Oz-ward Bound

Well! Long story short - I'm originally from San Francisco, CA in the United States. Three years ago Christmas whilst on holiday in Reykjavik, Iceland, I met my current girlfriend C at Christmas dinner in the Hótel Borg. The catch was she was an Australian living in the UK. A veritable shitload of travel was necessary in order to maintain our blossoming relationship, and as the months flew past, we realized that things as they stood needed to change at some point. 


That point arrived after the brutal winter London suffered during the span of time between Christmas and New Year's in 2008. The winter was absolutely brutal; dirty urban snow, blistering cold winds, icy pavements, and general misery was suffered by all. C, who was born and brought up in sunny Perth, Western Australia and had lived in Melbourne, Victoria for the seven years before her move to England, and had been putting up with the weather in Dear Old Blighty for the previous three and a half years, finally snapped. Within a space of weeks, she resigned from her job, evicted the tenant who was living in her Melbourne house, and moved back Down Under to the mystical land of Oz. 


I'd been to Australia once before - for three weeks during March and April earlier in 2010, meeting her friends and family in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, and Pacific Palms up north in NSW. A wonderful time was had. 


But now has come the point where, as some ruder punters might say, for me to shit or get off the pot. So I packed up some bags, shipped some boxes, got on a plane, and flew to Melbourne to live with my honey for three months on a tourist visa - to find out a bit more about myself, my relationship with C, and whether or not this relationship was worth uprooting myself from lovely San Francisco and transplanting myself all the way across the world.


This blog will be all about that voyage of discovery. And it will also, I hope, serve as an unconventional aide for those who might also be considering this trip sometime in the future! I will be detailing every aspect of this journey, whether they be governmental offices, websites, application forms, people to talk to in order to learn various ins and outs of trying to become an Australian citizen, etc etc etc.


Let's have fun, shall we? Ciao.