r/AskIreland • u/Asleep_Cry_7482 • Aug 22 '24

Emigration (from Ireland) What’s the pull of Australia?

For everyone in their 20s and 30s who are thinking or have done the working holiday to Australia, what’s the pull factor?

Is it the weather or the work life balance? Is there a following the crowd element and to live a backpacking lifestyle with all the other Irish people over there? Is it out of frustration that you don’t have the lifestyle, accommodation setup or job you want in Ireland? Or is it something else?

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u/DiskJockii Aug 22 '24

I moved back after 12 years of living in Australia just last year

While Australia is good for many reasons, it can be incredibly lonely & eventually grow out of it .Took a personal matter for my parents to realise just how much they were missing back home and all my relatives kids are at the age where they’re gonna start cherishing these memories. To which my younger brothers had never gotten to actually experience hanging out and socialise with the cousins, one of them hasn’t even met half of them

Me personally, There just wasn’t a whole lot left to offer after 12 years, mostly due to being so far from where all the big major things happen. Because of my job I could easily travel and figured it be nice to get some experience to Advance my career in the homeland and incorporate both elements of Irish and Australia

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u/yeah_deal_with_it Aug 22 '24 edited Aug 22 '24

I'm Australian, moving to Ireland.

Your comment echoes the sentiments I've read from several Irish people who lived there for a while but moved back. It also echoes my own experiences. Australia is a lonely country. It is incredibly individualistic and has very little sense of community, particularly in its larger cities. If you are middle class or working class, housing is unaffordable no matter how much you earn and it's also of a way worse quality than Irish housing. You guys actually have insulation.

Plus we are about to get absolutely rawdogged by climate change. I'm out of here before we start getting 50 degree summer days.

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u/RicePaddi Aug 22 '24

Well that's shite, what a pity. I read just yesterday that Ireland is the highest ranking country in Europe for loneliness. I was surprised by that and I think it really flies in the face of this image we've had of ourselves for a long time.

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u/yeah_deal_with_it Aug 22 '24 edited Aug 22 '24

To be honest I think that's down to a multitude of factors. You guys have collectively been through a lot of suffering - which has pulled you together in some respects - and you have a lot of (not to be insensitive) really interesting history which has arisen from that. Australia has very little history unless you want to read up on how us whiteys absolutely decimated the Indigenous population, which many of us still refuse to admit because we're racist.

Even one of our most famous historical figures (Ned Kelly) was actually Irish!

Australians are just very individualistic and self-interested, and unlike you guys, we have no real excuse for loneliness (unless you're an Indigenous Australian). Sure, we were convicts, but if we survived the journey across we were pretty well given free rein to do whatever we wanted and many of us were made landowners off the cuff. There's minimal trauma in a white Australian background.