I remember the first time the word “emigration” was mentioned in my context. Although I had been planning to leave Ireland for almost a year, slowly closing accounts and making connections abroad, I hadn’t actually looked at my plan as emigration.
Back in Dublin, I was working in Ballsbridge and renting a house with five others in Whitehall. Although only seven kilometres, my commute to work consisted of two Dublin buses (if they arrived) and sometimes totalled 1½ hours in travel time each way.
The inaccessibility of Dublin, paired with the fact that my housemates and I were paying €3,500 a month for our shared house, got me thinking about moving.
My partner and I settled on the Australian city of Perth as our destination of choice after consulting a native who I had befriended years before. This connection was and still is integral to our happy life here.
Because Perth is so far away from everywhere, flying there can be tricky. We decided to use this to our advantage and stopped off in the US to say goodbye to family. We flew from San Diego to Vancouver, then onwards to Brisbane and across the country to Perth.
That’s a whole new level of jet lag.
We learned so much in those three months, and have gained a new perspective on life and work. I’ll never take air conditioning for granted, or being able to eat your lunch without swallowing some flies
The working-holiday visa we had on arrival stipulated that we must complete 88 days of regional work if we wanted to apply for a second-year visa. This meant that, within a week of landing in Perth, the most isolated city in the world, we shed our corporate attire and began our work on a blueberry farm, one hour north of the city.
The days on the farm were hard, with the usual work day starting at 6am and ending close to 5pm. We soon got into a routine of picking berries one day and packing them the next.
Every day brought something a little different, and I even spent time installing a new irrigation system around the confines of the farm, something of which I had zero experience.
We learned so much in those three months, and have gained a new perspective on life and work. I’ll never take air conditioning for granted, or being able to eat your lunch without swallowing some flies, or even having to watch your boss take care of one of the many venomous snakes that made its way into the compound.
My friends and family have asked me the pros and cons of being in Western Australia, and I could talk for days about this. Firstly, because the weather here is so amazing, there are so many activities every day of the week. You can get home from work and have something to do in the evening. If this doesn’t interest you, why not make your way to the coast, where you can find the best beaches in the world, hands down.
The Aussies love their sport, so it’s a great place if you also like being active. When we first arrived, we got to watch the West Australian Football League final, bringing flashbacks of watching international rules football on the TV when I was younger.
Our schedule is packed all week as we’ve recently starting playing pickleball and I’ve also joined Greenwood Gaelic football Club.
Perth is definitely the place to be if you love the outdoors.
I won’t lie and pretend that the housing crisis is nonexistent over here, but it definitely is a little easier finding somewhere to live
People talk about the cost of living here, and how things are more expensive than at home. I don’t agree. People see things on menus for over $20 Australian dollars (€12.10) and think it’s a rip-off, but that’s roughly the one-hour wage here. It’s like giving out that something is €10 at home.
I won’t lie and pretend that the housing crisis is nonexistent over here, but it definitely is a little easier finding somewhere to live. It’s a relief when you get a response from an agent or landlord and don’t have to battle with 100 other people viewing a house. To put it into perspective, my partner and I are renting our own apartment for the same price we were paying to share a house with five others in Dublin – and we’re 10 minutes from the beach.
There’s a huge Irish community over here, and I get a sense it’s growing by the day. I’d definitely recommend that any young Irish person take the plunge and spend at least a year here. You could easily take a trip around the country, working casually to fund your trip.
As for my partner and I, we’re hoping to stay a little longer, so are back working in our prospective careers in the city. We love our life right now, but realise it may not be forever.
We definitely both have days where we miss home and our families, and my dog, Pippa, but the world is a lot closer than it used to be, and being able to see my family through a screen helps a small bit.
- Cathal Mongey is from Rathkenny, Co Meath. He and his partner Edna Carneiro Sweeney moved to Perth together in 2023.
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