Life of Jana

I thought I'd write a quick post to answer a few questions I've been asked since I first told my relatives, friends, and coworkers that we were moving to Australia. Why are you leaving the UK? Why did you decide to move to Australia? Tristan and I had discussed moving to Australia but we didn't have a timeline or a specific plan around how or when this would happen. The decision to work towards moving came when I was pregnant with Saskia. I was 6 weeks into my pregnancy and following a four week holiday in Australia, was feeling very overwhelmed and had lots of mixed feelings. I have always felt pretty isolated in the UK - all of my family lives in Estonia and Tristan's family is in Australia. When Saskia was born we knew that this was it - the perfect time to move. I have a few very good friends here (shout out to Marianne and Almu) and Manchester has been our home for almost 10 years now but after weighing all the pros and cons (also considering Estonia briefly...

Over a month has passed now since I posted about getting ready to leave and we can finally say that we will be arriving in Australia next month! We've been super productive so here's a quick moving update. Packed boxes - Our main goal was to sort out everything we wanted to take with us and pack things away as soon as possible, as we had to book a moving company and give them an approximate size and number of boxes to pick up. There are still things left to sort out but we hope to have our boxes picked up at the beginning of next month. Hopefully they'll get there by the time we have our own place.  Tristan found a job - Can I just say at first how proud I am of him! He started looking for a job about a month ago, almost immediately received a positive response and they set up a job interview with him via Skype. He did so well, they wanted another Skype interview and offered him a position at the end of that call. Luckily he has some time off once we arrive, so we can ...

Tristan and I have been in a relationship for 7 years, we have a beautiful daughter together and have never been apart from each other for more than a week! We have always talked about moving to Australia at some point but since having Saskia, we hurried up with the move. We started filling out the online application for my Australian Partner Visa 309/100 in early December 2018. We slowly read through every question and filled in all of the details, page by page. It is impossible to fill it all out in one go, there are like 26 pages! It's a good thing you can save the form and come back to it another time.  Once we reached the page where we had to provide statements (nature of the couple's household, social aspects of the relationship, nature of the couple's mutual commitment to each other, etc) we decided that I would complete each section - later we would check them together and Tristan planned to add anything I missed. There are 5 sections at about 2000 words each. T...

We are moving to Australia! After 9 years of living in the UK, Tristan and I have decided to pack our bags and leave Manchester. We will be moving at the end of October this year and as we want our move to go as smoothly as possible, we have lots of things to sort out! Since I became pregnant with Saskia, we talked a lot more about moving to Australia. Tristan and I have no family here in the UK and we wanted Saskia to be closer to her relatives. On the 10th of February we finally lodged our Partner Visa 309/100 application. We were told it could take up to 19 months to receive a response. As we were patiently waiting, on the 11th of June after 4 months I received my grant letter! :) So here is how things have been going so far. After I received my visa, we shared the news with our friends and family. There are definitely mixed feelings from my side of the family - I am moving even further away from Estonia but they have always known about our plans and understand our deci...

I have still a couple more posts coming up about my Australian trip. I hope they are an interesting read! After Brisbane , we flew to Tristan's hometown Rockhampton where we spent the remaining 2 weeks of our holiday. Rockhampton is a small city in Queensland with a population of around 62,000 people. Rockhampton experiences over 300 days of sunshine each year, which means it is a good place for tourism and outdoor activities. Known as the "Beef Capital of Australia" there is much more to do than just sit in the pub and eat burgers! I have made a list of 10 things you can do around Rockhampton. 1. Rockhampton Kershaw Botanical Gardens are a well visited attraction in Rockhampton. The park has many paved walking paths, rest areas, drinking fountains and beautiful scenery with many palms and tropical flowers.   2. Quay Street in Rockhampton is full of beautiful architecture and old buildings. The city centre (main street) is not very big but I think we spent at ...

If you need a holiday, a day away or just a little break - Great Keppel Island is an amazing place to go! Great Keppel Island lies 15 kilometres off the coast from Yeppoon in Central Queensland. The island has a long history - it was discovered and named by James Cook in 1770. Great Keppel Island is also called Wappaburra which means 'resting place'. Great Keppel Island is a perfect tropical getaway - turquoise waters, beautiful beaches and many holiday activities. The island is also part of the Great Barrier Reef, which makes it an amazing opportunity for tourists and anyone else who wants to discover a bit more about marine wildlife. The Great Barrier Reef is part of a Marine Park, meaning it is protected from damaging activities with some areas of the park strictly regulated. We took part in the Coral Cruise tour, which we spent the duration of on a glass bottom boat. It was really cool! We got to know a bit more about the reef, saw corals and fish. I have never seen suc...