Go to the supermarket in Perth and it's easy to spot the Kiwis - they fly big silver fern flags on their cars, Amanda Lawry says.
She and partner Jarrod Hannan, 40, and their daughters, Michaela Finlayson, 13, and Sinead Hannan, 14, shifted from Ruakaka to Western Australia in July and are glad.
They are not the only ones - Northlanders are shifting in increasing numbers, with annual departures reaching 2069 last month, the biggest exodus across the Ditch in the past five years.
Ms Lawry estimated 30 per cent of students at the girls' school in Perth are Kiwis, most of them with "fly-in, fly-out" fathers like Mr Hannan.
He flies to Port Hedland - 1635km north of Perth by road - to spend four weeks driving trucks and other machinery at the iron ore exporting port, then flies back to Perth for a week.
His earnings were "much better than back home", enabling them to rent a Perth home and chip away at the mortgage on their Ruakaka house, which they rent out.
"We have just done so much better here. I can't see us moving home."
Statistics NZ records show 53,000 New Zealanders (2069 of them Northlanders) moved to Australia to live in the year to February 29.
These departures were offset by 13,891 people moving across the Tasman from Australia to live (476 of them in Northland).
Most of the migrating Northlanders are like Jayne McKenzie and her partner, Clint Williams, 31, who left Whangarei in 2008 with their 4-year-old daughter Kaneisha in search of more money and a better life.
They lived in Port Hedland for 18 months, with Mr Williams working as a plant operator and earning three times his Whangarei wage.
"Unfortunately, my daughter found it hard being away from her grandparents, so I decided to bring her home," Ms McKenzie said. "We didn't want to come back to the low wages here, so my partner got a fly-in, fly-out job in Western Australia. He works four weeks on site and then flies home to Whangarei for one week."
Others who answered a Northern Advocate Facebook appeal for Northlanders who had jumped the Ditch included Lana Brown and Kathaleen Griffiths, both happy to have moved with their families, although Ms Brown - who shifted from Hikurangi in Shepperton, 178km north of Melbourne - had experienced "grief" during major flooding.
However, Naomi Mitchell-Moir spent several years in Australia and was glad to get home to Whangarei.
"Trust me, the grass is not greener," she said, describing "insane pricing" in mining towns, where there was "hard, hot work in isolation".
Warnings like that have not deterred Amy Paganini and her electrician partner, Gavin Prichard. They plan to leave Whangarei soon with their two daughters to join her sister in Port Hedland.
"We are hoping to be there for about two years to make some money and, hopefully, pay off most of the mortgage on our Raumanga home," Ms Paganini said.
"We've always talked about it, but now it's actually happening."