'I left my well-paid job in Ireland for a life in Australia - I love it and wouldn't change a thing'
'We just absolutely love it here - the weather, the opportunities, the fact you meet people from all walks of life. It’s just amazing.'
An Irish woman has revealed how she moved to Australia after years of loving Home and Away - having saved up for just six months.
Colleen Deere, 35, from Carlow, had a "really good job" in a bank in Kildare but was intrigued about life abroad. She spent six months saving up for the move and flew to Perth initially with a working holiday visa - a place she says she “fell in love with straight away”.
Colleen met her now-fiancee, Tom McParland, 39, while they were both working on a vineyard and living in the same hostel in Margaret River.
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The pair hit it off straight away - they have now been together for eight years, have Australian citizenship, and currently live in Sydney with their one-year-old son, Cove. She urged those considering living abroad to “go for it because if it doesn’t work out, it’s literally just a return flight back”.
Mum-of-one Colleen, a team leader at a recruitment agency, said: “I had a really good job at a bank back home, but to be honest Australia had interested me ever since I was really young and I had always really wanted to visit.
“Customers used to come into the bank and send dollars to their sons and daughters abroad and it always really interested me where they were and what they were doing.
“I finally made the decision to fly the nest and saved hard for about six months after booking the flight - I flew out to Perth with around 7,000 Australian dollars and I remember I just settled in really really quickly and fell in love with the place straight away.”
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in business and a masters degree in business, economics, and finance, Colleen worked in a bank in Kildare for a year. At the age of 26, she made the decision to leave Ireland.
She said: “I was always interested in Australia - I think watching a lot of Home and Away episodes had something to do with it. When I finally made the decision and booked my flight in January 2015, I spent six months saving hard.
“I flew out in June with less than 10,000 Australian dollars. My family thought I might come back home, they thought I was a bit of a homebird. But I loved it there - I spent a year in Perth and then applied for my second year visa, moved down to a hostel and vineyard in Margaret River, and began working there.”
Colleen got her working visa in February 2016 and began her new job at a vineyard.
She said: “I arrived at the hostel and didn’t know anyone. I remember the first time I heard Tom’s scouse accent - he’s from Merseyside - and I knew I liked him straight away from day one. Within the first two weeks, we were sharing a dorm together - it made sense with the rent costs.
“You don’t earn much from regional work - it worked on a commission basis so you basically just picked grapes and put them into buckets. The faster you picked the grapes and filled up your buckets, the more money you would earn.
“There were some weeks where I’d only be working a few hours each morning and would be earning about 400 to 500 Australian dollars a week and I think our rent at the hostel was around 180 Australian dollars a week. It was a really, really good experience though.”
Tom was at the vineyard before Colleen arrived so he finished his designated hours before her. However, he waited in the hostel until Colleen was also done - and the pair embarked on a trip to Bali, where they spent a couple of weeks celebrating completing their work.
Colleen said: “We then went back to Perth together - to be honest, at first, we didn’t really know where to go from there. It was tricky - with Tom being from England and me from Ireland, we didn’t know how it was going to go with the different visa restrictions and we had no real set plans so we just decided to go with it and figure out what we could do to stay here.”
They spent some time in a house share in Perth before making the decision to move to Sydney - where they felt there were more opportunities.
Colleen secured a job as a trainee recruitment assistant and Tom got into construction work - so the pair made the leap and moved to Sydney, where they have lived for the past eight years. They live in a 750 Australian dollars-a-week two-bedroom apartment with their one-year-old son Cove.
Colleen has since received sponsorship from her employers and said she was “over the moon” when they told her, because “it meant I had a way to stay in Australia”.
Colleen and Tom earned Australian citizenship in December 2023 and Cove automatically received it after being born in the country. Colleen said: “We just absolutely love it here - the weather, the opportunities, the fact you meet people from all walks of life. It’s just amazing.
“We’re moving back to Perth soon - after all our years and time spent in Sydney, we’re now at the stage where we’re a little bit older and ready to settle down more.
“Sydney has been incredible and we had great times here, especially in our mid-20s when we went out lots and partied, we really experienced the Sydney lifestyle.
“But Perth is cheaper and we’re now at a different stage of our lives - we can rent a lovely four-bedroom house there for around 650 dollars a week.”
She urged those moving abroad to take the plunge and “have no regrets - if it doesn’t work out, or it’s not what you expected, it’s literally just a return flight back.
“I truly believe if you’ve always wanted to travel abroad or move to another country and you go for it, you’ve won no matter what. You’ve either made the best decision of your life, or you’re now richer with knowledge and wisdom knowing that you have no regrets and you gave it a good crack - no what ifs!”
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