Kangaroo Land, Down Under or the land of Oz.... all the funny nicknames Australia may have.
Yes, that is where we have landed!
Probably a decision that came as a surprise, even for ourselves! A few months ago we put all our stuff upside down, literally, and migrated to Oz.
Yes.. yes... of course, things don't happen like that! You are right. It is difficult to explain this feeling of surprise for being here.... but, before our world trip, when we thought of applying for a VISA somewhere just to keep some doors opened... we chose Australia more for the fun of it than thinking what it really meant.
Visa-wise we had Canada or Australia to choose from. We both knew Canada and are total fans of the west coast, BC, "if we had a job there we would not think twice before buying a ticket and shipping our stuff to Vancouver!" - you would hear us saying without hesitation!
Australia, we had never visited before, and besides pictures of Australian surfers, kangaroos, Koala bears and being an Island-country-continent where the most poisonous animals hide (discovery channel fault!) 
))
Which is just as real as Brazil being carnival, beautiful women in tiny bikinis and Amazon forest ... or... Germany being populated with people on leather pants and drinking white beer and eating sausages, an eternal "October Fest"!
All that to say: we had zero clue what Australia was about. But why Australia then? You may ask... Well, something we both didn't know! We thought. )
Appartment hunting
In that spirit we found ourselves putting together 1kg paper-work in order to apply for a permanent resident Visa for this country we both did not know!
And before we left for our world trip, we prepared our application which would take two years (!) processing time. During the trip we never really thought about it. Somewhere in the back of our minds we knew that we had a process running to migrate to Australia, but if we would ever use it...?
During the trip we visited Australia, half way around the world... the first time we faced this country and our idea of spending some time living here.
June/2003 we first put our feet in Sydney and we had 6 weeks to get an impression of the country.
We were impressed of Sydney from day one. Scary at first, with a weired low budget tourists scene in Kings Cross, fascinating from day 2 with all the water front and the immense inner harbor incorporating the city life. We couldn't get tired of catching ferries and going everywhere the Sydney Ferries would take us. Sometimes with a purpose, most of the times, just for the fun of it. It was just so astonishing!
Sunday trip: Royal national park
And so we went, always bombarding ourselves with this inner question: Can we imagine myself living here?
And the answers were as various as they could possibly be: sometimes yes, other times the feeling of being FAR AWAY and upside down from the rest of the world would strike and .... well..all the comparisons would come and ...
At the end, I guess we left the country with a little bit more clue of how Australia looked and smelled like, but not much more of a clue if this would be a home for us!!
:-/
Wish you were here..
And time passed....
..... countries came and went as a picture book.....
..... ideas came and went as a brain storm....
- and - the world trip was over.
Away from the mind prisons, one is overwhelmed by the endless world of possibilities.
We realized we wanted to spend our life together.... got married.... but still didn't know where to life long term or what to do exactly!
- Christmas 2004, in the letter box we found a striking message: Australia had accepted us as immigrants! And we had to make our first entry into the country within 3 months-time. Demanding little letter!
March 30th , 2005 was the deadline, by then we should touch Australian land. March 15th we were flighting out from Germany! First idea: "let's spend 2 weeks, get our stamp and run back to Germany for some more job interviews".
That was what we thought...
