Have board, will travel: Englishwoman Amy Nosike is in heaven

Englishwoman Amy Nosike is living the ultimate Australian lifestyle — all that’s missing is the passport.

‘I didn’t want to go to Canada — it was too cold’: Englishwoman Amy Nosike at Newcastle’s Merewether Beach has embraced the Aussie lifestyle. Picture: Adam Yip

Amy Nosike is already living the ultimate Australian lifestyle: she lives by the beach, spends countless hours outdoors with her kids and volunteers as a surf lifesaver in her spare time.

The only thing missing is an Australian passport — and she is looking forward to rectifying that in January. The Briton came here more than six years ago, joining a legion of others from her country of birth who’ve made the same trans-­continental migration.

The English represent slightly more than 992,000 of Australia’s 25 million people, almost 14 per cent of all 7.3 million migrants in Australia in 2018, something Ms Nosike said made her feel at home in Lake Macquarie, 150km north of Sydney.

Yet she said some elements set Australia apart from the Anglo­sphere crowd. “Some things are different, Australia is a lot more outdoorsy,” she said.

“I’ve always loved the beach, I’ve always been a complete beach addict since I was a little girl … (in Britain) the nearest big beaches were an hour or so away, whereas here I can put my board on the car and be there in 20 minutes.”

Ms Nosike said when she lived in the US, she was struck by the culture clash.

“I did six months in Florida in my mid-20s … the American culture is so different to England and I did get a lot more homesick,” she said.

“My friend said to me, ‘You’re forgetting it’s a foreign country just because they speak the same language’ — Australia felt more familiar to me.”

The 35-year-old has been a member of her local surf life saving­ club since 2017, something she says helped her integrate into the community.

“I initially joined an organisation called Surfing Mums, where you go with your children and you take turns watching your children and then you go surf,” she said.

“It’s a lot more dangerous over here, I wanted to learn about that, learn about the ocean, reading the conditions, what to do. I wanted to be part of the club, make new friends.”

Ms Nosike, who grew up in Hampshire, in England’s south, has worked off and on since arriving but now spends all her time caring for her three boys under five.

She said her family wanted to stay in Australia and applied for citizenship almost as soon as they could.

“We want to stay here, we do love it here,” she said.

Ms Nosike’s husband works in health in Newcastle and it was his visa that allowed the family to move here in 2014.

“We wanted a better work-life balance and it was either Aust­ralia or Canada,” Ms Nosike said. “I didn’t want to go to Canada — it was too cold.”