Sunday, July 19, 2009

Australian Passports.

Our family applied for Australian passports earlier this month. We were entitled to get them once we recieved our Australian Citizenship. We still have our Irish and Welsh passports too. Having dual citizenship means we can retain the right to travel under either.


We had to pay extra money to fast-track the kids passports because their UK passports had expired in Feb and we didn't want to take the chance on not getting them on time. We let our applications go through the normal process knowing we have our other passports to fall back on.

The kids passports arrived within 48 hours of applying for them. Ours arrived on Friday! So now we can travel as a family under the banner of one nationality which should cause less raised eyebrows at customs on our holiday later this month.

I came upon this quote about immigration and thought I would share it with you.



"The immigrant's heart marches to the beat of two quite different drums, one from the old homeland and the other from the new. The immigrant has to bridge these two worlds, living comfortably in the new and bringing the best of his or her ancient identity and heritage to bear on life in an adopted homeland."- Irish President McAleese

Are you living where you were born? Or have you moved to another country? How do you reconcile your heart with your past and your present?

2 comments - click here to leave your comment:

  1. What a wonderful post and quote! Living overseas for the first time in my life has been a great experience. Before this, the only other country I'd been to besides the USA was Mexico. I hadn't even ventured up to Canada...how pathetic is that?

    Anyway, I'm a traveler at heart, so I plan on making up for lost time. I have found so much to love about Okinawa and Japan. I find myself wanting to do new things all the time so that I uncover as much of this island as possible in the 3 years we are here. We actually want another overseas tour after this one...hopefully in Europe this time. I have 39 years of being "homebound" to make up for!

     
  2. Hi, I saw you on Corey's blog. I live near oxford UK, born in Northern Ireland, yet to go to where I was born, left there I think when I was two, which was 50 years ago!!!

    But I have lived all over, my father was Maltese and in the British Forces, and I married forces...