When tragedy struck in the “old country” and my beloved wife was taken from me it left a gaping hole in my life. Thirty-something I decided to emigrate to Australia not exactly wanting to deny the past but desperate to start afresh.
I settled in Sydney and after the required amount of time and commitment to my new country – a place I have fallen in love with unreservedly – I was able to gain permanent resident status and while there was the occasional jibe about being a modern Ten Pound Pom I’d learned to take the mischievous antipodean humour with a pinch of salt and proudly call myself an Aussie albeit still with a South London accept.
I dated but never found that special one to make my new life complete. I’d joined one of the better dating sites that aim to verify its members and rather surprisingly – to me at least – found myself chatting to a Thai lady who found herself in the same boat having lost her partner too some years back.
Well, one thing led to another and I decided to travel to Thailand to meet the lady in question. Sudarat – or Tik as she is better known (most Thais have far shorter nicknames) was from the northeast of the country but had lived and worked as a nurse in one of the Thai capital Bangkok’s swanky hospitals.
We got on really well and her English proved to be no barrier to our communication – she was a lady willing to learn. Interestingly she was not someone who initially wanted a foreign husband so that she could live abroad. Thais are very family oriented and she wanted to be close to her ailing father who unfortunately died shortly thereafter just weeks after Tik and I tied the knot in a district of Bangkok called Bang Rak (the ‘Borough of Love!’)
Subsequently, she visited Australia on our honeymoon with me on a tourist visa and quickly decided that we should make our lives in Australia. This was around the time that I researched partner visa in Australia and found a great firm that could help us through all the red tape.
They explained that like us it’s not always possible to be in the same country at the same time despite being married. This is where partner visas come in. They enable Aussie citizens or permanent residents to sponsor partners abroad that enables them to become residents too.
Detailed paperwork was required and we had to apply for another tourist visa and a permanent visa at the same time and satisfy all sorts of criteria – a company to help was vital as getting a spouse visa is complicated and stressful.
But in the end, we were successful and now have a newly designed home in the western suburbs and will soon welcome our first child.
Consult the experts and let them help you jump through the hoops and hurdles satisfying all regulations.
It’s made our Aussie honeymoon permanent!
