I need a plan ..or something

It's humbling to write about my personal circumstances but I feel the time has come to bare my soul. As most of you will appreciate, old age doesn’t come with much dignity.

I come from Perth. I am stuck in Thailand and I have been living on personal savings since November 2019. I will be 76 this June. I worked in Australia until September 2019. I had intended to return to Australia in March 2020, but the flight was cancelled due to the govt lockdown.

I was going to apply for the pension as soon as I got back. I tried applying in July 2020 but was refused because I was not "in Australia" at the time. I tried pleading with Centrelink and contacting MPs but nobody would listen to reason. “Rules is rules” apparently don’t allow for sensible exceptions.

The govt has saved 10 years of pension money on me but now in my hour of need they have abandoned me. Plenty of money for immigrants and overseas aid of course. Plenty of money to help big businesses to keep going during the Covid. They recently built a new embassy in Bangkok at enormous cost. They refuse to talk to casual visitors or on the telephone they fob you off with instructions to find your answers on the internet. So friendly, not.

Apparently, they are kept busy by silly old codgers, like myself, who have run out of money. They refuse to give money for any reason and insist on contacting your relatives even if you have not had contact in many years. Accident victims are handled if they have insurance, otherwise you're abandoned in the hospital closest to the accident. The Australian government has no compassion. In comparison a Swiss citizen will be air-lifted by Learjet anywhere in the world and brought back to Switzerland for expert care. But I digress ..

I am living as frugally as possible. My rent is $108/month and electricity is about the same (less if I don't use the aircon.) Food costs about $50 a week. I don't drink or smoke. The internet costs about $100/month - I watch a lot of Youtube documentaries. And keep up with Oz and US politics. I have not socialized for a year now because I cannot afford restaurants or taxis. I use a bicycle to go shopping about twice a week.
I did visit my daughter on her 11th birthday last October by catching govt transport to her home. It takes an entire day to get there. I wasn't really welcome by the ex, but that's life. She lives in the big home I paid for 12 years ago.

I had travel insurance when I left Australia but that lapsed in October 2020. They refused to renew it unless I was in Australia. Try getting health insurance if you are over 70 years old? Nobody wants to know you. I had to pay $1086 for a Thai visa that allows me to stay one year.

I got sick in January. The diagnosis was an infected gall bladder. The pain was unbearable. I went to a local hospital and they sent me by ambulance to the main regional hospital. The doctors put me on intravenous antibiotics and water for 4 days. I came good and was home again after 7 days. They said the treatment was free, but I must pay for medication. The bill was $434 which I thought was very reasonable, but it put another dent in my shrinking budget.

Early in 2020, using my personal nest-egg I decided to try making money with Amazon.com. Big mistake. I had products manufactured in China and had them shipped to Dallas. About 1/3 of my inventory was delivered to Amazon and the remainder placed in storage. Total costs about AUD40,000.

Another major mistake was that I under-estimated the cost of shipping and storage. The total cost was AUD$18,070 of which I paid $6,240. I have not been able to raise the balance $11,830. I began selling on Amazon middle of October 2020. Despite selling $14,532 worth of products since then, Amazon have taken all of that in fees. So, no profit at all. About half of that was storage fees.

The shipping company is charging $440/month for storage and of course will not release any of my products until their bill is paid. I had intended to try selling on other outlets like eBay, Shopify or direct from my website telemit.com using a small fulfillment company but that's impossible while the goods are inaccessible.

I was advertising on Amazon for a few weeks, but the costs were astronomical. I had to stop them raiding my credit card account. The results of their internal advertising were miserable anyway.

I began advertising mainly on Facebook Conservative groups and it seemed quite effective. However, Facebook decided to delete all Conservative accounts in January. I have been doing an occasional ad on Twitter but without a target audience the ads probably don't get seen by many potential buyers. I recently tried uploading a video-ad to YouTube but because it’s controlled by Google they nixed that immediately saying my ad was against their policies. I was only advertising my coffee mug shelf.

I have tried getting bank loans but nobody will help me simply because I have no demonstrable regular income.

I asked DFAT to help with emergency funding back in December, but they said NO because I still had money in the bank and had not proven I tried to get back to Australia before the lockdown.

I have tried "go fund me" websites but since most are under the control of Facebook & or Google they block me from getting to first base, being a known Trump supporter.

I am facing bankruptcy. My savings are down to a $422 total today. I will need that for one more month rent and food.

Thai Airways told me my ticket from last March will still be OK. I checked today but no flights are available to Australia, not even Sydney. The Thai govt said they intend to allow tourism to start again in October so it looks like I will have to wait until then.

I will try pleading with DFAT again, but I am not too hopeful of a sympathetic response. Having a company active in "selling" overseas is not a good look for a person asking for money, I guess.

Being an optimist and a dreamer, I am hoping that somebody will know a way out of this dilemma or have some ideas that I have not considered.
I’d appreciate any helpful comments or questions.

3 comments

You have given a lot of detail and in that I can honestly say I am sorry to hear about them. I can say little about your attempts to earn money but I can certainly say something about your difficulty getting home. I won't beat around the bush by trying to make you feel good but will say it from my experience and those of many that I have become friends with. In short the Australian and State governments have completely disowned you apart from saying they are working to get you all home by Christmas. They forgot to tell us what year though. I have written letters to the embassy while I was stuck for an extra 6 weeks in the Philippines. All anybody gets from them is an automated reply. Useless. Many letters to DFAT, Penny Wong, local and federal MP's have either gone unanswered or the reply has been the normal political BS answer which means nothing. My federal MP did tell me that any Australian who cannot get to an international airport will have to work out themselves what to do as they are not able to be helped as the Australian government won't interfere in another countries internal problems. All I was asking for is to get the local embassy to help them get to an airport so they could get a flight home. Not to pay their fares but to ask that they be given approval to travel through checkpoints etc put in place for Covid. Many of these people have reached out for help and been abandoned. Many are volunteer workers. Doctor's, nurses, agricultural consultants etc. I did get an email published as part as the investigation into Covid, quarantine, etc. That submission does not get finalised until June 2022. What is the good of it then. I am utterly disgusted with the way I, yourself and many thousands of others others have been treated by a mob of inept clowns. I don't think I have ever felt so betrayed, abandoned and ignored by any government.  THEY MUST HELP STRANDED AUSSIES TO RETURN HOME. The federal govt blames the state government for the returning caps on flights where it is clearly the responsibility of the federal government. They can bring in fruit-pickers (instead of sending the unemployed to do it), race car drivers, cricketers, tennis players, entertainers. Should I continue with that list?

Sadly there are many Australians who are saying that if the stranded travellers are not home by now leave them there. They are so ignorant of the truth. I have had many confrontations with these sorts of people along with racism against the Chinese and the other 36 nationalities living in my home town of about 6500. I never realised how ignorant and racist so many Australians are.

I can only suggest that you jump on facebook and find the group of stranded aussies in Thailand. There are groups for nearly every country in the world. I suggest this as you may be able to find some fellow aussies that might be able to help support you. It's worth a try and it did help me through my time of being disowned by the country I have called home for 67 years. I wish you all the best in your attempt to get back home and to any other readers of this forum. Good luck.

Hi Country Joe

Thanks for your reply/  I'm sorry that you have had similar experiences with the Oz gument.  They certainly have no compassion for their citizens.  Hypocrisy is running rife as well, allowing international visitors but locking out ordinary citizens. Thanks for your suggestion that I use Facebook to contact other Aussies in Thailand but as I said Facebook deleted my account.  I may try finding an internet cafe where I can sign up using an alias.  I was glad this forum gave me a chance to make a post, but I guess it is mainly read by people living in Australia. 

Thanks again for your reply and good luck to you too mate

I have 2 Facebook accounts. I must admit I wasn't deleted as you were. I just used the same phones number for each one. When I leave Australia I will only change the number in ones of them and let the other disappear into Facebook eternity.

It looks as if you struck some difficult times

If I was you I would get in touch with the Australian Embassy in Thailand again.

https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/our-locations/missions/Pages/australian-embassy-thailand

Hope all goes well for you.

What about contacting the MPs for the area you used to live in, or relatives surely will speak for you to these MPs.  I don't know where in Perth you came from?

Parliament of WA Web - Contact Us

Member List (parliament.wa.gov.au)

Senators & Members Search Results – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au)

Hope this helps!

3 comments



To make a comment, please register or login

Preview your comment