Anna Moran
If you wanna know what it’s like to live in the countryside down under,
This lady will tell you all about it in her popular YouTube videos…
Maz
Hi, I'm Maz, and I moved with my husband and my daughters to Australia in 2016.
Anna Moran
Maz - her husband, Ben and their 3 girls - are also knows as the BamFamalam!
Maz
And I am a Britstralian.
Anna Moran
The family moved over from a small village in Kent - and now own ten acres on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland…
So what made you start a YouTube channel?
Maz
Well, we kind of started a family channel. So the initial intention was just to kind of, I guess, record our lives. And then we did this one video about our move to Australia. It was pretty early on in the channel's life. So I think we're about four or five weeks in, and we did this video about our move to Australia.
And all of a sudden people started watching it, and so that's why we ended up doing more videos. It was just because that's what people were really interested in and so we thought, okay, people who haven't moved here, they want to see more. They want to know what we're doing. They want to know everything about life in Australia.
Anna Moran
Yes! It’s so hard to get a feel for what it’s like when you’ve never been here before.
Did you find there wasn’t much of that around when you came over? Cause I don’t remember there being YouTube channels or any kind of social media available back in 2011 when I moved over here.
Maz
There weren't those things when we moved or we didn't see them anyway.
I certainly did not see anything on YouTube like that, so Ben and I, like most people that want to move to Australia, completely obsessed over Australia, so we would watch Wanted Down Under, which was a show in the UK. We watched Home and Away Religiously. And we also joined Facebook groups to speak to other people who were doing the same thing.
Anything Australian. We consumed it, but we didn't see anything on YouTube. And I think that's the great thing about YouTube is that you can, I guess, help people by just living your life. The great thing about what we do is they're getting to see, you know, the problems that we have, the wonderful experiences that we have.
You know, they get to see someone living their dream life. They see someone else doing what they want to do. So we are not like, you know, a polished reality TV show. We're just us.
Anna Moran
Oh, I wish that existed when I came over. I tell ya. What would you say is the average number of views you get per video?
Maz
One that we had in the last few months has gone up to a hundred thousand views.
I mean that's, I think that's the most we've ever had on a video. We seem to have a solid following of probably over 3000 people who watch us week in, week out. So I mean, that's a decent number.
Anna Moran
Oh, that's brilliant, Maz. And are they all Brits who watch your stuff?
Maz
No. No. Funnily enough I thought it really would be, but probably about half of our viewers, or maybe a bit more than half are actually Australians.
So either expats themselves, I mean, we can only see it by locations. We don't know whether they're people that have moved to Australia or whether they're just Australians. There are people that just love Australia that watch our channel. And there are also people who are looking to immigrate or people that have immigrated that just love to, I guess, reminisce or see what our experience is.
Anna Moran
Yeah. Right. And so what are the most popular videos that you've produced so far?
Maz
I think the most popular one was our six Strangest Things videos. So six strange Things about Australia. Oh, I did one. So I ended up in hospital recently and I did a video about my hospital experience here in Australia and that seemed to get quite a few views as well.
Anna Moran
Oh bless you.
Maz
But we show a lot of the area of where we live. So we show a lot of the Sunshine Coast, occasionally other places that we visit. And just generally with, we're talking about our life experience here.
Anna Moran
And how does your life here differ to your life in the UK?
Maz
Well, I mean obviously we've, we've got the obvious sun.
That makes a big difference. We did have our girls at home, so our girls were very young when we moved over, so we had a lot of family support and I guess that's, that's one of the real differences is that we don't have that family support here. I guess we had a reasonably comfortable life in England.
We lived in a lovely home, in a lovely village in Kent, so life wasn't really that bad.
Anna Moran
Yeah, Okay
So what is it that made you want to leave there then?
Maz
I, fell in love with Australia when I was very young. My sister used to put on Home and Away for us, and I just couldn't get enough of the beaches. I always wanted to go to the high school there.
So when I was 14, I went to school in Australia. I asked my parents, please, can I go there? And they said yes, and pretty much chucked me on the next plane out.
Anna Moran
I didn't know that that was a thing that you could even do that. So you can, if you live in the UK, you can go to school in Australia for a while.
Maz
Yeah, well, the international homestay programs are a massive thing in Australia. I didn't do an international homestay program. I just went directly to a boarding school. And I just dreamed of Australia for the rest of my life. I just wanted to be here. You know, when, as I kind of got older, it was kind of like, oh, well I've got kids now.
And you know, I met Ben and he one day said to me when Mia was a baby, he, so Mia's our, our youngest, he said, I really wanna immigrate to Canada. I said, I don't flipping think so. It's cold. What are you insane? We came to a bit of a standoff with each other, so I book the holiday to the Gold Coast, so that's how that one got sorted out.
Anna Moran
Oh, poor Ben. And why did you choose the Sunshine Coast where you are now?
Maz
It was actually because of work. So initially we came over to the Gold Coast on our recce, which is where we decided to move over to Australia. Then I came back on my own on a separate recce once I'd got some stuff sorted out that we needed for visas.
So, when I came back I was searching for work to try and get a setup before we moved out and I managed to get a job in the Sunshine Coast.
Anna Moran
Ah, nice one. And do you like the Sunshine Coast?
Maz
We absolutely love it. It's a lot quieter than anywhere we'd lived before. And to be honest, if we had have got a job offer in the Gold Coast, we would've taken that first because it was more what we were used to.
We were used to somewhere quite lively. But now that we are here, we absolutely love that quietness. It's fantastic.
Anna Moran
So when you first came out, you lived in suburbia, not far from the coast. What made you sell your first house and move inland?
Maz
The house prices rose massively around here, and so it's just a really good time for us to sell.
And we got this acreage property and so now we live a little bit more rurally. We're about half an hour inland. And it's such fun.
Anna Moran
Can you explain to us what the difference is between your old house on the Sunshine Coast and your new house?
Maz
So the new property that we live on, I think it's 60 times the size of the one that we used to live on.
So we used to live on a 700 square meter block. It was a five bedroom detached home with a swimming pool. It was very nice. And it was in a beautiful suburb, I guess like an estate style neighborhood with lots of other houses. And now we have moved onto 10 acres. It's called a hobby farm. So the previous people that lived here had cattle.
They had lots of chickens. When I say lots of chickens, they had 300 chickens and a number of cows. We don't have any crops or animals, so we are just like plastic farmers living on this farm. We don't really have many neighbors. We've got two neighbors and they're about 500 meters away from us.
Anna Moran
Do you get bushfires out that way?
Maz
Thankfully, we've not had one where we are so far. However, where we used to live, we. We were kind of smack bang in the middle of a number of bushfires.
Anna Moran
So is that your, sorry, that's the house that you were in a suburban area quite built up.
Maz
Yeah, there's a lot of national park around that area. And the whole bush caught a light.
It was a few streets away from us, so our house didn't actually back onto bushland, but a few straights away It did. And so the fires came up to their back fences. Was it scary?
Maz
Yeah, it was, but the rescue services are incredible and so I never really worried too much. I think the scariest thing was actually for our relatives because in one of the fires we lost all internet, and what I was unaware of was that the fire had become international news.
So all of my family knew about it and I'd lost internet, and so I didn't realize I had all these messages coming in to check. I was okay.
Anna Moran
Did anyone lose their homes around you?
Maz
We have heard of people le losing their homes in fires that were local to us, but that particular fire, no.
Anna Moran
What about on the property that you're on now?
I've seen on some of your videos that you've come across some snakes. Mm!
Anna Moran
I don’t know how you can be so relaxed about it!
Maz
So the scariest instant was a few months back. I came home, let the dogs out in the garden, and one of them was really barking and prancing around. I went out and there was the biggest carpet Python.
Anna Moran
Oh no.
Maz
After about half an hour, it started coming towards the house. So what I do know about snakes is that they don't like vibrations. So I whacked up the drum and bass, and I tell you what, this sodding snake liked it. It came up my house and started going up my drain pipes.
Anna Moran
Oh, you’re joking
Maz
So at that point, I was at home on my own. So I called the snake catcher.
There was one morning, we had terrible floods earlier this year, and I did not have my contact lenses in. I looked up above the blind and there was this black thing and I said to Ben, what's that black thing above the blind? He said, ah, that's a baby snake.
Anna Moran
You're kidding me.
Maz
He picked up the back end of it and was just, he got a glove on and he was just trying to do it, so it wasn't biting in me.
It was quite a little snakes. It wasn't too.
Anna Moran
Well done Ben! He’s brave isn’t he! And what about spiders out there?
Maz
Oh, there was one, probably about one and a half to two times the size of my hand. It was huge. I've never seen anything like it. And that was in our back garden.
Anna Moran
Wow. I could not cope with that.
Maz
But you do get some cute animals as well, don't you? Like you do seem to get a lot of kangaroos out your way as well.
Maz
Oh, we do. We've had, we have eight that visit our property, and they are beautiful. I love them. And there's a couple of real big ones.
They've got their biggest muscles.
Anna Moran
Arrrr I don’t think you ever get sick of seeing Kanagaroos. So how old were you girls when you came out here?
Maz
So the youngest one was two, the next one up was three and Lily was 10.
Anna Moran
And do you think that that was a good age to bring them over?
Maz
I've gotta say, I don't think it really makes any difference. I mean, my children have been brought up to be adventurous.
That's how I was brought up. And so if you get the opportunity to do something, you blinking well go and do it. And you do it with a really good attitude and you embrace it.
Anna Moran
Yeah, true. And did they settle in easily?
Maz
The two and three years old, sometimes they didn't even know they were in Australia.
They quite often would say, can we go to Nan's and go and get a biscuit? So we'd call Nan up and, you know, that was fine. And the 10 year old, I think the first school that she went to, she didn't settle in straight away, but I, it was maybe just a cliquey school because the next school that she went to, which was about six months after we'd moved. She thoroughly enjoyed it. She settled in on day one. She loved it.
Anna Moran
Oh, bless her. And would you say that all of your girls associate themselves as being Australian now?
Maz
Yes. Yes, they do. I actually, so I, when um, the Queen's funeral was happening, I made them sit down to watch it because I said, you really need to see your culture.
You need to know where you come from. You need to know all of these things. They weren't interested, Anna
Anna Moran
Really.
Maz
I forced them to stay up all night.
Anna Moran
Does that, but does that make you sad that your girls maybe aren't going to get much of an insight into your culture that you grew up with?
Maz
Oh, as far as I'm concerned, they are gonna get that insight, whether they like it or not.
They might have not been happy about staying up all night to watch a funeral, but I made them because I, it's, it is important to me. So. It's not a case of they're not going to because they're not interested. They're going to, whether they're interested or not.
Anna Moran
Yeah. Okay. So they really do, they are really quite Aussie, aren't they?
Maz
Yes, they are, and if you hear them, everybody says they sound Australian.
Anna Moran
Do you ever get comments on your accent because you've got a slight Australian twang?
Maz
My accent is all over the place. And the funny thing is, I think that's with most expats, it can depend who you are speaking to, it can be dependent.
You know, if you've just had a chat with your family members, you might all of a sudden sound very English if you've been listening. Or watching English TV shows. You know, we watch a lot of English TV shows and so I might sound more English then, but then I could be at work with someone Australian, and all of a sudden I sound like I am Australian.
I think we all get a bit of a muddled up accent. It's not, it's not one way or the other. It's, it just becomes a mess.
Anna Moran
I find it cringe. I'll come off the phone and Ryan knows exactly who I've been on the phone to by the way that I'm talking, which accent I've got. Is there anything that you miss about the UK?
Maz
I guess, although I don't miss it, I've become more interested in culture. So I am more interested in the royal family. I am super excited to one day go to London as a tourist, which I wouldn't have thought of those things before cause I just lived there, you know, and it's just the normal. But now I just, everything fascinates.
Anna Moran
Yeah, me too. I feel the exact same way. It's like you become a bit more patriotic and a bit more British when you move away, isn't it?
Maz
Yes. Yes. It's weird. I miss shops. Mm-hmm. So I. Really love shopping in the UK and I like when I go back, I am so excited to just go into Tesco's. The first day that I'd been back to England since we moved to Australia, I woke up at five with my jet lag and pretty much skipped into Tesco's and everything's so cheap.
It's the variety. We just don't get the variety in Australia. I mean, that's fine. Like we can get what we need. But to have that again is just thoroughly exciting.
Anna Moran
I just love looking at the sandwiches, you know, the, like the Tesco meal deal section. I just look.
Maz
Oh yeah, you sound like you're absolutely bonkers, like saying this kind of stuff.
But truly like my suitcase when I came back to Australia was full of laundry detergent, like, oh,
Anna Moran
Can you imagine if customs stopped you with that?
Maz
I had enough for two years.
Anna Moran
Brilliant. I love it. Final thoughts on any advice for people who are looking at moving out to Australia from the UK? Any, words of wisdom
Maz
Do you know? You just have to embrace it. So you move to a new country and you embrace a new culture. Don't worry about what you used to do. You just have to be flexible.
Anna Moran
Definitely, and if you want to check out Maz’s Adventures on the Sunshine Coast, you can find her at The BAM Famalam on YouTube. They've also got loads of useful tips about moving to and living in Australia on their website.
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