EVEN IN the good old days, the promise of Down Under was a powerful lure for Irish people, especially when it became a rite of passage for the Celtic Tiger cubs on their gap year.
Now the attractions of Australia and New Zealand are a more potent draw than ever. About 10,000 people paid €10 each over the weekend to attend the Down Under Expo at the RDS, doubling the numbers that attended last year.
The presence of so many families pushing buggies and men, in particular, in their late 20s and 30s was a sign of the times.
Event organiser Stephen McLarnon said: “When we first started this show, people were looking at lifestyle reasons, sitting in traffic, the price of housing and so on. Four years on it is about the economic climate.
“There is a reality check where the market is in Ireland and there are opportunities abroad. It is not just about working holidays any more.”
“Rain, rain, rising prices, rising crime, traffic jams, more and more rain,” read the not-too-subtle advertisement by the state of South Australia which it contrasted with its own “fine weather, fine wine, fine beaches, fine jobs, fine universities”
Australian visa specialist Liz O’Hagan described the turnout and the calibre of interested parties this year as “overwhelming”.
“There is a situation where people have lost jobs, the construction industry is in trouble. The opposite is happening in Australia,” she said.
Trevor Kestell and his friend Shane Kearns, both electricians from Dún Laoghaire, are targeting the boom West Australian city of Perth where wages in the construction sector for skilled tradesmen are AU$450 a day (€260) and the cost of living is 20 per cent cheaper than here.
“A year ago I wouldn’t have thought about it,” Trevor said, “but the way things are going means it is only going to get worse.”
Paul and Nicola Daly from Belfast, who have a 13-month-old daughter, are looking to return to Australia after several years back in Ireland. “You can earn more money than here,” said Paul, a mechanical engineer.
“It is not just the sunshine, it is the predictability of the weather in Australia. When you have summer you have it for months.”
