‘My children left, so I did too’: The little-known British migration trend

 It was October 2025 when the last of Brett Slater’s three adult children – his youngest son Marcus, 26 – followed his two older siblings and moved from London to Perth in Western Australia.

By that point, Bethany, 33, and Tom, 31, were both settled with their respective partners in the same coastal city, known for its beachside suburbs and 140 days of sunshine a year.

All three of them had been raised or born in Australia in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Slater, 63, and his ex-wife had relocated to Sydney from Halifax in Yorkshire with his job in IT consulting (Beth and Tom were aged six and four at the time).

The family moved back to the UK after six years, when Slater’s parents were getting old and needing care, but they’d always reminisced about those happy times living and working Down Under. The kids were keen to capitalise on their Australian citizenship one day and move back.

So when Marcus tipped the scales and followed his brother and sister to Perth, Slater – who was living in London and working in finance at the time – knew what he had to do.

“I put my flat on the market and resigned from my job, and that was it really. I packed up my life in the UK and booked a one-way flight to Perth.”

Moving to the other side of the world in your 60s might not be for everyone, but Slater is far from the only British parent choosing to take the plunge and fly 9,000 miles to settle near adult offspring.

The cliché might be that Australia is full of young British backpackers, but the reality is more layered.

While arrivals skew young, the settled British population is one of the oldest migrant groups in the country – with a median age close to 60 – reflecting decades of migration and, increasingly, parents following children.

Slater has been happily settled in Perth for a couple of months now. He has swapped his two-bed flat in Greenwich for a four-bed house with a pool in the coastal suburb of Yanchep, and taken up sailing and fishing.

He spends his weekends on the beach with his kids and his best friend from the UK, who happened to move to Perth with his wife around the same time.

Slater will start looking for a job over the next few months – possibly as a lorry driver or bus driver or a postman. “Something a bit different to what I was doing back in London as a bit of an adventure before I retire,” he says.

So why are so many parents like Slater choosing to follow their children, exactly?

A clue might lie in who those young British expats are becoming. In many cases, the wave of people in their 20s and 30s who left Britain for Australia in the early 2000s has now settled into family life. With children, mortgages and careers anchoring them in place, the distance from grandparents has become harder to ignore.

Louise Hambly-Smith, 70, is one such grandparent. She relocated from her home near Bristol to sunny Sydney seven years ago after her daughter and her Filipino-Australian husband announced they were expecting their second child.

Hambly-Smith had been considering retiring from her job as a single foster carer anyway, and the idea of helping to look after her own family and supporting her daughter in a sunny climate seemed idyllic.

She decided to give it a couple of years before making a permanent decision – the conditions of her temporary visa made that easier because she was required to return to the UK every few months.

She rented out her flat, which paid for her to rent a room in a shared house with some friends she had met through church in Sydney.

But she remembers one return trip in particular that swung her decision. “I arrived back to a rather bleak Britain, not only recoiling from the effects of Brexit, but Covid had hit, forcing everyone into lockdown,” she says.

“I soon realised that I had made a mistake. Although I had missed my friends and beautiful England, I knew I had a different role to play in Australia. I have now embraced the extreme weather, intimidating birds and insects, and committed.”

Of course, relocating to one of the world’s most in-demand destinations is not as simple as booking a one-way ticket and jumping on a plane.

Australia’s visa system has tightened significantly in recent years, and parent visas in particular are notoriously expensive and slow-moving.

Still, for those determined to make the move, there are ways – whether through family routes, long-stay visas or carefully stitched-together arrangements.

Having previously held permanent residency, Slater was able to return on a Resident Return visa, which costs roughly £250 and is designed for former residents looking to re-establish their lives in the country.

Hambly-Smith took a more gradual approach, arriving first on a £3,000 temporary visa before later applying for a Contributory Parent visa – sometimes called a parent or grandparent visa – offering a permanent, if costly foothold, with fees running into tens of thousands of pounds.

She is currently on a bridging visa while she waits for her grandparent visa to be processed, which can take several years.

Others apply for far cheaper alternatives, albeit with waiting times so long they can stretch into decades.

Bridging home and away

Increasingly, families are turning to temporary solutions instead, such as carefully managed stints on visitor visas, effectively living between two countries. In most cases, eligibility hinges on having the majority of one’s children already settled in Australia.

Ruth and Martin Evans, a retired orthodontist and green energy consultant, are one such couple choosing to follow the seasons as much as their children.

Their two daughters, Nonny, 33, and Jessy, 30, both relocated to Australia from the UK several years ago, so as retirement approached, the question became not whether to join them, but how to structure life across two countries.

For the past two years they have spent six months of the year in Petersfield, Hampshire, where they raised their daughters (they are now in the process of selling their 40-acre home and plan to rent locally instead).

For the other six months they rent a furnished house on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, a popular area among British retirees, and crucially, within an hour of the suburbs where both their daughters have settled.

Each time, they apply for a six-month visitor visa, which costs under £100 per application and is a common arrangement for grandparents splitting their time between Britain and Australia.

Not only does the move mean she and Martin, 69, see their children often, but it means they can keep up their active lifestyle. Martin can play padel and kitesurf, she can cycle, play golf and ocean swim.

“It feels a bit like having your cake and eating it,” says Ruth, 68. “The end of October comes, the weather turns miserable, the hour goes back, and we just get on a plane and it’s spring again.

“That hybrid lifestyle really suits us. We love meeting new people, but at the same time we love all our friends and family back at home.”