Reading all the posts about the uncertainties of the moving process, cleaning bikes, where to live... it all seems like a lifetime ago, but it's exactly one year ago that we stepped onto New Zealand soil and became residents. If anyone is interested a year and a bit is condensed here.
Back Story
We were a family of four living in the UK. Hubby had a safe, interesting, well-paid job for a good employer. We loved our house and our home town of York. So why even think about it? Through an accident of chance we ended up at a movetoNZ expo. The example case study they used in a seminar for applying as a skilled migrant was a perfect description of my husbands work experience and our attention was caught. From this point the seed was sown and we read up, researched, visited and started the paperwork whilst we thought about it.
Our motivation was primarily driven by the perception of the lifestyle and that it would suit us as a family. The attraction of fewer people, meaning less traffic, meaning less hassle, was very high as well.
Why We Came
Since we arrived, countless people asked us why we came. With hindsight the truth is really quite simple. The further down the process we got, the harder it was to stop. The more we had invested time, money and emotional energy into the process, the bigger the reasons needed to be to stop.
It came down to logic and balance. We are born researchers and would consider ourselves fairly risk-averse but we spent hours on this project and eventually got ourselves to the position where we felt we had minimised the risks with careful planning, particularly financial. We told ourselves things like "We can always come back" and "We're only 24 hours away" etc. We know now that they were mental comfort blankets. It quite simply became: if we'd abandoned our plans we would always have wondered "what if..."
A word on how we did it
We were lucky enough to have a background and circumstances which gave us enough points to be automatically selected on the Skilled Migrants Permanent Resident scheme. The plan was to come over as a family all together on a PR visa and get a job on arrival, living off savings in the mean time. We timed our departure to coincide with the end of a huge project at Hubby’s work and to allow plenty of time after the birth of number two to make sure she was fit and healthy.
Choosing this timing was very hard because of the work commitments. That year was a very hard year for my husband (and by extension for the rest of the family as well) and I had to do the brunt of the paperwork and organising, as well as coping with a new baby and a three yr old. This was an incredibly stressful year.
The months leading up to our departure were a full on, exhausting project managed hell. We had to fit in DIY to prep the house for rental and a future-proof it in case we wanted to sell from NZ. We also cleaned a lot of stuff from our garage for MAFF. But more importantly we had to fulfilled a painful obligation to say goodbye to everyone possible by travelling around the country weekend after weekend. We also organised a leaving party, and so the list went on! During this time I picked up some freelancing work and Hubby was working on average 12 hour days and there were a couple of occasions where he didn't see the kids awake for periods of 72 hours...
But then, all of a sudden he'd finished work; we'd finished the UK tour; and, our vast list of jobs, come calendar, come gant chart on the sitting room wall was telling us that we had just days left.
The packing was conducted excellently. Pickfords earned every penny of their money and we highly recommend them. Watching almost all your possessions be driven down the road on a container lorry is an odd feeling, more so walking back into your house to find just a few suitcases left.
By now we'd started a blog as an attempt to help those we were leaving behind to understand our journey and be a little closer to us. This has turned out to be probably the most important tool for cushioning the blow to those back in the UK for us. It has also helped us to reflect on our achievements and the whole settling in process.
The next 7 days of our life we really took comfort from the level of planning we'd done. Apart from some late departures from our house due to more cleaning than we anticipated, everything went entirely to plan. We had just two good friends help us to the airport - essentially to marshal our 14 pieces of luggage from two cars to check-in at Heathrow.
There was a brief incident at the check-in desk where we were told that the two car seats we were taking were part of our luggage allowance rather than exempt as we'd confirmed THREE times on three separate occasions on the phone with AirNZ. This was the point when I was about to snap under the strain of it all! In addition our cases were over their weight limits by a kilo or two per case. After a very firm but polite discussion all our luggage was loaded without excess charge and my heart rate returned to safe limits.
I could write an entire post on the flight: the hellish children in front of us; the genius invention of the CARES harness we bought for our one year old; the ridiculous security controls at LAX; the benefits of playing the young child trump card to skip the queues; the lovely Auckland airport helpers who aided our passage from luggage reclaim to the shuttle bus as our weary children struggled to keep awake.
Why Auckland?
We chose Auckland to live in for two main reasons. We wanted to give ourselves the greatest chance of finding work in the IT sector and we liked the look of the Auckland climate, particularly the opportunities it would give us to take up sailing again once the children were older. Although we didn’t really want to think about it, we did accept that if, after a few months, Auckland wasn’t coming-up-rumps on the job-front, then we would have to consider moving.
To help us focus on finding a job, we chose to rent an apartment in a block just on the edge of the CBD where we got a good rate as they were newly opened. It was ok and did the job for nine weeks in the end.
Where was the rush?
Our feeling on arrival was a bit weird. We kept thinking - am I supposed to feel some big rush of excitement? Neither of us did. It all just felt, kind of, normal. Every so often we'd look up from what we were doing and have a "We're in New Zealand" moment. The overwhelming urge was to continue with the quest. It would have made sense to sit back, relax, chill and take our time. Impossible. Our minds were so focussed on achieving goals we were compelled to start cracking through our checklist. Get a car. Find an area to live. Find a house to rent. Make friends. All whilst looking for a job.
The car was easy enough. Set yourself a budget then spend a few days looking at all the used car yards. Once you've done this for three days you'll be so hacked off with it you'll just buy something that suits and move on.
So we soon had a car. Then started the trawl around Auckland to find an area we liked. This is a problem if you have no starting point. It's a big place and there are such differing areas and price ranges. We started by estimating our salary potential and ruling out areas where the average house price was significantly higher than we could afford. Then it was a case of driving. Lots of driving; lots of estate agents or real estate agents; lots of offices; lots of grumpy kids. Here's our general, personal experience: Barfoot and Thompson have almost without fail been helpful and friendly and their agents have understood what we were looking for. In our experience, Ray Whites are almost the exact opposite. There are other agencies who varied from office to office.
To be continued.......