Romance and Relocation: Making the decision to move to Australia

So a bit of background first, just to put things in context. I’m a regular sort of guy living in Australia who had the opportunity to travel to the Philippines for business. While there I met a fantastic girl or for those of you who find the term “girl” condescending, a fantastic woman.  

We became friends and though natural, if somewhat rapid, evolution started a relationship of the romantic variety.  A classic tale no doubt…

As our relationship progressed and we grew to know and care more and more about each other, we both wondered what the future might hold for us given that I was based in Australia and would at some point have to return there. 

We wanted to stay together and both of us were thinking about how a long term relationship would work (or not work) if separated by over 6000 kilometres. So we started talking about organising a trip to Australia so that my girlfriend could get a feel for life in the “lucky country” (does anyone still call it that…?). We would take a slow and steady pace and see how things developed…

But then fate, or more accurately a momentary lapse in collective judgement, stepped in. My girlfriend was pregnant….so much for slow and steady.

My initial reaction was one of surprise tinged with a moment of mild panic…my girlfriend on the other hand was horrified, she was certain that I’d shortly be stepping out for a packet of cigarettes…never to return. She’d seen this situation a number of times with friends who’d had “foreign” partners who were all love and sunshine and then when the need for actual commitment arose they just disappeared.

Fortunately I was able to assure her that I wasn’t going anywhere and that we’d work things out together.  

Hmmm….what to do?  Well for me it was obvious…I loved her so I asked if she would marry me and move to Australia and I guess given the title of this post her response isn’t a surprise…she said yes.

So there it is….”we” are pregnant and need to sort out immigration to Australia. Through this blog I’ll detail out our progress both success and failure… In upcoming posts I’ll cover finding an OB/GYN in manila, getting a Philippines passport and ID, birth certificates etc, applying for visas and making the actual move.

Hopefully the information will be of some use to anyone in a similar situation and if nothing else will help me to examine my thoughts as things move along.

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