In the depths of London winter, when the grey drizzle and chill is endless, it’s hard to feel fond of our city. Australia, with its warmer climate, higher wages, and no language barrier for English speakers may be far away, but it exerts a strong pull. There are over 46,000 Brits living in Australia on temporary visas as of December 2024, up from just 3,600 in December 2021. But is the sunny, beach-based life all it’s cracked up to be?
Simi is a junior doctor who moved to Melbourne in January of 2024. “What really prompted me to leave was a combination of different factors that I think a lot of young people in the UK are experience at the moment,” Simi tells me. “Number one was this culture of misery that’s been created in the UK over the past five years,” she explains, citing the political climate, a lack of green space and disappearing creative venues.
“London is so unaffordable these days,” she says. “It’s pushing out all these beautiful people who can’t afford to live in a city that would thrive from having more young people in it.”
‘London felt unsafe’
Despite repeatedly trying to make London work as her home, it became too frustrating to try and carve out the life she wanted to be living. “Not only did it rinse my bank account, it felt unsafe,” Simi adds. She found she didn’t feel safe walking home alone as a woman at night. “It was affecting my mental health quite a bit.”
London feels out of whack for most people right now. Rents keep climbing to deranged heights, while wages are so stagnant that the employment pool feels practically fetid. No one can afford a house deposit and your boss probably wants to drag you back into the office, horrible commute be damned. Then there is the undeniable crime wave that has seen everything from phone snatching to burglary feel like its become legalised.
In this atmosphere, tales of people living their best lives elsewhere become all too alluring. “Everybody knows someone who has left for Australia, people who are having an incredible time out here,” says Simi. She began to feel “egged on” to take the plunge and make a drastic change like moving to the opposite side of the world. “When you’re in your late twenties, if you don’t take a risk now, when do you take it?”
Moving Down Under for a stint has always been a rite of passage for some Brits – my own parents lived out there in the Eighties (if I had been a boy, the story goes, I would have been called Sydney in tribute). But now the Antipodes has upped the ante when it comes to attracting UK emigres.
New visa rules for Brits
As of July 2023, the Working Holiday scheme was extended so that anyone with a British passport can apply for a visa right up until their 36th birthday. Previously it was capped at the age of 30. And as of July 2024, UK passport holders can apply for three separate Working Holiday visas, allowing them to stay for up to three years. The specified work requirement, which meant these visa holders had to work or volunteer for admittedly less glamorous jobs in farming, mining or hospitality, has also been dropped.
Local governments have been canny in their advertisements, too. During the British junior doctor’s strikes in 2023, the South Australian Government targeted the picket line outside St George’s Hospital in Tooting with mobile billboards touting the glorious benefits of being a medic in Oz, including an actual work/life balance (imagine) and gorgeous natural scenery.
A recent survey from the British Medical Association found that one in three NHS staff want to move overseas, with Australia as the top destination. Anecdotally, one NHS doctor friend moved out to Victoria – along with her doctor housemate, her doctor brother, and her dentist boyfriend. Given the current state of London’s NHS hospitals, who could blame them? Hospitals that are quite literally crumbling around the staff’s ears, A&E waits that are reaching crisis levels, and terrifying ambulance delays are just as awful for the beleaguered medical professionals who are trying to provide care for their patients.
‘I wanted to escape’
It’s not just doctors and nurses who are packing their bags. With these changes, working visas are no longer the preserve of younger people prepared to pick fruit or wait tables in return for a stint in the sun. Australia has been able to attract an older crowd of Brits who are more established in their professional careers and actively seeking a lifestyle change – and Londoners are a clear target audience.
“I loved – still love – London but I’d just turned 30 and kind of hit a turning point in my life,” says Tabitha, who works in marketing and moved out to Sydney in 2019, just before the pandemic. “I hadn’t yet met ‘The One’ and felt the societal pressure that comes with women turning 30 – marriage, kids etc. I didn’t really want that, I wanted to escape where I could play pretend and live by the beach.”
Now she lives in Byron Bay, a beachside town on the northernmost coast of New South Wales. It’s worlds apart from London, but offers a fresh perspective on a different culture. “Living in a more rural area, there’s definitely a side of Australia you don’t normally see,” she says. “The rodeos, the cowboys. It’s not all harbour views and boat parties.”
The improvement in Tabitha’s quality of life has been lifechanging. “I instantly got a pay rise for doing a job with less responsibility,” she says. “It’s a strange sensation to go from from working 10-hours days and battling a two hour commute home, to spending a day in the office and having your toes in the ocean in the evening on a random Tuesday.” It’s not that the work culture is more laid back, per se, but there’s a greater emphasis on getting out and enjoying life. “The Aussies hustle during the day, but make time for play,” she says. “Everyone’s making the most of pre and post work.”
Free art and foodie culture
Simi has also found the balance to be much improved in the southern hemisphere. “Everyone here is about the impeccable quality of life,” she says. “Drinking Aperol on the streets and living their youth in a way that most people wanna live it in the UK.” Living in Melbourne she’s found the cost-of-living is much lower.
“It’s so affordable, the food scene is exquisite, there’s no shortage of things to do at the weekend that open up your headspace. We have food and wine festivals and film festivals where the whole city comes to a standstill.” In London, she says she found herself “racking my brain” for a weekend activity that wasn’t “just going out for wine”. Melbourne has a plethora of arts spaces, museums and galleries with free exhibitions, plus the F1, cricket and football all have regular events. “You can tell they really pump money into it here.”
Coastal hikes and beautiful beaches are all within a 45 minute journey from the city, and because Australia is so vast in comparison to its population, it’s possible to to enjoy nature without feeling crowded. “You have places like Brighton and Margate you can get to from London, but if you go on a public holiday they’re rammed,” says Simi. “The UK feels claustrophobic in comparison.”
While London and Melbourne have roughly the same average age (37 and 36 respectively), Melbourne has a much more youthful culture Simi has found. “The population feels young, it really gives this vibrant energy when coming from the UK, which has an ageing population,” she says. “It feels freeing and fun.” It also feels much safer than London, she says. “I have never felt unsafe once in this city, and I walk home by myself all the time. There’s a lot less crime, in my opinion.”
London’s diversity can’t be beaten...
But before you start applying for visas and browsing one-way plane tickets, there are some drawbacks to leaving London for Australia. “I miss winter fashion and the hustle and bustle of city life,” admits Tabitha. “But that comes and goes.” Some British cuisine is also hard to track down, she finds. “Pork pies, prawn cocktail crisps, a good roast dinner, cheese and chive dip… the food list is endless.”
Simi has found the culture shock to be quite profound. “It seems a lot less progressive than the UK. London is such a forward-thinking city but you don’t realise until you move out,” she says. “It’s a lot less diverse than London, and people have more of an air of sexism and racism about them here. I’m Asian, my background is Indian, and no one has said anything directly to me, but the generic culture is very different to the UK with regards to that.”
People are generally a lot more conservative, she’s found, with an air of competitiveness. “There’s a lot of Tall Poppy Syndrome here. People see someone doing good and they tear them down. We hang out with other Brits mostly, but the Aussies tell us it’s quite cut-throat.“ Simi has also been shocked to find that people “don’t care about the climate at all here”, in comparison to the much more eco-friendly mindset of most Londoners.
There are also just some things that London has that can’t be beaten, wherever you go in the world. “I miss the history, the stunning architecture that’s hundreds of years old,” says Simi. “You really take it for granted when you live there, and now I miss it a lot.”
