Hoping to advance Australia fair

Emma and Terii Rahui aren’t going to Australia to make their fortune. And they aren’t quitting their homeland for good.

But they’ll be gone for at least three years and in that time, anything could happen.

They will join the thousands of Kiwis heading across the Tasman (3300 left in May alone this year) in search of a better lifestyle, job opportunities or warmer weather.

This week Emma Rahui, 32, was busy packing up her Mt Wellington house, which sold at auction last week, and looking after her son Lachlan, 4, and daughters Amelia, 2, and Hazel, 18 months.

Husband Terii, 38, a sports coach and former development officer for the New Zealand Rugby Union, has gone on ahead. He’s staying with Kiwi friends Nicola and Dave O’Reilly, who left Auckland in April last year, at their Coolum Beach home on the Sunshine Coast.

Dave O’Reilly started a business coaching pre-school youngsters in ball skills and Rahui will take up the franchise for the other half of the Sunshine Coast.

Emma, an events organiser, hopes to find part-time work and after a four-day visit to the Sunshine Coast last month, already has some options.

When she and the children board a flight to Queensland at the end of this month, she says she won’t be turning her back on New Zealand, but she will be after a better lifestyle.

“Being able to spend more time with the kids was a huge appeal for us.”

Four weeks after Hazel was born, Emma went back to work, leaving Terii as a stay-at-home dad. But it meant long hours, struggling to pay off a “whopping” Auckland