My journey of becoming an Australian resident
I grew up in a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada, with my mother and my brother. Once I turned 18, and could go to university, I escaped from that town as quickly as I possibly could and enrolled at the university in Halifax, our capital city.
After a couple of years, this too seemed small and claustrophobic, and I high-tailed it for what I saw to be the most exciting and culturally diverse city in Canada, Montreal. I would spend the next 6 years there in university, and living all over the city and enjoying the music, food and art that it had to offer. The last year I was in Montreal, I was wooed by a long-time and long-lost friend, and we entered what would be the most significant relationship of my life.
That year, during an especially brutal winter, we made the quickest and most risky decisions of our lives – to leave that frozen city and move to New Zealand, or, what looked to be a subtropical paradise.
My boyfriend left for NZ and managed to get a job as an engineer in a coal mine in a town called Huntly, and I moved down within months after feverishly finishing a thesis to earn my Masters. We lived in a town called Pukekohe just south of Auckland. I would take the train in during the week to the administrative jobs that I had, but during the weekends we would lead a very cloistered existence, riding our bikes, making food, and going to the local market. It was beautiful and simple for a time, but after a year we caught the same bug that had driven me to move from the town that I grew up in, to the cities I went to school in, as suddenly everything felt very small and as though options for fun and work were incredibly limited.
My boyfriend’s family lived just across the Tasman in Geelong, Victoria, and we had visited them a few times during the course of the year. Each time we went to Australia and visited Melbourne, I was reminded of what it was like to be in a big city, and I felt again what it was to be excited by a place with seemingly infinite possibilities. Going back to New Zealand was going home, and there was comfort in that, but it seemed like the difference between actually living by encountering the unknown, or just being comfortable with a very small existence.
Eventually the sheen of comfort would completely wear off, and we started making arrangements to leave our small town in New Zealand for Melbourne.
My boyfriend got another mining job, this time in the Northern Territory, and I went to live in Geelong and then Melbourne, working in more administrative jobs. Almost immediately upon arriving, I started working on a Permanent Residency application, so that I could live and exist in this country enjoying all of the freedoms that my partner did. The application was extensive, and took weeks to complete. By the time I submitted it, it was an accordion folder filled with personal documents and love letters, officiated in a police station by a JP. Soon after its submission I received an acknowledgement letter from the Australian government telling me that I would have to wait approximately nine months to hear back from them. Then, just two weeks later, I received another letter from the government telling me I was a Temporary Resident, which meant that I would have all of the rights of a Permanent Resident but would have to wait two years before I would officially have permanent residency.
I was so happy to finally have a sense of belonging, and it was only when I had this small fraction of permanency and its related rights that I realised how much I missed that luxury, and how badly I wanted it.
Being on a temporary visa for the year in New Zealand and again in Australia contributed to my sense of being outside the society in which I was living, which then made me pine for Canada and created the feeling of discomfort, of not quite belonging. I couldn’t wait to gain permanent Residency, but I did, for two years.
During that two years, I worked in Melbourne in a few jobs that weren’t terribly interesting, but good experience. One day in March, I received a call from my recruitment agency that I had an interview with the Victorian Multicultural Commission, which was incredibly exciting because it seemed like such a departure from the unfulfilling corporate atmosphere that I found myself in. I managed to get the job, and it proved to be the best I had ever had. I met interesting people, made great friends, gained valuable experience and all with a sense of independence.
Just last month, I finally received my letter that I am a Permanent Resident, and it was pure joy. I am finally, officially, (almost) Australian, and I couldn’t be happier. I see myself making this country my home for many years to come, and feel so lucky to be able to do so. I find it amusing to look back on myself, growing up in a small town in a small Canadian province, and trying to picture how I could ever imagine living on the other side of the world, in one of the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities.