"I moved to Australia after saving up for six months because I love Home and Away"

A woman has revealed how she moved to Australia after years of loving Home and Away - having saved up for just six months.

Colleen Deere, 35, from Carlow, Ireland, had a "really good job" in a bank in Kildare but was intrigued about life abroad.

She spent six months saving up for the move and flew to Perth initially with a working holiday visa - a place she says she “fell in love with straight away”.

Colleen met her now-fiancee, Tom McParland, 39, while they were both working on a vineyard and living in the same hostel in Margaret River.

The pair hit it off straight away - they have now been together for eight years, have Australian citizenship, and currently live in Sydney with their one-year-old son, Cove.

She urged those considering living abroad to “go for it because if it doesn’t work out, it’s literally just a return flight back”.

Mum-of-one Colleen, a team leader at a recruitment agency, said: “I had a really good job at a bank back home, but to be honest Australia had interested me ever since I was really young and I had always really wanted to visit.

“Customers used to come into the bank and send dollars to their sons and daughters abroad and it always really interested me where they were and what they were doing.

“I finally made the decision to fly the nest and saved hard for about six months after booking the flight - I flew out to Perth with around 7,000 Australian dollars and I remember I just settled in really really quickly and fell in love with the place straight away.”

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in business and a masters degree in business, economics, and finance, Colleen worked in a bank in Kildare for a year.

At the age of 26, she made the decision to leave Ireland.

She said: “I was always interested in Australia - I think watching a lot of Home and Away episodes had something to do with it.

“When I finally made the decision and booked my flight in January 2015, I spent six months saving hard.

“I flew out in June with less than 10,000 Australian dollars.

“My family thought I might come back home, they thought I was a bit of a homebird.

“But I loved it there - I spent a year in Perth and then applied for my second year visa, moved down to a hostel and vineyard in Margaret River, and began working there.”

Colleen got her working visa in February 2016 and began her new job at a vineyard.

She said: “I arrived at the hostel and didn’t know anyone.

“I remember the first time I heard Tom’s scouse accent - he’s from Merseyside - and I knew I liked him straight away from day one.

“Within the first two weeks, we were sharing a dorm together - it made sense with the rent costs.

“You don’t earn much from regional work - it worked on a commission basis so you basically just picked grapes and put them into buckets. The faster you picked the grapes and filled up your buckets, the more money you would earn.