“He was always saying, ‘move over, there’s so much money to make here, you guys will thrive’, and I was always like ‘nah I’m not moving there it’s too hot’.”
Other friends who had made the move also told her it was a great place to raise a family.
“It got to a point where I’d just had enough, I was just like, ‘I’m sick of this we need something more’. Also, the financial freedom was the big picture.”
So the couple upped sticks, and 32-year-old Blair gave up his law enforcement job to pursue a career in mining.
“The kids, they love it. They’re doing really well in school.
“That was also a big thing for us to make the move now, it’s kind of a now or never for us because our kids were nearly at the age to go to school, and we didn’t want them to start school in New Zealand and have to move them.”
Blair is also making double what he was earning in Aotearoa.
“He knows that he could have been a policeman here, but they were about the same wages, we looked into it, so I just thought we didn’t move all this way to be on the same as back home.”
Blair said being a police officer was stressful and he had to deal with everyone on their “bad days”.
“Whereas Fifo, you can go get stuck in for a couple of weeks. When you’re there, there’s no distractions at work.”
He agreed that the pay, long hours and difficult work police officers endured in New Zealand could be driving some staff to Australia.
“I’d never go back to policing ... the stress of it, the stress on my family.”
Bailey Hill enjoying a morning snack. Photo / Carson Bluck
Life in Australia
To start off, Sequoia found the time Blair spent away difficult.
“I found myself just pretty upset a lot, pretty emotional a lot. But I got used to it and now I’m just like, ‘when is it time for you to [go]?’,” she joked.
When they first made the move, he was working two weeks on and one week off, but after their third baby came along he switched to “one and one”.
“We moved into the house on Thursday and I flew into work on Friday. So it was a bit rushed, as we adjusted there were a few tears and stuff.”
Blair told the Herald it was tough at the start, but leaving the police and becoming a Fifo mine worker has worked for their family.
“With the Fifo job I had no idea what I [was] going into ... that could have gone tits up.”
Sequioa said a lot of their family back home believe it’s crazy Blair works Fifo.
“They think, ‘why wouldn’t you want to go home to your family every night?’,” she told the Herald.
What they don’t see, Sequoia said, is if he worked a regular nine-to-five, he would leave just before the kids woke and arrive home right before their bedtime.
“That’s cool and that’s a lot of people’s reality, but with him being Fifo, he’s away for a week and we don’t see him for a whole week, we just communicate via FaceTime and then when he’s home, he’s present and he’s home for the whole week so he’s able to drop the kids off to school, he’s able to go to their sports.
“When we were leaving everyone was just so upset about it, but they see the bigger picture now, and they see the life we’ve created and they’re pretty happy about it,” Sequoia said.
New Zealand couple Sequoia and Blair with their children James, Brieana-May and Bailey in their Perth home. Photo / Carson Bluck
She had expected the cost of living in Australia to be significantly cheaper than it turned out to be.
“For example, regos here, I hate it when it’s time for our rego because it’s $1000 to rego our truck for a year.”
In comparison, according to NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA), a one-year registration for a private passenger vehicle is between $107 and $174 in Aotearoa.
Back home, she said their weekly grocery shop was about $300 for a family of four. Now their family of five spends about $500 or $600 a week.
“It’s bad, with the cost of living, but it just comes down to we get paid more so we’re able to afford that kind of grocery [bill].”
Although much of Sequoia’s family already live in Australia, the couple said in a dream world, Blair’s whānau would also make the shift.
“They’re all of our support system, so unfortunately for us to make the move to better our lives we had to leave our supports,” Sequoia said.
Even so, she believes they have been able to accomplish more in their two years living in Perth than they had in all their years back home.
Their only regret is not making the move earlier.
This story was made possible through University of Canterbury’s Robert Bell Travelling Scholarship in Journalism.
Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers social issues including sexual assault, workplace misconduct, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.
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