The Irish are quite well received in Australia, which is somewhat surprising considering the number of Irish gobshites who get themselves into trouble. Just in the last few weeks there has been the drunken Irishman in Sydney who left a pub, wandered into a random office building, fell down a fire exit and got stuck for five days. There’s the drunken Irishman in Melbourne who caused half a million dollars’ worth of damage to a hotel by turning on an 8th floor fire hydrant in the middle of the night. And there’s the drunken Irishman in Adelaide who, dressed only in his underwear and a single sock, punched a police horse in the face. Under such circumstances, it’s remarkable they let any of us in at all.

Yet they do, and four years after first arriving, here we still are. This week represents a bit of a milestone as we were finally granted permanent residency in Australia. No more visas required. It feels like a good time to reflect on the last four years.

Since we first left Dublin on 09 September 2010 to go to my friend Manu’s wedding in India and on to our adventure to Australia we’ve done a lot of the standard backpacker things. We’ve worked in the fruit picking fields of South Australia for five months, living in a hostel with backpackers from all over the world. We’ve bought a 22 year old car from a fellow traveller which broke down the day after he left the country. We replaced the engine in said car ourselves, had it fail to start in the remotest towns of Western Australia, and locked our keys into it half way across the Nullarbor desert. We’ve done two months of road tripping and camping, broken ¼ of our elbows, fed wild kangaroos (bad idea by the way, do not do this), spotted koalas, snakes, thumb-biting lizards and deadly spiders.

But that was years ago. Since then we’ve settled down, fallen in love with Sydney, found decent jobs and gathered around us a great bunch of friends. We also found time to go home to Dublin four times, India (again), Cambodia, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Hawaii and oh yeah, get married.

This makes it all sound very grand and exciting, but we’ve had our down times too. The boredom of the first two months in Berri with no money, no work and nowhere to go was horrible. The dread at the end of the road trip in Melbourne when we had no income, rent to pay and not $400 to our name was scary. The constant sad goodbyes to good friends we met along the way who have returned home are tiring, and the pangs of longing for the company of friends and family at home are regular. Still, we have Skype but we don’t use it enough, and the 11 hour time difference is killer.

But after all, we were this week granted our fourth and finally permanent Australian visa. This entitles us to the same benefits as citizenship, minus the passport and the right to vote. But now we can finally say we’re official Sydneysiders.

For all those at home – it’s the perfect time to come visit! For all those here – we want to say thank you for all the help you’ve given us along the way. Now that the blog has a fresh new home, we’re going to try and keep it more regularly updated with whimsy and observations about the Australian way. (Follow us! The link is at the bottom right of your screen.) When you come here first, if feels a bit like the UK, a bit like Ireland, a bit like America, but this is superficial. Now we know it so well, it doesn’t feel like any of those places at all – it feels like Australia. We’re people of two cities. I think we like it that way.