"The only Australian in Ireland"

Unknown artist

I'm from Australia, and I live in Cork, in Ireland. I migrated here in March last year. My wife is Irish. She backpacked in Australia in 2007 and eventually stayed there working, where we met in 2012. We worked at a television station - she was a producer and I'm a camera person. We always thought we would stay in Australia. We'd been together for 18 months when we first visited Ireland together. It can be hard to be with someone from overseas, without knowing who those people they're talking about really are. So we came to Ireland in March 2014 to meet her family. Our two week holiday expanded to two months, and we thought we may as well quit our jobs and stay a bit longer. I got a working holiday visa, and we stayed here for a year. We always intended to go back to Australia. We moved back there in October 2015. Within 30 minutes of being back, I knew we'd be back to Ireland - as soon as I heard the accents and saw how bad the driving was. There's this idea that Australia is a place with a better quality of life, with more work and better opportunities. That's all rubbish, it's crap. You live in a suburb in a box and you spend 60 hours a week working and sitting in traffic. In Ireland, there's a better work life balance. People think Australia's all sun, sand and surf, but it's not so easy. So in March 2017, we moved back to Ireland. I'm staying here forever. Why? It's easy to say. I like everything: the pace of life here, the landscape, the sense of humour. I love being somewhere where you can be somewhere else in an hour. In Australia, you travel an hour from Melbourne and you're still in Melbourne. Here I could be in Poland or Lithuania in an hour, and there are so many more cultures to explore within easy reach. Maybe people in Europe take this for granted. My job takes me all over Ireland, travelling the country. There's always something new to learn here. When I was moving here, the airline lost my luggage. I lost everything. Everything I ever wanted to bring with me. That included a beanie hat I had. I always have a beanie with me whenever I travel anywhere. It's a comfort thing. This one is more symbnolic because it's from a local team where I lived, the West Brunswick Amateur Football Club. I got it two days before we moved. I had worn it on the flight and put it in my luggage when we connected in Dubai. And so it was lost. It was the one thing I wanted to keep, as it was a team my friends were involved me and reminded me of being with friends. For Christmas that year, my wife contacted the club and got me a new hat that they sent over.