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You couldn’t call this a sudden decision, because I’ve been thinking about moving to Australia for the past 30 years! I have relatives in Adelaide, and my brother moved to Melbourne about 25 years ago. He’s been telling me for years that Australia is a great place to live, and that once I visited I’d never want to go home again.
Sally and I have become parents rather late in life – I also have three daughters from a previous marriage – and we’re very aware that we need to stay fit and healthy for the sake of our little boy. We’ve been looking for a change of lifestyle for a while, and about a year ago we started thinking about moving to Australia, although at that stage neither of us had been there. To be honest, I wasn’t optimistic about our chances of getting a visa at our age, but we decided to go to OE and talk to somebody. We met with Richard Gregan, OE’s director, and were immediately impressed with him. He’s a really direct bloke, and I sensed straight away that he would give us an honest opinion – he’s not the sort to string you along. He told us that he’d be able to tell us within ten minutes whether we qualified. He fired dozens of questions at us about our personal circumstances and our financial situation. When he said that we had a good chance of getting our visas, we were absolutely thrilled. We stayed on for over an hour, chatting with Richard, and when we left we felt as if we were walking on air.
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Richard told us the process would take at least a year, and it was almost a year to the day that our visas came through the post. OE seemed pleased with the speed of it, but we were so keyed up over the move that it felt pretty slow to us! Once you’ve started things moving, it’s always there in the back of your mind. There was a mountain of paperwork to get through, but luckily Sally is good at that sort of thing. I found it very frustrating at times, but OE helped us every step of the way. It was a great feeling to know that we had someone on our side, who would be upfront about everything, and would guide us through the whole thing. The worst moment was when a legal matter which I’d completely forgotten about came to light. I hadn’t mentioned it on the paperwork and I was sure that I’d managed to blow the whole application because of it. Richard was very reassuring and told us how to handle it, and he was right.
Four months into the application process I went out to Australia for the first time. I went to Melbourne to see my brother, and travelled all over the place. When I got to Perth, the place just blew me away – it’s so beautiful. I met Richard Swarbreck, OE’s accountant, and he was great. I spent hours with him, getting his advice on things like pensions, banking and property brokers, and his help was invaluable. I spent a lot of time looking at property and I’ve got my eye on a house with a pool and a nice garden. We have a good quality of life in Scotland, but I’m pretty confident we can improve on that in Perth. Sally hasn’t been to Perth yet, but luckily she trusts my judgement!
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When our visas came through, we were over the moon. My three daughters are very excited at the idea of coming out to Australia for holidays and they reckon their gap years are nicely sorted. Our friends and relatives seem quite impatient for us to set off – I think they’re all planning their holidays. Sally and I feel incredibly motivated to make a go of it in Australia. I’ve had enough of hotels – I’ve got my eye on buying a bakery shop or a coffee shop. We are looking forward to a fitter, more outdoorsy lifestyle, which will suit Dylan down to the ground as well. We have just put our house in Scotland on the market, and once the sale has gone through we’ll be off.
Could we have done it without OE? I honestly don’t think so. I look back on that day when we went into the OE offices and met Richard Gregan, and I really think it’s one of the best things we ever did. |
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Client Stories 
