To Hull and back

[Gob]

"Ping-pong Poms" are a well known phenomena here....

With its white sandy beaches and year-round sunshine, the Goodfellow family couldn't wait to leave their dreary home in Hull to start a new life in Australia.

But just two months after making the move of a lifetime, the family-of-three have returned to Britain - because of the sky-high price of teabags and the lack of Robinson's squash in Australia.



Siobhan and Andrew Goodfellow spent £10,000 to move with two-year-old daughter Savannah halfway around the world from their home in Hull to Adelaide in September last year.

But far from experiencing the life of luxury she'd expected, Mrs Goodfellow and her family were left shocked at the soaring cost of living in the country - with the final straw coming when she couldn’t find her daughter’s favourite juice in the supermarket.

Having never been to Australia and with no family and only few friends living in the country, the idea to move struck Mrs Goodfellow after watching STV documentary series ‘Poms in Paradise’ about Brits who have settled in Sydney.

Mrs Goodfellow, 35 said: ‘I’m really impulsive and I can be quite a bully when I’ve made my mind up on something but this was a big decision so I left it with Andrew for a few weeks to think about. I didn’t think he’d say yes. I didn’t think he’d leave his mum.

‘It was only when he came back to me and said, I think we should definitely do it, that I started taking it seriously.

‘Because of my daughter’s age we said it would be the right time, when she wasn’t going to be affected because she wasn’t in school or anything.’
So the couple decided to move over 10,000 miles from the three-bedroom, semi-detached house in Hull they had shared for eight years, to start a new life in Adelaide.

Mrs Goodfellow started looking for a replacement job in recruitment in April while Mr Goodfellow, 40, agreed to leave his job as a forklift truck driver and stay at home looking after Savannah until they were settled down and he could start looking for work himself.

They booked themselves on to a 32-hour flight leaving from Newcastle airport on September 3rd, packed their furniture into a shipping crate and let their property to a young family with two children.

They even sent their eight-year-old Dalmatian Molly to have vaccines and get a pet passport.

When they landed the family checked themselves in to a plush, two-bedroom hotel apartment in the centre of Adelaide, which came with a shared swimming pool, until they found somewhere to rent. But the dream quickly unravelled.

Mrs Goodfellow continued: ‘We knew almost straight away that something wasn’t right, but we just didn’t say anything to each other.
‘It just wasn’t what we were expecting. You think you’re going to be able to go out there and afford a great quality of life because the wages are all higher, but it’s also really, really expensive.

‘I drink green tea and out there a box of 80 green tea bags can cost £8. You can spend £80 on shopping and only come away with two carrier bags.

‘It’s the little things you miss as well, like not being able to get my daughter’s favourite juice. All they have over there is the thick Ribena cordial and she likes Robinson’s apple and blackcurrant. I remember going round the shops and thinking, what are we going to do?’

After just two weeks in their new home the pair sat down in their apartment and had a tearful conversation.

She continued: ‘One night we were sitting in the apartment and Andrew got upset and asked if I felt the same way. That’s when we realised we both felt the same but just hadn’t wanted to say anything.

‘We missed our families more than we thought we would, and talking to them was difficult because of the time difference.

‘We said we would go on a bit longer and see how we felt but we both knew from then.’
Urgent calls were made to the Port of Manchester where their furniture was sitting on the dock waiting to be loaded onto a ship. The couple asked staff to hold it, before telling Mrs Goodfellow’s sister not to put their dog on a plane which would have cost them another £4,000.

They then called the travel agent and booked flights home for the following week, but in their indecision called back twice to delay it.

‘We were uneasy about it but we had to make a decision. Before we left there was no doubt in my mind that it was going to work. We thought our daughter was going to grow up Australian.

‘We both looked at each other when we got the airport and thought, are we doing the right thing?’

Eventually the family ended up living with family in Newcastle by the end of October - just two months after leaving.

Mrs Goodfellow continued: 'I don’t think Savannah ever realised what was happening, she just got on with it.
‘We were worried about the amount of flying she’d have to do but she was always really good and never complained.

‘When we tell her about this in a few years she’ll probably say: “you did what?!”’

Mrs Goodfellow is now working for her former recruitment company in Durham, while her husband works shifts driving cargo on and off ships at nearby docks. They are sharing a house with her sister while they try and find somewhere new to live.

She said: ‘We have always wanted to move to the North East and now seems the perfect time. The family renting our old house have offered to buy it and all our things are already in storage.'

But despite their disastrous first attempt at settling in Australia, Mrs Goodfellow admits she could be tempted to try it again in the future.

She revealed: ‘I would go back to Australia, to Perth or Sydney or Melbourne, but not to Adelaide.

[oldr_n_wsr]

the wages are all higher, but it’s also really, really expensive.

Same in the northeastern USA.

[dales]

Same as the SF Bay Area..... this place is EXPENSIVE YET ALL THESE TRANSPLANTS KEEP POURING IN HERE.

GO HOME, CA IS TOO CROWDED WITH CLOSE TO 40 MILLION PEOPLE!

[Big RR]

4,000 pounds to ship a dog. That sounds awful high to me. I guess the cost of living is really high.

[Crackpot]

I think it has to do with the cost of quarantine.