This is WHY WE LEFT Australia

Hey there, 

If you’re reading this, welcome to our blog! This is where we write down all the things that the fast pace of social media does not allow. I just want to preface that in saying neither of us are in any way professional writers, but it's nice to be able to use writing to reflect on what we're experiencing.

This week we’ll be writing about (duh duh duuuhhhh) why we chose to leave Australia. 

So to get straight to the point - there is no singular reason we left, and honestly there may be too many reasons to discuss in a single entry. Australia is the most amazing country and our home was even more incredible. And we were surrounded by incredible people who we love and miss very much.

So why did we leave?

It had been in the back of our minds for a very long time. When I was studying, I always had seen myself going overseas and working but was never quite sure if it was just a dream. 

And then COVID happened. 

My experience of COVID was in healthcare. I was working in a South Western Sydney Hospital which became known as a ‘hotspot’. I remember wearing layers and layers of PPE and watching beads of sweat slide down underneath it; feeling growing dampness in my shirt. I remember watching our senior staff lost for words as executives assessed the rehab gym for bed space, and watching the number of COVID wards soar. The word 'unprecedented' got thrown around a lot.

And it was intense to say the least.

As I started researching travelling I was thrown into the world of travel vlogging, predictably coming across people like Kara and Nate, Eamon and Bec, Kinging It, Sailing la Vagabonde and Max and Occy. It was so addictive and so compelling watching these people who travel full time and get paid for it. I think Evan saw how addicted I became and could probably see the cogs turning in my head. 

I have to say though, I’m definitely not the kind of person to go out on a whim and do something crazy. Things that I find scary - they take me forever to plan. So you can imagine how daunting moving to the other side of the world seemed. But slowly, very slowly mind you, we began to prepare a list and began our research. I think it was potentially sometime in 2023 that we started planning. We had this ginormous whiteboard that we wrote a list of tasks on and little by little, we began to tick them off. And believe me, the process was slow. It took me 9 months to become registered as a health practitioner overseas (for comparison it takes about 30mins in Australia), and 2 months to get a visa. At some points it felt like we were getting nowhere - we kept bouncing back and forth about different places to live and how we wanted to structure our lives. And we couldn’t settle on a plan. But for some reason (and I’m genuinely surprised that I didn’t panic about this) we settled on the idea of having very few plans. We gave ourselves two weeks to sort everything out in an AirBnB and hoped like heck that it would work out. 

As we began to say goodbye to our friends and family I certainly felt sad. I remembered how strange it felt to come back home after moving away for university. It’s like you want to pick up where you left, but realising that people change in the time you've been gone. It’s exciting, but also sad realising how much you’ve missed out on. So often people asked us “how do you feel?” and so often I responded “I really don’t know” - there was no overwhelming feeling at all. 

And then we left. It felt so normal like it was just another day.

And now, we’re in the UK! Our lifestyle has been something I could not have guessed if I was given a million chances. We don’t have the stability we had wanted when we were in Australia but we’re thriving! We’re loving the element of the unknown, the surprise of the adventure and all the craziness that comes with it. 

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading my mind blurt onto a page. We’re hoping to write something down each week, but in the unpredictable nature of our lives we really don’t know what will happen. 

But as always, thank you so much for all your love and support. It means the world to us.

Lots of love, 

Taylor and Evan