Ok, so this is aimed at those of us who have been here for a while, and have totally settled in.

Now that we know where to shop for things, have jobs, a house and school sorted for kids, have made friends and feel a little more at home, is Adelaide still the place for us?

Are us "old timers" finding more things we love, or hate as time goes by?

Thoughts anyone?

Sunshine.

Hi Sarah,

Was nice to catch up today. As an "oldie" I can honestly say that Adelaide is definately the place for us. Going back to the UK last November after about 18 months here helped to cement those feelings of Adelaide as home for me. When I consider the lifestyle we have here compared to the one we had in the Uk (and the one most of my friends there still have) there really is no going back.

OK, so Adelaide isn't paradise but, in all honesty, where is when you've still got to work, do the school run and all the usual everyday things. As others have said same s :sign53: shinier bucket. But I like my shiney bucket! :D :clap:

Hi Sarah,

Good to catch up with you too :D

Adelaide has grown on me alot since we arrived. I now know that there are many beautiful places hidden away amongst the 'colourbond' and bungalows. I no longer fret that there is nothing to do and nowhere for the kids....all that stuff comes with the friends you make over time and knowing where to look for information. Happiness comes from accepting your new surroundings and not comparing them to the U.K..... for example I may miss the British Autumnal weather but now wonder at the sheer beauty of the light quality and bird song at twilight.

Friends,familiar faces and regular routines make a big difference....only that can come with time. I can see a future here now, where as in the first year or so I regularly thought of nothing but going 'home' (So much so that Rob had to hide my Passport :ph43r: )

It's has potential to be 'all good' here, the quality of life is fantastic and the possibilities numerous. I feel that we are here to stay, but nothing is forever........

So for all those newbies feeling lost and empty give it some time before you throw in the towel.

Jan ;)

G'day,

Have to agree with Jan's sentiments.

My parents made the decision for me 36 years ago almost. Still remember the day we left and several return visits, on the first return visit I did not want to go back to Adelaide but as the years passed and a few more holidays back to Blighty I realised that I did not miss the UK all that much.

I thank my lucky stars my Dad had the foresight all those years ago to take the plunge and IMHO I am sure your children will feel the same way in years to come.

Jet :)

Hi Sarah , "nice to see ya!" :D

Have to agree with the other old timers , yes I do love it here now .I feel" lucky" most days and that is priceless .
Im still not sure that I will be spending all of rest of my life here, but that is more down to my feet (V. itchy !) than Adelaide.
My feelings towards the place have been up and down (cried when we first got here , and wondered what the hell we had done !) but life is on an even keel now and yes its a great place to raise a family :sign60:


Julie xx

Nice to read your threads and so great that you have all settled in. We don't arrive until September and I can't ever imagine calling it "home". Please can you let me know how your lifestyle has got better? and what you compare it with in the UK. Sorry if I am being a bit nosey, but like I said I can't imagine calling it "home"!!!
Thanks.

For a start, over time you put down roots. You find your way around, more routes become familiar and you don't need the map. You work out your favourite shops. You get to meet people. You find you begin to see people you know when you're out shopping. Gradually you become integrated into your local area - that's when you begin to feel really at home.

We still feel that for us there's very little to choose between England and here, but the network-building is doing fine and we feel much more at home now. The big test will be our visit back to England in July - I still don't know whether I am going to turn to jelly as soon as I get there and not want to return here, or whether I am going to look at the place from an outsider's viewpoint and wonder why on earth I ever wanted to stay there.

our first six months were good, we found a good rental, found work etc, and started to settle in.
it was cold, and there was some homesickness from my wife but otherwise it was pretty good.
it also cost us a lot less than than we had planned for.

our big mistake was buying a house in (what turned out to be) the 'wrong' area, it looked ok, but...
Consequently it has been very up and down for the last 18 months, but generally a depressing and miserable experience.
we are hoping to start again elsewhere, but the financial loss is massive, and such that we are unlikley to be able to afford to buy a house in the foreseeable future.
so overall not very good at all.

Sean,

When you say financial loss, do you mean that you purchased the house for more than what it was worth, or are you refering to the cost of moving on etc.

What's wrong with the area that you live?

V

Hi all,

Great thread,

Spend a lot of my time at the mo wondering / hoping Adelaide will be home and how to make the adjustments tho I know it is only time and putting yourself "out there" however your comments are really helpful and make me feel really optimistic..

Good luck in July Elaine,
I will be very interested to read your respons to coming back to the uk!

Cheers,

Tash

Hi Roberts.

For us our life has improved because now we get more quality time together as a family. In the UK I worked every saturday for about 8 years :loopy: and just when I stopped working on the weekends my husband changed job (for financial reasons) and was working a rota system which included Saturdays and Sundays. <_< Here I can count on one hand the amount of weekend work that Roy has done and just being a family is so nice. If we get invited to go somewhere we don't have to check Roy's rota and we can actually plan to do things. (and do! :) )

I also want to add that i agree so much with some of the other comments. When we first got here I can remember actually sobbing because I didn't know where to go to buy reasonably priced school bags for the kids! :crying: :( But these are things that come with time and once you start to find things more familiar then it begins to feel more like "home".

Sally

yes, i think we paid too much for the house, as we cant get now what we paid for it then.
other houses have gone up slightly, but not ours.
with that and agents fees and the stamp duty we forked out for it, adds up to tidy sum.
to buy another house in a better area, we will have to pay stamp duty and fees galore, as well as house price.
this all makes selling painfull, and buying again pretty much impossible, unless we are prepared to take on a hefty mortgage.


whats wrong with the area.

to be honest, most people are ok (i think).
but all the druggies, losers, sex offenders, weirdos, scowling inbreeds, and of course the usual petty criminals, they all seem to live near me.
and the local school is where their kids go.
also next doors dogs can bark from 12 - 18 hours a day.
if you try and object to any anti-social behaviour you get an agressive anti-pom retort.
there plenty more too, but i think i've said enough.
after 18 months i've had about as much as i can take, if i dont move away soon i fear i will 'join them'.

On my return from Vegas last week it was great to come HOME to Adelaide. Knocked me for six that I came home to warmer weather than I'd holidayed in. What struck me more was that while reaching Sydney was okay being In Adelaide was coming home.Instantly I was aware of people around me sharing a smile and taking time out of there day to listen for a response to How Are Y' ?
Add to that that my other friends were returning HOME to Scotland, I was ready to make my own way home. Also since HOME is also where I'd left hubby and kids and great friends it maybe wasn't all about Adelaide.

Reading this back it probably makes no sense other than in my own head and heart.

Have I even answered the question???????
Gils :rolleyes:

For us the day to day stuff is pretty much the same. Rob does shift work (pretty much the norm here <_<....your so lucky Sally :sign61: ) and his commute can take an hour depending on the time of day, which reminds me.....Make sure you get your suburb right from the word go or you'll get stuck there, you almost certainly won't want to move the kids out of school again once they've settled and made a few friends.

I still get up at some ungodly hour to do the school run and spend quite a lot of time picking up dirty socks and small pieces of plastic toys :sigh:

But it's not those parts of life that necessarily (sp?) make quality of life. For me it's the friendliness of your neighbours, the helpfulness of the people in the shops/post office, the quality of the fresh food, the chance to relax in our free time, the pleasantness of my surroundings, the fresh air, the smiles on my kids faces and most importantly knowing that the opportunities are there should they want to take advantage of them and that they will enjoy childhood for a while longer here.

Jan

Sounds like a nightmare. For what it's worth though, you could always put it down to a bad deal, we have all done them.

Surely being financially worse off and living in an alternative area, is better than living with these undesirables.

V

yes it would be.
i'll be nice to go outside at night again.

Hhhmmmm a tough one for me to answer at the mo.

I suppose we LIKE adelaide.

We did love it when we first came.. but i suppose most do ( the excitement, house buying, new car, new jobs etc) but once you actually start "living" its all a bit "normal", so afraid im not over enthuisiastic.

I think some of the above posts state it well. Its an ideal place to bring up a family.. which is probably why we struggle a bit, as we have NO intentions of that, therefore theres not a lot happening at all to suit us.

We enjoy hustle n bustle, which just doesnt happen here.. even on a Friday/Saturday night in town, its like Glasgow on a monday night. No one really goes on a "night out" Thanks GOD for our british pals...

On the other hand.. we have a nice house, good plot and space.. which we never had before and i actually enjoy the quite "sometimes".

We have always travelled lots, and i honestly thought that this move would "pacify" me... but it hasnt..my itchy feet have got worse :blink: so going to Canada and UK next Feb ( that will be interesting to see how i feel) .. and in the meantime are checking out the other cities.. Only Brisbane left to do..

So.. we do LOVE living in Australia, but its a big country and i just dont think Adelaide is big enough to stand out more than the rest ...only time will tell.

Karen

Don't think I count as an old timer, but we do feel settled and have put down roots (except a house :angry: )

I personally love Adelaide and it's still growing day on day. The kids love school and when I am at Uni I can see the sea from my spot!

Just some examples - Last Saturday (I think) we went to the beach in the late afternoon (37 degrees) met up with some good friends , and the kids all swam in the sea and splashed around (me too) played on the beach had a 'picnic' of fish and chips and watched the sun go down. It was so easy and cheap and was a fantastic day. The weekend before we went to the SA museum on North Terrace and joined in with all the free giant games outside, then spent the whole afternoon mooching free through the museum, ended by going up to the Garden of Unearthly delights and watching the free buskers until it was time to go home.

On Friday it was the kids school sports day, it was held in the Belair national park and looked fantastic (I couldn't go) the kids loved it.

I couldn't go because I was on my Uni field trip in the Murraylands and was busy going to Aboriginal rock art sites and speeding down the river on flat bottomed boats, fantastic, I had no idea what it was like down there, definitely going again.

This is just the last few weeks, and is fairly typical. We go to lots of free family events and the beach, we haven't hardly explored the rest of the stste yet, we haven't been north of St Kilda yet! So I think we will be here for a while to come ... :D

Hope that helps some... I agree with Karen a lot of the focus here is on families, and for us it's perfect, but I don't think Adelaide is a particularly 'happening' place and hasn't the night life of Melbourne and Sydney.

Nikki
xx

I know that we haven't been here very long yet, but I just had to agree with Jan's comments. Day to day life is much the same but it's the quality of our life outside of the everyday humdrum that has changed. Perhaps it's because Adelaide is different or perhaps we have changed - personally I think that it is a little bit of both.

When we got home this afternoon my new next door neighbour brought us over a cake that she had made!!! We had lovely neighbours in the UK, but nobody ever did that for us, we have only spoken twice. I was amazed by the kindness.

Clare x

Hi all

Great thread, some very interesting comments. We are coming out fist week of June and like many others probably, we are very open-minded about the whole thing. But we know routines will eventually be the same and that housework still needs doing etc. But we so want a more outdoor lifestyle, fresh air, good quality fresh food, less of this political correctness, more family time, more care in the community etc .....

So bring it on - but we know that the first 2 years will be tough. But great to read your comments so that when we have the "blue" days, know that others have been there and come out the other side.

Take care
Sas

Ok so I will give my little bit, we have been here 11 months now and settled into live straight away. There have been no homesickness from us or the kids and about the worst time for us (me in particular) was when mum left. That only then made me put things into perspective and from a very long conversation from a fab friend on here (yes M you know its you!!!!) I rationalised things and re-evaluated the reasons for being here and it made it even more clear why we had done this.

Like many have said life here still revolves around the hum-drum of daily life but the quality of our lives is now so much more enriched. I would never in a million years have joined a folk group and started playing my guitar in front of people and the kids are now very musical which is great. We try to do something different every weekend and most of it is free. We went to semaphore yesterday and bought a kite from the kite festival and had a fab few hours trying to get the flipping thing flying!!! It was great!!!

The kids have so much more freedom here and are very aussie in their ways now which is funny. Work also plays a huge part in the settling process and my work has gone from strength to strength and looks set to rise again shortly (watch this space!!!) and darren is really happy in his job so things are great.

Does it feel like home? Well its certainly not "home" as I am used to and the "home" we know as ours but it is "home" for us in australia and home is where the heart is and where the family is and thats fine for me. Adelaide has a lot to offer but the nightlife is pants!!! So we usually go others houses for BBQ's and parties and thats our night out!!! (believe me it can be just like being in a club at times!!)

For now I am happy with my lot and feel proud and honoured to be here and very proud of us as a family for having the balls to do this!!!
Good luck to all
C
XXX

Do we 'love' Adelaide?

Well it definitely feels like home. Lots of this is to do with the fact that the boys have both settled into school/childcare and Ady and I have both got jobs we enjoy.

Daniel has totally fitted into school in fact only this morning he told me in his funny half Aussie half South African accent that he 'laves school, mammy' We aren't South African, it's just that half his schoolfriends are!!

Even the fact that our rental property is now for sale isn't really making us feel too unsettled, we know that we've settled in a good area and will find something else in due course.

Like others have said, finding a good area is a must - our plan was to focus on the Eastern suburbs as they have everything. While we are paying a good proportion of our income on our rent, we are very comfortable in the area and this has definitely helped us to settle in these early months.

One of the best things about our new life is my commute to work. In England I tackled the M42 for 2 hours a day. Here it takes my 20 minutes to drive into the city centre in rush hour. (apart from Clipsal when it was a pain in the ar*e to drive in from the East). And the cost for parking...how can I argue with $8.30/day?!

In conclusion (and after much rambling), we like Adelaide lots but absolutely LOVE our new life. Why didn't we do all this sooner?!

Andrea

Day to Day life is the same as said before ..................... just a more beautiful ,normally warmer walk :D :D :bouncy:

And if Im ever feeling down a walk along Moana beach with the dog always makes me smile :D beats Outer London parks anytime .

:yeehah: What a fantastic post! :yeehah:

:clap: :clap: :clap:

Not a single glimpse of rose tinted specs anywhere!

Can't wait until this time next year when I can add my own opinion.:bouncy:

Sara

Adelaides weather is the biggest problem when you've been here a long time, i know its not cold compared to the UK but 17oc is bloody cold!!

Stevo.

Oh yes Steve have to agree with that am sat here with flanelette PJ's on and its not even winter yet!!!

a great post............. ;) mm

Not sure if im classed as an old timer or if i count as not on mainland but anyway what Elaine said is right, and the bit about...."big test will be our visit back to England in July"- etc...will help for alot of people (when we all may do that hol back to uk :chuckle: ) but im like that when i leave KI and go to the mainland!!!!, i come back and think...ummm is this feeling like home on the island!, as it is so different here.

I do like it in SA though and its all growing on me, it is not until you start with the same old that you start to feel "normal" again, and then meeting new friends etc...helps along the journey. It is a beautiful place to live where i am and what we saw of SA even the little bit of Perth (and in August QLD!!! :yeehah: ) i am not disapointed at all. Bit chilly though (had to say it...got heater today though :sign60: :lol2:

tan.x