Testimony on Australia

A year and a half ago, with my husband we arrived in Australia. Thanks to his work, we had the opportunity to move to Sydney and we jumped at the chance!

Initially, we moved to Paddington, a pretty suburb of Sydney, with the famous Victorian houses. Village atmosphere in the middle of the city,this area quickly delighted us! Then with a French friend also living in Sydney, we decided to launch a website for French and French-speaking people, giving access to a lot of practical information about the country, by sharing what we had been through before. This is how our site was born www.guide-australie.com.

A year later its success continues! Six months after our arrival, I looked for a job, and I quickly found it. I’m a product manager at a software company. The atmosphere at work is much more pleasant than the one I had in France. Pressure and bad stress are almost non-existent, the quality of life is enormously affected. Our greatest surprise when we arrived in Sydney was the food! We were very pleasantly surprised by the variety and quality of everything we can eat here! We find all the European fruits and vegetables, but also all the most exotic fruits of the southern hemisphere!

Sydney, a very cosmopolitan city,mixes all cultures and we find an extraordinary choice on our plates with Italian, Greek, Thai, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Lebanese, etc. Sydney brings an extraordinary quality of life. A city with the dimensions of a capital city, it combines its dynamic urban rhythm with the strong presence of nature! The beaches, the many and vast parks are the subject of many festivals and outdoor activities. We live outside first and foremost!

We didn’t have any real difficulties settling here, because everything was easier, in an always positive atmosphere, Australians are lovely people! There are some cultural differences,but often we appreciate them! One of the few aspects that can annoy us is the respect of the rules to the letter, which earned us some fines for parking our parking, but the car was positioned head in front of the gutter instead of the other way around, thus not respecting rule, we had to pay a fine of 80 euros…

Finally, at the end of the day, it goes into the anecdotes! And we take care not to repeat the experience! For those wishing to settle here, the most complicated is the first immigration process. You really have to be informed, and it has to be conducted as a project. Unless you come for a year on a work holiday visa for the under 30s, or be sponsored by a company for a job here, other forms of immigration require a lot of personal investment. Take your courage with both hands, do it seriously, the game is worth it!

Séverine Chu