Having always liked to travel, I thought it seemed like it would be a lot of fun to live for a while in another country.  Even countries most similar the United States still have different foods, different sports, different politics, different slang, any lots of other differences.

In 2003 my dad and I had looked into doing a rock climbing trip at Devils Tower with some friends of our family.  We went to the rock gym in Ann Arbor a couple times a week to learn to climb.  I was already overdue to graduate from U of M and had finally decided to finish as quickly as possible.  I needed a couple of full semesters plus a half semester of work to finish.  I decided it made more sense to do the half semester during the summer so I would graduate another 4-5 months early.  But by the time I was certain of the start and end dates for the classes, the climbing trip was full and I wasn’t able to go.

Sydney Opera House

It was frustrating because I was looking forward to it and as it happened my break between semesters perfectly matched the dates of the trip.  It would have been a real adventure and that was the biggest appeal for me.  I decided I could still have a pretty good adventure and started looking for somewhere exotic to go.  As luck would have it, I had recently finished an 8-month internship at AMD which allowed me to save enough to cover my housing expenses for the rest of my undergrad degree with enough leftover for a nice vacation.  Two weeks backpacking in Australia seemed like the perfect trip.  I could name a dozen places that seem much more exotic now, but at the time Australia had perfectly captured my imagination.

So off I went and had a great time seeing cosmopolitan Sydney, hiking Darwin’s Walk in the Blue Mountains, spending 3 days SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef, living in stilted tents among cassowaries in the Daintree Rainforest, and getting my first taste of hostel life and backpacker travel.  I loved the relaxed friendly vibe of life in Australia, the moderate climate in the south and tropical climate in the north, that some of the nearest countries were interesting places like Indonesia and Fiji, and the ethnically diverse population.

The Three Sisters - Blue Mountains, New South Wales

At the end of my trip it took almost 45 hours for me to get from Crocodylus Village in the rainforest of Queensland back to Ann Arbor, so I had plenty of time to think.  I had just submitted grad school applications and though I hadn’t received any responses I knew I would get in somewhere and that would consume the next couple of years.  But I wondered if I could get a job down under once I graduated.  After doing lots of research I thought it would be pretty hard to find a job there from the US.  What’s the incentive to hire a new grad from halfway around the world?  How would I even do an interview?  So I set my sights on a general migration visa — essentially the Australian equivalent of a green card.

View from a ProDive liveaboard - Great Barrier Reef, Queensland

Australia has a major shortage of skilled workers and has one of the easier migration programs in the developed world. Their skilled migrant visas are available for a huge range of occupations from bakers to plumbers to engineers, although the qualifications are different for each of them.  In general trade-based occupations require several years of experience in the trade, whereas with professions that need specific degrees you’re eligible with only the degree or with the degree and a very brief period of experience.  Most computer and electronics degrees required either the degree only or the degree plus 1 year of experience.  Unfortunately for me my field was an outlier and I needed 4 years of experience.  So I had to wait until 2008 before I could be considered.  From there the process involved gathering lots of paperwork, paying lots of money, and lots and lots of waiting.

A Parrot at Crocodylus Village - Daintree Rainforest, Queensland

My application actually moved quickly, and in mid-2009 roughly a year after I began the process it was approved.  I could hardly believe it, after all that time I finally had it!  Talk about a long term goal, it took almost as long as college.  But despite the fact that I was good to go now, I still had a bit more I wanted to do…

Next time….Part 2: South America