my drift. Europe is my home. The Netherlands is my home. A little town called Vuren is my Home. A nice house in a quiet street is my home.
Or is it…?
In 2001 I set foot ashore in Australia for the first time. A good friend had moved to a beautiful seaside town in Queensland, Australia. This was a good excuse to visit this antipodean world. I hadn’t done too much homework before the trip, but hey, did Australia surprise me! Australia wasn’t some weird copy of the USA, it wasn’t a sunny version of the UK and it surely wasn’t anything like The Netherlands! The Australia I discovered was a big sky country with quaint villages, wide open roads, untouched landscapes and more pristine beaches you can throw a stick at. And all of this in prosperous western country with some other favourable treats like a good climate, a relatively ‘normal’ government and friendly locals.
Could this be a new Home?
Like so many before us, the idea of migrating to Australia quickly faded after returning home. Work, family and friends took there usual place in our life and soon all was back to normal. ‘Big sky country’ was just a happy memory.
We would visit Australia a few more times after the first trip and discovered more and more of the beautiful continent. After every visit the idea to move south grew stronger and stronger until we couldn’t rationalise ourselves out of not giving it a go.
Exactly 10 years after we first set foot in Australia we started the visa procedure…
If you want to now how we fared… Read more here