Introduction
By Simon
In Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem, there is a famously quoted line: “Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.” Indeed, faced with an unknown country and an unknown life, we may have no reason to think ourselves strong enough — but equally, no reason to think ourselves incapable of coping.
This applicant of ours went from being blocked on skilled migration, to choosing to study in Australia, and finally securing an Australian migration visa. For you, for me, and for everyone still on the journey, it is an inspiration: perhaps weakness and ignorance are not the barriers to making a life in Australia — a lack of resolve is.
Arriving in Australia for the first time — everything felt like a dream
The rains
First impressionsAustraliawas, in my schoolbooks, a vast and sparsely populated lone continent in the southern hemisphere. The first time I actually set foot there was on my honeymoon. Stepping out of the airport, it was as if everything before me switched into high definition: the deep, mesmerising Great Barrier Reef, the shell-shaped Opera House, the surfers’ paradise of the Gold Coast, the rugged and magnificent Great Ocean Road. Perhaps it was because I had spent too long in the nine-to-five grind of corporate drudgery, perhaps it was because everything was so beautiful it felt unreal — but I felt I had spent the happiest few days of my life。。。
I couldn’t help thinking: what if I lived here…
Thinking I’d give it a try, I contacted a few agencies. Newstarsec’s Michael answered my string of questions professionally and efficiently, and, based on my own circumstances, drew up a plan for me along with the documents I would need to prepare。Once I met the English requirement I could lodge the application — the prospects looked very strong!
So from the very start I was full of confidence.
Back in China, my wife and I both held what people call “iron rice bowls” — secure, lifelong jobs — living a calm life you could see to the end of at a glance. But much of the time it felt so calm that I couldn’t breathe. I felt I was just a numb cog, taking orders on a fixed assembly line. If you start to feel that all those things at work that are “taken for granted” are no longer warranted, if you feel that all the “treading carefully” through life only buys you something trivial. then I think it is time in life to take a gamble, to give it a real shot — because if you don’t bet, you may have no chance at all of winning.
So I wanted to give myself one chance — one chance to break the suffocating calm!
If you want to reap a harvest, you need patience
Who would have known this road would take a full four years.
The first step was sitting the English test, aiming for four 6s. The listening, speaking, reading and writing I’d let go rusty over the years all had to be picked up again. The PTE practice papers I printed out made a thick stack. From then on, on top of work and the kids, my life had one more item: “study”.At the time there was no test centre in my city, so for every sitting I had to take a five-hour high-speed train to Beijing. After getting off I’d find accommodation near the test centre. My weak point, speaking, fell just a little short every time — 47, 48, 49, 49 (target 50) — until the last sitting, when I scored 53 and passed.Every time I walked out of the exam room at the Nikko New Century Hotel Beijing I’d think, “let’s never meet again” — yet I had to go six times before I finally cleared this English hurdle!
At the end of 2018 I signed with Newstarsec.With Tracy’s help I completed my skills assessment and Queensland registered-engineer certification with BPEQ. They advised me to lodge a Queensland Subclass 489, as I’d meet the minimum points requirement and it was the safer option.
Queensland is Australia’s famous Sunshine State, and Australians themselves love to settle or holiday there. Coming from a hometown of ice and snow, I was especially fond of the tropical climate, and my mind was already daydreaming about the Great Barrier Reef and Brisbane。
What I didn’t expect was that in July, with the new financial year, things changed: the mechanical engineering occupation, stable for several financial years, now carried an additional requirement of four 7s in English. Two paths lay before me: one was to keep sitting the English test, the other was to study in Australia for a year and go for Tasmania’s 489 (later the 491)。
So, at the end of 2019 I went to Tasmania to study a Diploma。The programme I studied was easygoing; as long as I completed the assignments to the teacher’s requirements, I could graduate smoothly.
Tasmania really can’t compete with Queensland on climate or bustle, and it’s relatively remote geographically too. But it was precisely this chance to study that let me see Australia from a different angle, and grow even fonder of it. Compared with my earlier tourist’s mindset, in Tasmania I was truly living.
Here the pace of life is slow. On the streets you’ll see people running and walking their dogs at all hours; small animals forage by the quiet roadsides; at night you can see the Milky Way clearly. Here strangers will greet you, oncoming drivers give way to one another, and even if it backs up the traffic behind, they’ll wait for you to park without a single blast of the horn. Here children can run around barefoot, seemingly without the burden of homework. Here you step out the door and you’re at the beach; here the streets are full of vintage cars from the eighties and nineties. Here a trip to the supermarket gets you proper steak and fresh, cheap milk.Here, happiness has little to do with money.
Not long after I arrived in Tasmania, the global pandemic was raging and the economy was in a slump. The Tasmanian government introduced a new requirement: applicants had to hold a job that benefited the state’s economic development — such as construction, engineering or healthcare.
With that aim, I tried a few construction-type jobs, and through a friend’s introduction became a plasterboard worker. Plastering in Australia is an industry almost monopolised by the Chinese community. Hard work and endurance have let them gain a firm foothold in this field. Every morning what woke me was the cramping of my fingers — but luckily the building sites for the houses were all in beautiful seaside hills, with green as far as the eye could see.Here a blue-collar job is highly sought after; the land is rich, labour is scarce, and blue-collar workers generally earn more than office-bound white-collar staff, ranking near the top for annual income.No occupation is high or low, noble or base — there’s only a different division of labour. Although some believe years of hard study are about earning more money, here study and income simply can’t be equated; you can’t even call them positively correlated — though that’s not to say study is useless. Australia’s average level of education is high, and so it’s the people who knuckle down and do honest work who are more in demand and earn more. Here, it may truly be that ten years bent over the books is worth less than a trade in hand。
Finally, in April 2021 I received my invitation, and at the end of the year I returned to China, having drifted abroad for a full two years. Because I left the country after being invited, my visa wasn’t granted until January 2023. Visa in hand, a new chapter could begin.
Living well matters more than anything
These three years of the pandemic have taught many of us that the few decades a person has in this world are absolutely not for working overtime every day, nor for paying off car and home loans, and certainly not for suffering.Living well matters more than anything — we come into this world to enjoy life and to experience it!
If you run fast, at twenty-two you have a home and everyone around is full of admiration; if you run slow, at thirty you’re still on the road chasing your dreams. Some spend a whole lifetime striving for a car and a house; others buy a motorbike and travel the length and breadth of the land.
Whatever kind of person you want to be, whatever life you want to live — as long as you don’t regret it, that’s enough.Not everyone can get up at seven in the morning. And don’t measure a person’s appetite by a single bowl of rice — some like to wolf it down, some like to chew slowly. Allow others to be themselves, and allow yourself to be yourself. Every age has its own flavour; just follow your own heart. Not every choice has to be the “correct” option — as long as you want to, you can also choose the option you like!
—— End of the story
Closing remarks
Once you’ve lived in Australiafor a while, you come to know that this place is no paradise either.，For instance, today the RBA has announced another rate rise, the mortgage pressure is greater, while inflation still can’t be brought down, and the various costs of living are all rising. Climbing. But, unlike the kind of environment many people want to flee, here you have a choice. You can choose to work overtime and earn money, or you can choose a life of leisure. When you feel tired at this stage of life, in the next stage you can choose a better balance between life and work. No one, and nothing absolute, forces you to do anything; passers-by will only say, “Oh, that’s just their choice””。
And to have a choice is itself a kind of happiness. If you are trapped in an environment with no way forward or back, take a look at the choices outside — it’s not too late to choose now, and this is a good time to do it!
Past articles revisited
Internal Home Affairs documents revealed → More 189 invitations still to be issued in the second half of the financial year
How the various visa categories were processed in February! Latest state-nomination quota usage figures
Bachelor’s graduates in business may also be looking at a 5-year 485? There’s a way!
Bachelor’s graduates in business may also be looking at a 5-year 485? There’s a way!
Bachelor’s graduates in business may also be looking at a 5-year 485? There’s a way!
Bachelor’s graduates in business may also be looking at a 5-year 485? There’s a way!
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