An Aberdeenshire woman who has lived in Australia for more than six years has said she would not have got the same opportunities in the north-east.
Elise Cox, 27, who is originally from Banff, moved Down Under when she was 20-years-old on a temporary visa in 2016.
She wanted to move to Australia when she was 16, with her parents telling her that she would have to pay for it herself.
Instead of moving to Edinburgh or London, Miss Cox explained why she decided to move across the world: “In my mind, it was better to go and be in the sun and they speak English.
“The lifestyle also looked good and I love being outside and going to the beach. It just was a no brainer kind of thing.”
“By the end of studying (business management at college), I had saved a bit and then I booked a one-way flight to Australia on my own.”
“I kind of got here and was like ‘what am I doing, what do I do?'”
She moved in with her cousin’s friends and then travelled the country, which included doing farm work for three and a half months in Far North Queensland, enabling her to get a second-year visa.
Miss Cox described this as the “most eye-opening experience”, saying: “It was probably the first time I’ve been on the receiving end of people speaking to you like you’re just worth nothing.”
The Banffshire woman managed to get a job in marketing with Dext, a cloud-based software company in Sydney.
She admits that for the first three to four years of living in Australia, she “hung out” with other Brits, but this all changed when she met her Australian boyfriend Dan and started to have more friends from her new country.
She says meeting Dan – a 28-year-old general manager at an interior design company in Sydney’s Northern Beaches – led to her moving to a “more Aussie kind of location” in Manly.
Like most, Covid-19 was tough for Miss Cox, but she had the added difficulties of being over 10,000 miles from her family back in Scotland.
However, as she had no pathway to permanent residency, opportunities opened for her during the pandemic and with her staying with Dext during Covid, this led to her having the indefinite right to stay in the country.
‘So lucky and very grateful’
She told The P&J: “Because I stayed in Australia during Covid and I stayed with the same employer for two years, I was so lucky as I just got this pathway to permanent residency.
“Within six months of that being announced, Dext paid for it to keep me in the country and my permanent residency came through in April this year. So that was five years of working for them and all this uncertainty if I’d get to stay.”
Miss Cox said she said fells “so lucky and very grateful” to have got this.
Because of the pandemic and long distance, she has only managed two Christmases at home out of the last seven but will visit for four months next year.
“Covid stopped me for two-and-a-half years, it was horrible. It was really hard because my work conditions were because of sponsors.
“If I ever had to leave for an emergency or anything like that, I would be kind of giving up my life here. Nothing happened, but that was hard.”
If Miss Cox did lose this job, she said she would have had to effectively “start again”.
However, she is living the dream Down Under and is due to give birth to her first baby in the next week.
With an average temperature of 26C in December – which is summer in the Southern Hemisphere – Miss Cox misses Scottish Christmases.
‘Nothing beats being back home for Christmas’
Even though she feels “very lucky” to live by the beach, she craves a roast dinner on December 25, rather than cold ham, oysters or prawns.
“From my perspective, nothing beats being back home for Christmas, it’s such a nice environment. Being in the heat here and there being Christmas trees outside, it’s just weird, I find it funny.”
Miss Cox spent this Christmas with her partner’s family, who she said “really embraces” the Australian lifestyle, adding: “It makes me embrace it as well.”
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