This is Howard here from startupremarkable.com.

Are you thinking of coming to Australia for maybe some lifestyle design or just to get away from wherever you are at the moment? Well, myself and my girlfriend did it about six month ago and we’re leaving tomorrow. And it has been an awesome time. So I’m just going to run through some things I’ve learned that hopefully it can help you choose, make the right decision if you’re gonna come over here.

So, I suppose this guide is more for you, if you’re coming over here to either start a new business or if you’re already self-employed whether on the internet or whatever. It’s not really a guide if you want to come over here to work. I might just touching that very briefly as we got some experience from that as well.

So the good thing about being here in Australia, first of all, just some really obvious ones you may know already. First of all, everyone speaks English. That’s obviously a good thing that means you can meet friends very easily. You can work with people very very easily and the thing I like about that is you don’t really live in an x-pat community. You can easily go in to any place of the country and you can mix with everybody. So, obviously, you know that’s a great thing.

The next great thing is the weather, as you can see today, it’s [I don’t know], 30 odd degrees. Where we lived was a city in South Australia and it is the hottest city in the hottest state in the hottest continent in the world, which is obviously awesome. So I think you get as hot as 42 degrees or that also equates to [I think] 107 degrees. So, if you want to live by the beach and have a nice, hot lifestyle, it’s an awesome place to come to. Sometimes it gets nearly too hot. So, that’s a warning so you’ve got it all here.

And also, the economy is rocking, I don’t maybe where you’re watching this from but a lot of parts of Europe and a lot of parts from US, you know they have some though times it’ll be hard to get business depending on whatever kind of business model you use for your business. Over here, times are good and you can really tell everyone is out drinking coffee, eating in restaurants and for my perspective, I came in and started up a kind of a digital marketing consultancy and there’s a lot of business to be have over here. I must say, if I stayed here longer, I’d be really really confident I’d be out to grow that really fast. [Cause, I would say not] It’s probably a country that is under developed from a digital marketing point view, not that many businesses have websites etc., but they all have a lot of money to burn at the moment. So, from that perspective, awesome, if that’s your type of business model I’d say you know this great opportunity over here.

And, then just lastly, really, the other great thing just for experience point of view [experiences I should say] everything you want is here, you know. My girlfriend and I were living in the beach down in safe Australia. Absolutely awesome, you can learn to surf there. You just hop on a plane and for a few dollars you can fly up to the Great Barrier Reef and go scuba diving, one of the best places in the world. You can hop on the current and dive on the outback. Really, it’s from an experience point of view, everything you need here. So [you know] from that perspective it’s absolutely awesome.

Now, just a few things I would say, highlight, for you to really consider from a, I would never really say negative point of view, just so you’re aware of them. The big thing that really shocked us when we got here was how expensive everything is. We didn’t really cater for that, we kinda thought [we did a bit of research, of course we did] but we didn’t really factor in how expensive it was gonna be. And the major reason being that the Australian dollar is an all time high at the moment. This is currently early 2011 and since we got here, it’s been like that. So, if you’re earning money in dollars, whether it would be US dollar or pounds in England or wherever. And you’re bringing money over here, you’re gonna find you don’t get a big bank here at the moment. And just to give you an example of some prices, we are paying here in Sydney, we are paying $300 a week for a pretty basic apartment. It does get better depending on where you live. We moved down to South Australia, a place called Adelaide, and I found a lovely place on the beach, it was a hundred and $50 a week. So, that can give you a perspective.

So I would just say that the different cities there’s are a big difference in the prices in it. Sydney being the more expensive, of course Melbourne expensive, Adelaide is pretty cheap, we lived there for 5 months and we absolutely loved it. If you have any questions on Adelaide feel free to hit me up and I’ll answer them as well as I can.

And I suppose the only other thing I’d say, negative to some positive to others, is that the culture is not a lot different from UK or America. It’s really kind of, we find it kinda merge the two cultures actually, and that can be a good thing for some or it can be a bad thing depending if you like your old familiar Starbucks and other mug cons, you can get them all here. If you’re looking for something radically different like you find in Asia or [you know] if you go in Thailand or whatever, you’re not gonna find it here. Just so you’re aware of that.

So all in all, as summer, if you’re thinking of coming over here, awesome, I’ve had such an amazing time. I just quit my job 6 months ago and now I’m going back to live in England. And really set up where [I think I’m gonna, you know] I’ll be able to really have a business that will be able to sustain myself which is really the main goal for me.

The main thing I’d say if you are coming over here is depending on what your business model is. If you’re gonna come over here consulting and working with other Australian businesses, there’s a lot of money to be made. If on the other hand you have to really have a minimal lifestyle because you have some kind of business model like, I don’t know, niche sites on the web and the internet, and you’re earning a certain amount – You may find it tough unless you got a good income because those things are expensive. That’s just the fact.

But if you do come out, please tell me where you come out and we’re you’re living and I’d love to hear. I do know a few people here now from the Entrepreneurship and Start-up Community those are absolutely awesome. They’re as good as everybody in the world. So I’ll happily put you in touch with them.

Ok, so, Good Luck.