Rachel Kenny, Ballygarrett
For Rachel Kenny it was a series of unfortunate events which led to her seeking pastures new.
In 2016 she had been working in a hotel in Clondalkin, commuting up and down from her home near Gorey. Like so many she had been unable to afford to rent in the capital, excessive costs making relocation impossible.
And so she joined the thousands of others on the M11, doing late night shifts, early morning shifts, weekends, until finally, tired of it all, she opted for something closer to home.
A new job beckoned, one in a restaurant in Gorey town, no more commuting, no more long hours at the wheel. However, just two months later the restaurant closed.
Undeterred, Rachel found another job, in Centra on Gorey’s Main Street. Yet two weeks later she, and all the rest of the staff, were out of a job after it too, closed its doors for the last time.
This led to her making the decision which would ultimately change her life forever.
‘After discussing all this with my friend we decided that Australia would be a great experience and hopefully things would have gotten better in Ireland when we came back,’ she recalls.
In February of 2017 Rachel, then aged 26, and her friend said their goodbyes and headed to Melbourne, their only plan to get there in one piece and see what happened.
‘We didn’t plan much past arriving in Australia. I decided to move to the hostels while my friend stayed with her brother and it finally felt like the backpacker adventures were beginning.
‘Everyone was so friendly and everyone just wanted to have a good time with no serious responsibilities. It was very freeing,’ Rachel says.
However, they still needed to find work, and an encounter with two fellow Irish women led to them undertaking a mammoth road trip from one end of the country to the other.
Rachel and her friend were advised to travel to Darwin where work in traffic control was readily available for the right people and where, vitally, they could fulfil the criteria for their second year visas.
And so, after driving 3,750km, they immediately sat an exam to get their traffic management cards. Qualifications in tow, they drove to every company in the area, eventually finding work courtesy of a man from Cork, joining his mostly Irish staff. Mission complete.
At this point the plan was to return home to Ireland after two years, but then love intervened. Rachel had met Gary during her time in Australia and, with just six months left on her Visa, she decided to stay.
She is now in the process of getting sponsored by her employer to stay as a permanent resident, but even if that falls through she doesn’t see herself returning home.
‘I don’t see myself moving back to Ireland. Me and Gary have already spoken about what happens if it got rejected and we said that if that did happen, that we would try set up a life in Canada.’
When asked if she misses home, Rachel replies, ‘I do and I don’t. I miss my friends and my family of course but its so much more stressful back home. Jobs are scarce, finding somewhere to rent that doesn’t take every cent of your wages is a nightmare.’