A British expat who traded Sydney for his picturesque seaside hometown has revealed that, after returning, he quickly realised home no longer felt the same.
Fraser, 25, moved back to St Ives, Cornwall, after spending two years in Australia, hoping to be nearer to his family. Living on the other side of the world had become increasingly difficult as he watched his parents and younger brother grow older from afar.
He had missed birthdays and Christmas celebrations, craved authentic fish and chips and English beer, and missed having the freedom to simply ‘pop home’ and spend time with the people he loved.
But the homecoming Fraser had pictured did not quite happen. Rather than settling back into Cornwall, he found himself yearning for the opportunities and lifestyle he had embraced in Sydney — and wondering how he had once been satisfied with his old life.
‘I realised the UK wasn’t my home anymore after the first week,’ he told the Daily Mail.
His experience reflects a dilemma facing many young Britons and Australians who spend years ‘ping-ponging’ between the two countries. They move abroad in pursuit of stronger careers, warmer weather and a better lifestyle, only for homesickness, family commitments or visa issues to eventually draw them back.
For Fraser, however, returning to Cornwall felt like attempting to fit back into a life he had already outgrown.
‘When you travel, explore, give yourself to the world, it shows you so much. It’s life’s greatest lesson – experience,’ he said.
A British expat who left Sydney to return to his idyllic seaside hometown says he knew within a week that the UK no longer felt like home
‘I’ve changed dramatically over the years and especially in Australia, so coming home you feel almost like a big fish trying to squeeze back into this tiny fishbowl and you’re thinking, “How on earth did I even fit in there to begin with?”.’
‘I wanted more’
Fraser’s decision to leave St Ives in the first place had been years in the making.
Growing up watching travel YouTubers and films including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, he became convinced there was more to life than his Cornish childhood offered.
‘I knew there was more to the world and I wanted to see it, to experience it,’ he said.
St Ives attracts scores of visitors to its beaches and picturesque streets each year, but Fraser said growing up in a heavily seasonal tourist town was very different to visiting one on holiday.
‘In the winter there’s no jobs as the businesses close to save money because no one’s coming down on holiday during that time. I felt stuck and limited,’ he said.
He also watched people around him fall into what locals called the ‘St Ives Cycle’.
Fraser, 25, moved back to St Ives in Cornwall to be closer to his family after years away, having grown increasingly distressed by watching his parents and younger brother grow older
Fraser found himself desperately missing the opportunities and lifestyle he had grown accustomed to in Sydney – and questioning how he’d ever been content with his former life
‘You essentially work all week, feel burnt out, so you get drunk on the weekend and spend most of your wages and then repeat the cycle,’ he said.
Sydney was the contrast he had sought, while the city’s outdoor lifestyle changed how he wanted to spend his days. By the time he returned to Britain, those wants became impossible to ignore.
‘Your friends back home feel a bit more distant than before – or at least for me – as we’ve changed so much in the time apart,’ he said.
‘Growing up in such a tiny seaside town at the edge of the UK, as beautiful as it is, the opportunities, the people, the exposure to different cultures, places you can travel… it’s so ridiculously limited and I wish I could enjoy it more.’
The 6am moment that made him miss Australia
It was Fraser’s morning routine that provided one of the first signs he might struggle to settle back into British life.
‘I realised the UK wasn’t my home anymore after the first week. I’d get up at 6am and go for a run and no one would be around,’ he said.
‘I’d then try desperately to find any coffee shop that was open and nothing. All open at 8 or 9am and the coffee being average or below adds to that too.’
It was Fraser’s morning routine that provided one of the first signs he might struggle to settle back into British life
He had become particularly attached to the Australian enthusiasm for squeezing as much as possible into the hours before work.
‘The Aussies have a great mindset in which it’s winning the morning,’ Fraser said.
‘When you get up, run, coffee with your friends, sea swim, have a “5-to-9” before your “9-to-5”, there’s something about it that makes your day feel yours.
‘You’ve achieved greatness before 9am, in which the majority of the UK are rolling out of bed.’
Fraser believes Australians have ‘nailed’ the art of making the most of everyday life.
‘Health and wellbeing is so natural to them and that’s why they’re all so happy grinding out work, success, health. To me it’s just such a better understanding of what seizing the day is,’ he said.
He found the British attitude he returned to markedly different.
‘A lot of Brits are comfortable and just say, “That’s that then,” when it doesn’t have to be,’ he said.
Fraser believes Australians have ‘nailed’ the art of making the most of everyday life
It’s a comparison that will inevitably divide people on both sides of the world – particularly Australians who dream of escaping to Europe and Britons who would happily trade grey mornings for a Sydney sea swim.
Yet that push and pull is exactly what keeps many young expats moving between the two countries.
Australia offers sunshine, higher wages in some industries and an outdoor lifestyle that can be difficult to give up. Britain offers proximity to family and friends, familiar traditions and easy access to Europe.
The problem is that after experiencing both, neither necessarily provides everything.
He came home because he was terrified of losing time with his family
‘Why I came home’
Despite everything Fraser loved about Australia, there was one thing Sydney could never give him: proximity to his family.
‘My main reason for coming home was my family,’ he said.
‘I would see pictures of them over the years I was away and I could see them ageing and it terrified me.’
Watching his younger brother grow up through photographs was particularly difficult.
‘My brother going from 16 to 18 and seeing a man rather than my little brother, missing birthdays, Christmases – I felt detached from my family as I couldn’t just “pop home” to see them for a weekend,’ he said.
There were other things he genuinely missed about Britain too.
‘I missed the warm friendliness of the people I know here,’ he said.
‘Being alone in a city is extremely isolating but also quite nice. Here at home I know everyone, so it’s impossible for me to not bump into someone I know.
‘Fish and chips, full English, English beers, going in the sea and not worrying about sharks or blue-ringed octopuses.’
But even the safety and familiarity he once craved have become part of the problem.
‘It’s safe here but almost too safe. There’s no real world, it’s an isolated little pocket of the world.’
Perhaps the most difficult part of returning has been explaining his disappointment to people who cannot understand how anyone could be unhappy living in St Ives
‘People tell me I need to be more optimistic’
Perhaps the most difficult part of returning has been explaining his disappointment to people who cannot understand how anyone could be unhappy living in St Ives.
‘When you come home and you look at your old life you kind of go a bit like, “Oh… is this it?”,’ Fraser said.
‘I say to people, “Man, I miss Sydney”, or that I’m not enjoying being back home and they tell me, “You need to be more optimistic, this place is beautiful”.’
Fraser accepts they have a point. He knows he grew up somewhere millions of tourists would consider an enviable place to call home.
But he doesn’t believe recognising St Ives’ beauty obliges him to want to spend his life there.
‘It would be the equivalent of having a super comfortable king-size bed and then going to a stale mattress single bed,’ he said.
‘Sure, you can appreciate it and be optimistic or whatever, but sometimes you don’t have to be. And I don’t want to be.
‘I’ve spent 22 years of my life here. I’ve completed it over and over and over again and so I’m sick of it. And that’s okay.’
The response from people around him has occasionally made Fraser question whether he is supposed to feel guilty for wanting more.
‘People here will tell you that you’re the problem when I don’t believe I am,’ he said.
‘If you’ve experienced greatness – going back to mediocrity is hard and I don’t care what anyone says.’
His experience captures the difficult reality behind the expat fantasy of eventually ‘coming home’.
Moving abroad can create homesickness for the people and rituals left behind. Returning can then produce a different kind of homesickness altogether – this time for the person, routine and life built overseas.
And for the Australians and Brits who find themselves repeatedly crossing the world in search of the place that feels right, home can eventually become less straightforward than the country written on their passport.