OP I’m not Australian but having been here from the UK for the last 13 years I couldn’t agree with you more . People do seem absolutely obsessed with property here to the point that if you are still renting at an older age like we are ( 50’s and 60 ) you are definitely seen as having failed in life. If you don’t have that poorly built , extremely expensive house with a back yard in the suburbs by the time you are 30 then there’s no hope for you and you somehow deserve every bad thing that life throws at you from then onwards 😏. It’s definitely got worse even in the time I’ve been here . My 30 year old son got made redundant recently and there has definitely been the idea from certain people that he should use the money to save towards a deposit on a house . He’s happily living in a share house and has booked a trip to Borneo , Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and good on him I reckon . He has no responsibilities and I feel that there has to be more to life than just working for the " Australian dream" of life in the suburbs. I personally am a bit over living in Australia at the moment and would rather go back and live in the UK or other part of Europe if I could but it’s not possible at the moment.

My Son is English , his partner Dutch and they live in Norway . My 18 month old granddaughter has just started to say a few words in a mixture of 3 languages . My other English son’s partner is Czech and my 2 year old grandson is speaking a mixture of Czech and English . I think with children it just comes naturally and the younger they are the easier it is .

Definitely agree with you on this one . Came to Australia from the UK 13 years ago . Every place we have rented ( can’t afford to buy at the insane prices ) has been freezing cold in winter and like a sauna in summer. The first place didn’t have any form of heating at all and I remember desperately trying to keep the large open- plan living area warm with a couple of freestanding electric heaters . It was freezing and the ceiling to floor single paned windows all around the house let out any heat we managed to conserve and let in so much heat in the summer the place got like an oven. The houses since haven’t been much better although at least we do have A/C in the living area of our current place . It still gets like an oven / freezing in the ready of the house though… Australia is so far behind the times when it comes to insulation and double glazing yet the house prices are crazy expensive for poor quality. I’ve never been as cold / hot indoors as I have since moving here . Went to visit my son who lives in Norway in November one year and I could walk around his house in a t-shirt it was that well insulated and triple glazed .