Why You Should Move To Australia

Kelly Burns
6 min readMay 1, 2023

There’s much more to Sydney than the Opera House.

An image of the Sydney Opera House illuminated with purple lights and at night.
Photo by Trevor McKinnon on Unsplash

I moved to Australia during the pandemic. It was a tough decision, but a necessary one. When COVID-19 began, my job also ended. Everything in my life seemed to come to a standstill. I was living in my small apartment in California without a plan in sight. As usual, I stayed home and did a lot of reading. I also made Quarantine Pizza, and handmade pasta, and didn’t see many people. I decided to move to Australia to join my partner and close the loop as we had been dating long-distance for many years.

Packing up my life, saying goodbye to friends, and moving on was challenging. I never let go of my ties to the people I love in the Bay Area. I miss them, but I am learning how to be here, even if the adjustment is a little bumpy. Interrupted Messenger chats don’t help.

However, there are some things about Australia that I really enjoy:

1. The people are very polite. Moving to Australia was an adjustment. Not to mention the language differences, Aussie slang, communication style choices, and other misunderstandings. Sometimes, you might come across an Australian who believes that all Americans are rude, uneducated, and stupid. I have had instances where this topic came up. After I said I was an American, people really didn’t want to get to know me. In other…

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Kelly Burns

writer and sometimes singer/composer & painter. Italian-American. INFP. I write fiction and nonfiction. www.kellyburns.com