Help me calling Australia home

Hi, my name is Roxy and I’m fundraising to be able to pay for my visa application.

In case you don’t know me, here’s my story.

At the age of 30, after working for 10 years in Finance in Italy I packed my whole life and moved across the world to Australia to have a year gap.

After working as au pair girl in Sydney for a local family, I moved to Darwin to get a job there. Not long after my arrival in Darwin I landed a hospitality job in WA, in a little country town. On my days off I would spend my time at the local gym (only thing to do in town). Fell in love with fitness and moved back to Sydney to study Cert 3 & 4 in fitness in order to become a Personal Trainer before moving back to Italy.

After completing my fitness studies I moved back to Italy to realise I cannot live in that country anymore.

Came back to Australia and continued my studies in fitness and also remedial massage therapy.

Over the past 8 years I have spent roughly 80k between visas and expensive colleges.

For those who don’t know, on a student visa you are allowed to work no more than 20 hours a week and as an international student education fees are absolutely insane.

In 2022 I have been offered a sponsorship visa in FNQ so I moved there hoping I would finally get the opportunity to stay here permanently. It turned out to be a big mistake so moved back to Brisbane.

After the FNQ mistake, I figured out I could apply for a skilled visa so I found myself a job in my industry and worked to save for my visa. Unfortunately last year I have found myself jobless and had to delay my visa application. In December immigration laws have changed and the visa I wanted to apply for is not available for me anymore.

I have contacted my migration lawyer and he mentioned there is a partner visa I can apply for. He has sent me the bill and my heart sank. It’s a $17,773.90 bill and I have time until the end of October to pay that.

Unfortunately for the past years I haven’t been able to save much considering I wasn’t allowed to work more than 20 hours a week and also had to pay expensive colleges. Also when COVID hit I had no income for 10 weeks due to the gyms being shut during lockdown. I had no support because I did not qualify for jobseeker (I’m not a permanent resident) so had to use pretty much all my savings. The Government allowed international students to claim their super and that’s when I realised I have never been paid super.

I have been screwed over by 2 employers so far so lost around 10k in that process. Unfortunately I will never get any of the money back (already went to fairwork for that).

I know everyone is struggling at the moment and I’m very aware of what struggling looks like since I have started a new life here by myself with no support at all.

I do believe in helping others and I like to think I help as much as I can.

I’m not great at asking for help, so if you can help, I’m really grateful. If you cannot, I absolutely understand.

I have built a new life and career from scratch on the other side of the world and I’m really proud of what I have accomplished so far.

I would truly appreciate your help!

If there’s something I’ve always struggled with is asking for help. Unfortunately I have no other options so here I am, learning how to allow others to help me.

From the bottom of my heart,

Thank you wherever you decide to help or not