Sabine Nielsen summarises discussions held during the panel discussion feature event of 'Memories in my Luggage' exhibition at Brighton Library on 18 March 2015.
What do you do when your spouse receives an offer to work overseas – this is a question that faces a lot of women – and occasionally men. Our panel discussion focused on the various issue that face families who move to Melbourne as expats.
What do you do when your spouse receives an offer to work overseas – this is a question that faces a lot of women – and occasionally men. Our panel discussion focused on the various issue that face families who move to Melbourne as expats.
Unlike migrants who arrive here with the view of settling for the long term, expats are sent by their companies or by their government, sometimes they join CSIRO or one of the major hospital to focus on scientific research. Expats can be “job nomads”, too, following their jobs and careers to live in a variety of different countries.
For many women, the most difficult decision in joining their husband is to give up their own career.
A lot of expats arrive here on a business visa, which means the wife is an “adjunct” and their visa does not give the option of working. That can be hard.
“I was so desperate, I started my own business”, says one of our panel members.
Expat wives have to make a lot of compromises and learn ways around the obstacle – like running your business online.
Linde Mohr, President of the Australian-German Welfare Society, who has lived the life of an expat wife for many years, explains wistfully: “Living as an expat wife has improved my golf and my bridge no end!”
Linde also got involved in voluntary work – which has become an almost fulltime, albeit unpaid position. And as a former teacher she devotes some of her time to the University of the Third Age, teaching German.
A recently arrived mother of three is not yet ready to work: “With three small children at Primary School and a husband who is very busy at work, I am currently a full-time mum”, she says, and adds: “At the moment, I sit down at night to do the children’s homework! They have started school but they arrived here with not a word of English.”
She describes arriving here. “The day we arrived, we were met by a Real Estate Agent who showed us eight properties. All I knew at the end of the day was that I didn’t like any of them!”
The others nod their head. “You have no idea what it is like – arriving in a new country where everything is different and the first thing you have to do is to unload a container load of boxes.”
It is beginning to dawn on me that the life of an expat wife is not as easy as I had imagined. All the difficulties that migrants face – a new language, a different culture, trying to find your way round – are compounded when you shift around the world more than once. At least, as a migrant I knew I would most probably stay in Australia. I was able to go to university, to get a job, immediately slotted into the general system of social security and began to settle down.
Another difficult decision that faces expats is: Whether to sell their house in Germany, or rent it to strangers until their return.
Some expats arrive in Australia on a contract, to stay two or maybe four years.
But if the work is challenging and satisfying and you have made friends, sent your children to school and adapted to the easy-going life in Australia, the decision to return home is no longer that easy.
Two years suddenly turn into two decades. “Time just goes by – and one day you think: Hey, I hadn’t meant to stay away forever. I am still German and there are a lots of things, which draw me back. I can’t rule out returning … one day.”
Sometimes expat families who return to Germany after several years of expat life in different parts of the world find they cannot settle. “Although we had a house and friends and had returned to a life we knew, we had changed ourselves. Besides, the things we had missed most whilst living overseas – the proximity of our families, the opportunity to call on them to babysit, to visit the grandparents often – all that didn’t happen because we lived to far away from each other!”
When they decide to return to Australia as migrants, it is a very different experience. “Not having the company to back you up!” The most worrying aspect is long-term financial security. “You give up your right to a pension in Germany – and here you only have a few years to pay into your superannuation. That is a worry. And you have to do everything ourselves: Find accommodation, decide in which suburb to settle, find work …”
For expats, moving to another country is not so much a conscious choice that you have made after long and careful consideration but one that maybe facing you one night at the dinner table when your husband announces: “By the way, we are moving to Indonesia!” - as happened to Waltraut Bartels. “I didn’t even know where Indonesia was!”
Waltraut and her husband Knud, an aircraft engineer, had already spent some years living in France. She realtes some of her experiences of coming to a country like Indonesia where the culture, the traditions and the social rules can be even more confronting than moving to Australia. “In Indonesia we had to have servants – so many people are poor, you have to offer employment.”
She quickly learnt that there were many traps awaiting the unsuspecting European. “Once I had to sack all the servants because I found out, our main house boy had invited his whole family into our lounge room to ach TV. That was not on and could not be tolerated (as employer it would have meant ‘loss of face’), but my husband was overseas at the time. In the Indonesian culture, the husband is the employer, the big boss – not the wife. So I had to say: ‘My husband is very angry and has giving instructions that you are all to be sacked.’ That was something I had to learn to do, to defer to my husband.”
(The reason, Waltraut had to sack all the servants, was that they were all related to each other.)
As an expat one learns to become savvy. “I maintained some of my independence in Indonesia by driving my own car. That was one thing, I could do – although there were always Indonesians offering to drive me, I insisted on this, my freedom. Sometimes, I got lost. I’d sit there with my map spread out in front me and wait for a Chinese student to come along – they were the best at reading maps and explaining to me, which way to take!”
“I’ve learnt to drive on the left hand side of the road”, a recently arrived expat exclaims proudly – and reminds us that it is often the little things that trip up a new-comer.
Apart from the language – and the Aussies’ particular use of the English – there are so many other things one has to adept to and/or learn.
Making friends is the hardest of all – we all agree on that.
“When we arrived here, we met some of my husband’s colleagues. ‘You’ll have to come around for a barbecue’, they said …”
“You’ll be waiting a long time! Australians often say that – but it’s not like in Germany. When someone says that to you there, they’ll arrange a date and time, here it is much more casual!”
Expats and migrants alike are often drawn back into communities that reflect their own background. To exchange experiences, to offer each other help, advise and support, or to speak their own language.
Our panel members praise St Leonards College in Brighton, a school that offers help and support for expat and migrant parents through the group “International Friends”.
Most importantly, what we learn this afternoon is that the life both of an expat and a migrant bears many challenges. Often it is not easy to live so far away from home, as we do here, but we also get the chance to experience a completely different life. An opportunity and an adventure that few of us would want to miss. Waltraut and Knud, like many other expats, decided to settle in Australia after their retirement.
For Germans in Melbourne there are various ‘official’ organisations, like the Australia-German Welfare Society; the German Lutheran, Catholic and Baptist Churches or the Temple Society who offer all sorts of services – play groups, youth groups, handcrafts, Seniors’ groups and language classes are just dome of them. There is the Deutsche Schule Melbourne; the Spatzenschule in Toorak; the Geckos is Preston; the German Saturday School; German clubs like the Club Tivoli in Windsor and Teutonia in Hampton, the Austrian and the Swiss Clubs – and many families with young children have simply found each and have started play groups; others have formed “Stammtische”, sporting clubs or meet regularly through “German meet-up”. The Australian-German Welfare Society offers a Friendly Visiting Service; Seniors’ outings, film afternoons and German book clubs. German SBS and 3ZZZ radio play an important part in our lives. Social media is a great tool to help find one another, too.
It must be understood that these groups are not to set us apart from Australian society but rather to give us the chance to live in both of our hemispheres – and therefore to live more richly and to appreciate life more fully – to delve back into our familiar culture of origin but also to share and give back something to Australian our neighbours. That’s what multiculturalism is all about, isn’t it?
For many women, the most difficult decision in joining their husband is to give up their own career.
A lot of expats arrive here on a business visa, which means the wife is an “adjunct” and their visa does not give the option of working. That can be hard.
“I was so desperate, I started my own business”, says one of our panel members.
Expat wives have to make a lot of compromises and learn ways around the obstacle – like running your business online.
Linde Mohr, President of the Australian-German Welfare Society, who has lived the life of an expat wife for many years, explains wistfully: “Living as an expat wife has improved my golf and my bridge no end!”
Linde also got involved in voluntary work – which has become an almost fulltime, albeit unpaid position. And as a former teacher she devotes some of her time to the University of the Third Age, teaching German.
A recently arrived mother of three is not yet ready to work: “With three small children at Primary School and a husband who is very busy at work, I am currently a full-time mum”, she says, and adds: “At the moment, I sit down at night to do the children’s homework! They have started school but they arrived here with not a word of English.”
She describes arriving here. “The day we arrived, we were met by a Real Estate Agent who showed us eight properties. All I knew at the end of the day was that I didn’t like any of them!”
The others nod their head. “You have no idea what it is like – arriving in a new country where everything is different and the first thing you have to do is to unload a container load of boxes.”
It is beginning to dawn on me that the life of an expat wife is not as easy as I had imagined. All the difficulties that migrants face – a new language, a different culture, trying to find your way round – are compounded when you shift around the world more than once. At least, as a migrant I knew I would most probably stay in Australia. I was able to go to university, to get a job, immediately slotted into the general system of social security and began to settle down.
Another difficult decision that faces expats is: Whether to sell their house in Germany, or rent it to strangers until their return.
Some expats arrive in Australia on a contract, to stay two or maybe four years.
But if the work is challenging and satisfying and you have made friends, sent your children to school and adapted to the easy-going life in Australia, the decision to return home is no longer that easy.
Two years suddenly turn into two decades. “Time just goes by – and one day you think: Hey, I hadn’t meant to stay away forever. I am still German and there are a lots of things, which draw me back. I can’t rule out returning … one day.”
Sometimes expat families who return to Germany after several years of expat life in different parts of the world find they cannot settle. “Although we had a house and friends and had returned to a life we knew, we had changed ourselves. Besides, the things we had missed most whilst living overseas – the proximity of our families, the opportunity to call on them to babysit, to visit the grandparents often – all that didn’t happen because we lived to far away from each other!”
When they decide to return to Australia as migrants, it is a very different experience. “Not having the company to back you up!” The most worrying aspect is long-term financial security. “You give up your right to a pension in Germany – and here you only have a few years to pay into your superannuation. That is a worry. And you have to do everything ourselves: Find accommodation, decide in which suburb to settle, find work …”
For expats, moving to another country is not so much a conscious choice that you have made after long and careful consideration but one that maybe facing you one night at the dinner table when your husband announces: “By the way, we are moving to Indonesia!” - as happened to Waltraut Bartels. “I didn’t even know where Indonesia was!”
Waltraut and her husband Knud, an aircraft engineer, had already spent some years living in France. She realtes some of her experiences of coming to a country like Indonesia where the culture, the traditions and the social rules can be even more confronting than moving to Australia. “In Indonesia we had to have servants – so many people are poor, you have to offer employment.”
She quickly learnt that there were many traps awaiting the unsuspecting European. “Once I had to sack all the servants because I found out, our main house boy had invited his whole family into our lounge room to ach TV. That was not on and could not be tolerated (as employer it would have meant ‘loss of face’), but my husband was overseas at the time. In the Indonesian culture, the husband is the employer, the big boss – not the wife. So I had to say: ‘My husband is very angry and has giving instructions that you are all to be sacked.’ That was something I had to learn to do, to defer to my husband.”
(The reason, Waltraut had to sack all the servants, was that they were all related to each other.)
As an expat one learns to become savvy. “I maintained some of my independence in Indonesia by driving my own car. That was one thing, I could do – although there were always Indonesians offering to drive me, I insisted on this, my freedom. Sometimes, I got lost. I’d sit there with my map spread out in front me and wait for a Chinese student to come along – they were the best at reading maps and explaining to me, which way to take!”
“I’ve learnt to drive on the left hand side of the road”, a recently arrived expat exclaims proudly – and reminds us that it is often the little things that trip up a new-comer.
Apart from the language – and the Aussies’ particular use of the English – there are so many other things one has to adept to and/or learn.
Making friends is the hardest of all – we all agree on that.
“When we arrived here, we met some of my husband’s colleagues. ‘You’ll have to come around for a barbecue’, they said …”
“You’ll be waiting a long time! Australians often say that – but it’s not like in Germany. When someone says that to you there, they’ll arrange a date and time, here it is much more casual!”
Expats and migrants alike are often drawn back into communities that reflect their own background. To exchange experiences, to offer each other help, advise and support, or to speak their own language.
Our panel members praise St Leonards College in Brighton, a school that offers help and support for expat and migrant parents through the group “International Friends”.
Most importantly, what we learn this afternoon is that the life both of an expat and a migrant bears many challenges. Often it is not easy to live so far away from home, as we do here, but we also get the chance to experience a completely different life. An opportunity and an adventure that few of us would want to miss. Waltraut and Knud, like many other expats, decided to settle in Australia after their retirement.
For Germans in Melbourne there are various ‘official’ organisations, like the Australia-German Welfare Society; the German Lutheran, Catholic and Baptist Churches or the Temple Society who offer all sorts of services – play groups, youth groups, handcrafts, Seniors’ groups and language classes are just dome of them. There is the Deutsche Schule Melbourne; the Spatzenschule in Toorak; the Geckos is Preston; the German Saturday School; German clubs like the Club Tivoli in Windsor and Teutonia in Hampton, the Austrian and the Swiss Clubs – and many families with young children have simply found each and have started play groups; others have formed “Stammtische”, sporting clubs or meet regularly through “German meet-up”. The Australian-German Welfare Society offers a Friendly Visiting Service; Seniors’ outings, film afternoons and German book clubs. German SBS and 3ZZZ radio play an important part in our lives. Social media is a great tool to help find one another, too.
It must be understood that these groups are not to set us apart from Australian society but rather to give us the chance to live in both of our hemispheres – and therefore to live more richly and to appreciate life more fully – to delve back into our familiar culture of origin but also to share and give back something to Australian our neighbours. That’s what multiculturalism is all about, isn’t it?
