Waking Up in Oz

Yes, it is true. I really am moving to Australia for a year.

What’s surprised me is I’ve been met with zero resistance. Before I started telling people, I made a mental list of counterpoints for every reason someone could give me for why I shouldn’t do this. I’ve yet to justify my decision to anyone. The general reaction has been “WHAT?!?!”*pause*”THAT’S AWESOME!” And while I’m grateful for the overwhelming support from my friends and family, I feel like I should explain how and why my vacation to Australia turned into a yearlong adventure. If anything, I can come back and read this when I’m homesick or at a low point and remind myself why…

Fed up with 9-to-5 life, unsure of my career path, no desire to get married and have kids in the near future, no mortgage payment or car payment holding me here… the only thing I know for certain is I want to see the world. I can’t imagine continuing life the way it is for the next 40 to 50 years and waiting for retirement to start traveling. There’s no guarantee I will even live that long and if I do no guarantee I’ll be healthy enough or have enough money to finally see everything. The time is now.

The plan so far is not so much a plan as it is a rough outline…

I’ll be applying for the Australian Work and Holiday Visa subclass 462 at the end of July/beginning of August. This visa allows 18-30 year olds to live and travel in Oz  for up to a year. On both the upside and downside, you can only work at a particular job for 6 months.

I’m flying to Sydney at the end of October, but first stopping in Fiji for a few days. This is a dream destination of mine and many of the flights I found had layovers in Fiji. How could I get all the way to Fiji and just board a connecting flight? No way! After a few days soaking up the sun and relaxing (read:partying), I’ll hit the ground running in Sydney. My friends Teneal and Layne have been generous enough to take us in until we find an apartment. We’ll spend about a week doing all the touristy things around Sydney (I will get a my picture taken holding a koala!) and then the job and apartment hunt will begin. I’ll take just about any job I can get, but ideally something in a restaurant or bar where I can interact with people. Temping in an office is also appealing, if only because the pay is great and I would have lots of flexibility. I’ve already scouted out areas to live and Coogee (pronounced kuh-gee) seems perfect: a beach suburb with lots of young people, expats, restaurants and pubs.

And of course I’ll be doing lots of what inspired this in the first place: traveling!  Teneal is planning a trip to Byron Bay for February. The obvious “must do” trip is the Great Barrier Reef. I’d also love to make it to the Whitsunday Islands, particularly Hamilton Island. I’m on the fence about Uluru… it’s a huge rock in the middle of nowhere and it takes some serious dedication just to get to it. I think I would rather put my money toward trips to New Zealand and Thailand (which I’ve convinced myself -at a 9-hour flight away- is not at all far from Oz). This is all pending… I fully expect to blow my travel fund on beer and Tim Tams.

And there you have it, the next year of my life in a very tiny nutshell. I’ll certainly miss plenty of people back home and staples of American life (I hear they have no Reese’s peanut butter cups!), but I’ve never been more sure of a decision or wanted anything as much as I want this. Which means, of course, this will probably be an epic disaster!

Here we go…

Tags: moving to Sydney, Travel Stuff, trip planning, why I'm here, working holiday visa