A British couple who moved to Perth to chase the Australia dream admitted it was the “wrong choice” and the complete opposite of what they’d hoped for.
There’s around 970,000 Brits living in Australia according to the ABS, with the United Kingdom listed in the top five countries of birth for people migrating to and from Australia.
Damien and Victoria Byron were among those, who left their life in Manchester behind and set out to establish roots in Australia.
Victoria, 35 and her husband Damien, 40 made the move with their two children Fabiom 16, and Aluna-Anayh, 12 in 2022.
The couple assumed it would be easy for Mr Byron to get work as a plumber, as he moved on a Temporary Skill Shortage Visa.
The couple told Nine that in retrospect it was the “wrong choice.”
“To be honest, we thought we’d just figure it out,” Mr Byron said.
“Once we got here, it was a lot harder than we thought to actually find work.
“I got plenty of job offers, but it was as an apprentice.”
Victoria and Damien Byron moved to Australia from Manchester.
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He was also required to pay for a 12-month course to recognise his trade qualifications in Australia, after which he would be paid a minimum apprentice wage.
He managed to find a role as a project manager instead, which meant he was working seven days a week.
“We weren’t aware that was going to be the case, it was really tough when we first got here,” he said.
“It was just a lot harder than what we’d actually imagined it to be. We were just bleeding money,” he added.
The couple were having to eat into their savings just to survive, whereas Ms Byron found herself missing life back in Manchester.
The family stayed in Perth for seven months, before making the difficult decision to move back home.
The Byron’s felt like they’d made a huge mistake when they first moved to Australia.
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It made the family feel like they had “failed,” despite that the family moved their things back to Manchester and easily slipped back into their old life.
But once again – it wasn’t what they had hoped for.
“As soon as I landed, it was like … ‘Oh God, this is the same feeling of why I wanted to leave’,” Victoria recalled. “It was like time had stood still. Everything was still the same.”
The Byrons were comfortable back in Manchester, but they knew they had unfinished business in Australia.
“We realised that in going to Australia the first time, the way we did, we’d made a lot of mistakes,” Mr Byron said.
“We knew what we had to correct and do right if we wanted to come back in the future.”
A long family discussion and a pros-and-con list sealed their fate.
“There were about 30 things on the pro column and maybe four on the con.”
After a year back on British soil, they decided to give Australia one last crack.
Mr Byron made the trip over first, working on the mines in Perth for several months to build up savings.
Ms Byron and the children followed and the family reunited in Sydney for an east coast road trip so they could figure out where they wanted to land this time around.
“We fell in love with the Gold Coast pretty much instantly, once we got there, we realised, this is the place, it has the best balance of everything for us.
“But again it was a case of doing it correctly, doing it the right way, getting the opportunity before we go.”
The family eventually landed in The Gold Coast after an East Coast trip.
The Byrons headed back to Perth for another 12 months before Damien secured his dream role on the Gold Coast.
A year on, the family can definitively say that moving to Australia for the second time was the right move.
They now have permanent residency and have the freedom to move back and-forth whenever they please, yet they don’t see themselves returning to the UK.
“We absolutely love it, and I’ve got no plans to move anywhere else, but when we moved the very first time to Perth, when we said, ‘This is it forever’, I think it added a lot of pressure,” Ms Byron said.
“It’s not a holiday, we’re still figuring everything out. We’re still always learning.”
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