What started as a three month long service leave adventure turned into five years, then another five years and now former local nurse Sally Lostroh calls the UK home.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Sal headed off on November 3, 2006, with just a suitcase and a guitar ... and the rest is history, as they say.
Thanks to her Scottish heritage, Sal qualified for a five year Ancestry visa.
She was then granted indefinite leave to remain, and after 16 years the next phase was to get her dual citizenship.
Before then, Sal called Blighty (and Deniliquin) home after the family moved here from Queensland in 1983 to escape drought.
“I worked on the farm for two years before starting my nursing training at Deni hospital.
“I was in one of the last few groups to be trained at the Deniliquin School of Nursing,” she said.
Before leaving Deni Sal worked as a special grade nurse at the Deniliquin Hospital in emergency, operating theatre and sterilising departments.
“I had started my Enrolled Nurse training in 1985 and went on to complete further qualifications and loved working in emergency and theatre,” she said.
“The staff I worked with were like family and it was a rewarding vocation.
“I still talk about the amazing team I worked with, and the difference between a UK GP and the rural GPs in Deni.
“It was the best 21 years of my life and I think every nurse could write a book.”
Since leaving the Deni district, Sal has tried her had at a number of different jobs within the medical sphere.
She worked as an operating theatre nurse predominantly, and also at a large teaching hospital.
She currently works in a secondary school in Leeds, in West Yorkshire, which has more than 1700 students.
Her role is in the Special Education Needs Department (SEND) as the admin and intervention assistant.
Sal’s husband Nick is the head of sociology and politics at the school.
“It’s a daily challenge and, to be honest, probably harder than nursing,” she said.
“I now work at the same school as my husband, so the 30 mile return trip commute is a lot easier to manage.
“It is an office based role overseeing intervention for students.
“My school is multicultural. Everyday is different and a learning experience, everyone and every culture is celebrated.
“I am frequently asked about snakes and spiders, why I left Australia when we have ‘beaches like that’ or have I seen a kangaroo ?
“I use this to my advantage convincing students to work. I tell them if they finish the task I will answer a question about Australia.
“When I first arrived my qualifications were not recognised they only accepted university qualifications, so my years as a sports trainer for Blighty and Deni Rams certainly paid off.”
When Sal first went to the UK she was based in Colchester in Essex, which has a deep Roman history.
“It was only one hour to London by train, so I would head into the capital to explore, but always ended up at the National Gallery discovering the famous works of art in person.
“I moved from Colchester to West Yorkshire in 2008, after visiting friends and falling in love with the country”.
With a change of career at 48, Sal became a teaching assistant in a designated specialised provision (DSP) in a mainstream school.
“I supported a student with down syndrome, which certainly doesn’t define her.
“I helped her complete her Duke of Edinburgh Award, which was inspirational and a career highlight - she is my hero.
“She has also gone on to win medals in cycling at the World Special Olympic Games and has been selected again for the Great Britain team for Berlin next year”.
A big changed occurred in Sal’s life when she re-married in 2013.
“My husband Nick has three sons who are all musicians, which they have inherited from their dad.
“I met Nick at a muso night in 2009 and it was love at first sight.
“We would not have been able to have all of our loved ones present, so we married in secret with only the boys and two of our best friends as witnesses.
“It was perfect, and I am one very lucky lady.”
Sal and Nick live in an area full of history and they have had a campervan for the last 10 years.
“We have experienced so much of England, Wales and Scotland.
“We have watched sunsets, visited beaches and experienced mind blowing history.
“We have travelled to Paris, Alsace, Normandy, Belgium, Spain, Germany and much more, which instilled a love of photography in me - particularly sunsets, waterfalls, wildlife and landscapes.”
As we know from worldwide media reports, the UK was one of the hardest hit when COVID-19 reared its ugly head in 2019.
And Sal was definitely not immune.
Having been diagnosed with Relapsing Remitting MS in 2001, she was at significant risk.
And unfortunately she caught the virus, which lead to longer term issues and what is now known as ‘long COVID’.
“People failing to follow rules and choosing not to get vaccinated increased my risk.
“I contracted the Delta variant upon returning to school; it hit me hard.
“I lost 8kg in a week and spent three months in bed.
“I had 60 symptoms in total which are now down to about 30, and my mobility has increased.
“I had a year off work and have just started to return recently.
“I still have long COVID which is classed as a disability in the UK.”
As for the future, Sal said to retire would be nice but "before then I would have to win lotto”.
“In a few years we will move to a more remote area, and Scotland is an option,” she said.
“We would love to settle in France, but neither of us are fluent in French.
“Nick is a keen cyclist. He has written a book on mountain biking we throw around romantic notions like opening a bike friendly cafe.”
While her future lies in some of those amazing places on the other side of the world, Sal often fondly thinks of her friends and family back home.
She reminisces fondly of her days as the first female football trainer at Rams, working alongside Michael ‘Kooka’ Bennett, and her days with Heather Hay at Blighty.
She still visits every four years or so. Though that is still not as often as she would like.
“We dont’ get long service in the UK and the wages are not as generous as Australia either,” she explained.
“We last visited in 2019. My brother Andrew and sister-in-law Cathy are at Blighty and my brother Matthew is in Deni.
“Mum passed in 2019. I’m so glad Nick got to meet her before she passed.
“We also have my second family in Queensland.
“Nick couldn’t believe how straight our roads were. He is used to twisty, windy roads; it was quite the novelty for him.
“My best memories include Deni and being able to walk into a pub, supermarket, post office or down the street and someone just saying ‘hi’.
“The Deni spirit of everyone helping each other out, or just offering to be there if needed, will always stick in my mind.
“I still check the latest stories in the Pastoral Times and I don’t feel far from home thanks to social media.”