We’ve made it. We’ve finally arrived and moved to Sydney, Australia. Can you believe it?!
I can’t either. Especially after I wrote a blog post and recorded a podcast episode not that long ago detailing every reason why I wouldn’t move to Australia.
Yet, here I am. I moved to Sydney!
This blog post will be giving you all the details about why and how we ended up here and what our plans are moving forward.
I vlogged our entire first weekend, so you can see exactly what we got up to on our first two days in Sydney, Australia in this YouTube vlog:
The last 12 months have been an absolute whirlwind, so let’s get into it!
This Time Last Year
It’s so crazy to think back to exactly a year ago today. On the 17th of February 2024, I was still living in London, working my amazing job and starting to pack up our apartment.
There had been so much deliberating, planning and will-we-won’t-we chats happening the six months previous that it was crazy to us that we’d actually handed in our notices and booked our flights.
The me back in February 2024 had no idea what lay ahead. The countries she’d visit, the people she’d meet, the life experiences she’d have and the thirst for more travel that would develop.
It was coming towards the end of winter, I was training for my first 5km race and terrified by this huge decision I’d made and what was to come of it. How would I know if I’d made the right choice and that everything would work out?
Making the Decision to Pack It All Up and Go
We’d been in London for almost 2.5 years the day that we moved out. We both loved our apartment, the same one that we moved into on our first day in London, and both loved our jobs.
But typical me, my feet started to get itchy again. This was the longest I had stayed in one place since leaving my family home at 18.
I don’t want to say I was bored of London, but it didn’t excite me at all.
I’ve spoken about this before that I think New York has basically ruined living anywhere else in the world, but the colour I associate London with is grey. Metaphorically and physically.
It was my second time living in the capital city, working at the same amazing job, but it just wasn’t home and nor was I loving the way it made me feel.
I’d always wanted to travel and see more of the world. Plus, I wrote this blog post a long time ago, back when I was single, about all the places I wanted to live and work in. That itch still hadn’t gone away.
There was more to life than London and working the same job forever. There was more life to experience outside of the UK. So I convinced my boyfriend that we should pack up and move to the opposite side of the world for a new experience.
RELATED blog post to read: Five Places I Hope to Live in the Future
Welcome to Travel Australia Tours
Welcome to Travel is a great organisation to help you get started with your move to Australia. They offer group trips along the East Coast, days exploring Sydney and Melbourne and administrative help to get you set up for success once you arrive.
If you’re interested in doing one of the tours, make sure to use the appropriate code below for some discount!
- $50 AUD discount for any Welcome tours: ORLAGHCLAIRE
- $100 discount for the 30-day Welcome to Travel East Coast tour: ECORLAGHCLAIRE
- $150 AUD discount for any of the Welcome to Travel Travel Packages: PKGORLAGHCLAIRE
A Year of Travelling Before I Moved to Sydney
Since March 2024, the past 12 months have looked like this:
- Romania
- Dubai
- Sri Lanka
- Kuala Lumpur
- Thailand
- Cambodia
- Vietnam
- Laos
- Thailand
- Hong Kong
- Japan
- South Korea
- Thailand
- Cambodia
- Thailand
- Philippines
- Singapore
- Bali
- Ireland
- New York
- Ireland
- Bali
- Sydney, Australia
Which is WILD. Never in my big imagination did I think my life would look like this. When I was younger, I always had this niggling thought in the back of my head that I wasn’t meant to travel.
We didn’t go abroad on holiday when I was young, sticking to Donegal and weekends and weeks around the South of Ireland. I was 18 when I visited England for the first time, to go to Newcastle for a university opening day.
My first time in Scotland was when I moved there for a month during the pandemic, and the same for Wales too when I was 24.
By the time I was 18 I had only been to Disneyland Paris and Lake Garda, Italy. So I didn’t think travelling was in my future, especially to places like Bali or Japan.
But thank GOD I eliminated that mindset in university when I applied to move to New York City. I was very much in my Pinterest Girl Boss era and the ‘Why not me?’ mindset.
Did I Want to Come to Sydney?
After the past 12 months of travelling, I was in two minds about our future plans.
On one hand, we already had our Working Holiday Visas for Australia which meant we had to be in the country by early February if we didn’t want to lose them.
On the other hand, we had a few different avenues we could take if we really wanted to.
There was the option to sack off Australia and keep travelling around Southeast Asia or further afield, perhaps to South America.
Another option was to stick around in Bali for a while, with its very low rent prices and living costs and working on my blog and content while not paying a lot of outgoing costs.
Then there was the decision to be made about Australia itself. Did we want to land in Sydney, get somewhere to live, find jobs and settle for a while? Or did we want to slow travel Australia, spending a month or so in lots of different places to explore the country at a slow pace?
In the end, we decided that being in one place for a little while sounded too good to pass on. Unpacking our suitcases for a long period, cooking our own meals for a change and having a very normal routine sounded heavenly after a very busy 12 months of coming and going.
So we made the decision and moved to Sydney, Australia to see if it felt like home.
RELATED blog post to read: Australia Working Holiday Visa: Everything You Need to Know
The Australia Plan Now We’ve Moved to Sydney
So, now we’ve moved to Sydney. We’ve been here just over two weeks now and have found somewhere to live – we’re moving in this weekend! Himself got a job on day five of being here and has been working around five days per week.
I just landed myself a part-time waitress job so I can build up some pocket money while also working on my blog and YouTube etc. which I start this week.
I’ve started running again, back on the couch to 5km program since it’s been a whole year since I last ran 5km.
We’ve been cooking a lot and it’s felt so good having salads and home cooked meals in the evenings. The weather has been excellent so I’m walking everywhere, getting my 10,000 steps in daily.
I don’t want to use the word ‘boring’ but I feel like I’m very much in my homebody era, getting into a routine and not going out much at all.
Most of my days are spent in the library working on my blog and content and I’m really enjoying the routine of it and working for myself.
I’m very much using this time to catch up on the mountain of content from my travels last year, so you should start seeing weekly travel vlogs from me (as well as Sydney content of course) and I’m starting from scratch again on Instagram, going place by place and sharing informative content on those locations.
What’s Coming Next Now We’ve Moved to Sydney?
Right now, we have plans to be in Sydney up until the end of June. No flights, no trips, nothing. Just heads down, working, saving, creating content, writing and living our best Sydney lives.
We’ll be doing a lot of travelling in June and July for the Lions Rugby tour, going to Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth. So that will be very exciting to see a lot more of the country.
In September we have a California road trip (don’t ask). But I cannot wait to do some planning for this as it will be my first ever time on the West Coast of America.
So even though I’m very much in my homebody era now we’ve moved to Sydney, we do still have some quite big travel plans coming up this year with more to be potentially added.
If I start to mention or even hint at going to New York for Christmas next year, shout at me and tell me no!! You can’t afford it, stop being delusional!!
Thank you in advance because I will probably start to get the itch again around July.
For now, here’s to my wholesome (boring) homebody era in Sydney, Australia!
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