Alexandra O’Donnell
| Town/City | Puckapunyal MILPO |
|---|---|
| First name | Alexandra |
| Last name | O'Donnell |
| Country of Origin | Germany |
| Date of Birth | 26.09.1968 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 2008 |
| Submitted by | Alexandra O`Donnell |
Story
My name is Alexandra O`Donnell and I would like to tell my story. My family, which includes my husband Martin and my children Geoffrey and Susannah, arrived in Australia on the 30th of June, 2008. It took us about a year to get all the necessary documents together for our visas, and we were all so happy to finally arrive at Melbourne airport.
Let me tell you a little bit about my family. We married in September 1989, our son Geoffrey was born November 1993 and our daughter Susannah in April 1999. I was born in Muenster, Germany and my husband in Nottingham, England.
Martin joined the British Army in 1986, and while he was stationed in my hometown of Muenster, we met in a local disco and fell in love. Except for the year of 1992, which we spent in London, we always lived in Germany. And my two children were born there as well. Martin completed his 22 years of loyal service for the British Army, and as he was still a young man, we then had to rethink which way our lives should take next.
After a lot of thinking and collecting information we decided to take our family to Australia. Here my husband joined the Australian Defence Force and carried on with his career. We left Germany on the 25th of June, 2008 and arrived at Melbourne airport on the 30th of June, as we spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
So now we all live in Puckapunyal, where my husband is stationed. And we`re all enjoying our new lives here, even though we can’t quite call Australia our home yet. But we certainly appreciate every day and my kids have settled in well and found new friends in their schools. My husband will take his Australian citizenship test in August 2009, in order to get his Australian passport. But he won’t be the first Australian in our family, as I was pregnant with our third child when we moved over here, and on the 7th of January, 2009 our little girl was born in the Northern Hospital in Epping. She is so beautiful and we called her Cathryn Victoria.
So now our multi-national family lives here in Australia and we hope to live here for many more years to come.