AUSTRALIA is a dangerous place to visit. Not because of the funnel-web spiders lurking in every suburban street. No, Australia is bad for Brits, because once we’ve been there our idea of how life could be changes utterly. Here we are, crawling along the M25 under a grey hospital blanket of a sky to work a ten-hour day. It all seems so purgatorial after a few weeks of the kind of sunshine that makes Australians bounce when they walk and smile at strangers on their way to an after-work surf. Oh to live in Australia! But then it’s just so far away, and if you like a bit of culture the ratio of opera companies to soap operas is all wrong. And they don’t get daffodils like we do in spring, or the Times crossword, and what if the children are all in London? That’s nothing a good pair of flight socks and a bit of property knowhow can’t fix, according to some savvy Brits, who are enjoying the best of both worlds by spending half the year in Australia and the other half in Britain.

For Rina Armstrong, half-and-halfing solves an increasingly common family dilemma. “Wherever I am, I’ve got one son in the wrong country all the time. One lives here in London and the other is in the Royal Australian Air Force, so if I want to see my children and grandchildren I’ve got to make that flight.”

After a couple of two-week reconnaissance trips, Armstrong, 63, retired from her job as an administrator with the National Health Service in October and flew straight to Australia for her first six-month stint, in the small town of Medowie, about two and a half hours north of Sydney and near her son’s air force base. Now back in Britain, she is delighted at how the split lifestyle is working out: “I absolutely love Australia and when I get back I’ve got lots of friends who are pleased to see me, which is very flattering. Now that I’m retired it also makes the pension go a lot further.”

The difference in property prices is another big incentive for the double life. Armstrong is deciding whether to trade her four-bedroom home in Abingdon, near Oxford, for a small British base and something bigger in Australia. In Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales coast, where she has begun her search, a new three-bedroom villa on the beach costs roughly £100,000. In capital cities, new developments such as Victoria Park in Sydney and The Chevron in Melbourne offer one and two-bedroom apartments from as little as £115,000.

Swapping the large family home for a flat also solves the problem of what to do with it while you’re away. Armstrong says: “You do worry about your house back home, and the garden looking deserted, and agents have told me it will be difficult finding a tenant for only six months, even though we’re near the university. Luckily this time I had someone who was in-between houses and they were really pleased to rent it.”

Armstrong was also initially concerned that setting up a personal infrastructure abroad would be difficult, but it turned out to be surprisingly simple. Many British banks allow you to draw from Australian cashpoints without a fee, removing the need for a bank account, although to open a bank account in Australia you do not need to be a resident or in employment. The NHS and Australian health systems operate on a reciprocal basis, so all you need to qualify for free health care is your national health number. You don’t even need to be a permanent resident to get a mortgage, providing you seek approval first from the Government’s Foreign Investment Review Board.

The process gets tricky when you earn in both countries. “Then you need a very good tax accountant,” says Mark Winters, 29, a builder and property developer who started the intercontinental commute eight years ago and now spends an average nine months a year in Australia and three in Britain.

While unemployment in Australia is very low, tax is very high — 42 per cent on income over A$63,000 (£26,000) and 47 per cent over $95,000. Property attracts hefty capital gains tax and any foreign income will be attacked with the kind of vigour seen in great white sharks during the breeding season. Still, Winters says, the opportunities in property make it worth doing: “It’s absolutely booming down here. I got a job as a project manager in construction straight away, just walked in off the street and was told to start tomorrow. I do that full-time and then develop my own properties practically full-time as well.”

He started by buying a block of land on the Mornington Peninsula, Melbourne’s equivalent of the Home Counties, which he split in two, renovating the existing house and selling the second parcel of land with plans and permits to a builder. “I started small, with what I could afford, did my research, made sure the area was up-and-coming and went from there.”

Winters, who is from Scarborough, has since spent $300,000 on a run-down three-bedroom house in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton. “I have learnt more here in a few years than I would have at home, and next time I go back to the UK I plan to buy in Yorkshire or around Torquay. Every time you do it, you walk away with another $40,000 in your pocket.”

Victoria Park, Sydney, www.waltcorp.com.au;The Chevron, Melbourne, www.andrewscorp.com.au; The Foreign Investment Review Board, www.firb.gov.au, 0061-26263 3795

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