Have you ever harbored a dream? Not just had one, but kept it, hung on to it, stashed it away in the depths of your heart to be dusted off whenever the time for it was finally right?
As long as I can remember (and my sister says it’s been at least 30 years), I’ve wanted to go to Australia. Not just GO, but EXPERIENCE. BE there. Perhaps not forever, but certainly fully, completely, for a while. At the same time, I cultivated the unfortunate attitude of rolling with the punches, because, self-help books and Internet memes tell us, things “will work out”. And they do, of course, but what the gurus don’t tell you is that you have absolutely no say in the how or when.
According to the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Monkey. It’s an anything-goes kind of energy that can bring change when you least expect it. After the year we had in 2015, change was/is sorely needed, and as I strolled down a busy street in Fremantle last spring, the salty ocean air wafting up my nostrils, it felt for the first time in a very long time as if change might really come. Change for the better. It seemed positive.
That Schäfchen, our elderly guinea pig, died almost immediately after my return seemed to contradict that trend at first, but then I thought, now it’ll just be the two of us. Surely we can make things happen in our favor with one cat and two bunnies. DH’s dream is to return to Germany, to be with friends and write his bestseller that’s been on his desk for some time. I figured I might toodle off and follow my dream for a little while, killing two birds with one stone: I’d BE in Australia and make money, because after all, I am in one of those professions everyone claims to be looking for.
After initial reluctance to even consider this, DH and I sat down to look more closely at what would need to be done. Since we’ve just recently added two kittens to our family, he would have been more comfortable had I been able to take the rabbits with me, but alas, unless you’re coming from New Zealand, Australia won’t allow rodents (which makes perfect sense, since ours are desexed, indoor rabbits but hey, let’s not quibble). Anyway, he’d be stuck with cats and bunnies, but still asked me to investigate further.
I did. And what I found was Reality giving me a toothy grin and a big, fat Fuck You! In order to not screw up my visa application, it would be best to hire a migration agent. One returned a quote of $200 to make sure my paperwork was in order. That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Then I must fork over $500 to the reviewing body in question so they can use my application stack to hold their desks down for three months, after which time they may approve me and may award me enough points to propel me to the next step in the visa process.
I’ve now spent $700 merely to get to apply for a visa! No clue how much that costs, as from here on, things get a bit murky. In any case, should Immigration and Border Control grant me a visa, I’ll have to get the obligatory health check, which back in the day I moved to the US was around $150 (for the US, 20+ years ago, if I remember correctly).
By now I’m out roughly a thousand dollars, after which I’ll have to find a job. The application process alone would eat up any and all savings I currently have, which is not an option for an unemployed person. In short, I can’t afford it.
Anita Goa writes on her blog that the Pisces moon brings release. I guess that means it’s time to use this dream to feed the fishes.
Now go back to the opening lines of this post. If you answered yes to my questions, you’ll know exactly how I’m feeling right now.
The Better Life 
😦