Beginning a his new life in Australia moved Lee Martin-Seymour’s career in a very unusual direction, as he tells Anna Gizowska

Successful business and family man Lee Martin-Seymour is used to getting what he wants, and in addition to landing the girl of his dreams and a lifestyle to match he also found the perfect location to settle down and start a family – Sydney, Australia.

The proud dad to two-year-old son Elliot, Martin says it’s all down to meeting his teenage sweetheart, Melanie. “I’d never even thought about Australia until I met Melanie,” says Lee, born in Bexleyheath in Kent, who now runs an IT recruitment division in the heart of the famous harbour city on the other side of the world.

A Valentine’s Day date with Melanie, who was working as a ski rep in Italy, was all it took to start him thinking in new directions. “I’d only ever been as far as America before, and I thought that was a whole world away. But Melanie had travelled more, and when we met up again after the holiday, she was keen to get me moving too.”

She succeeded, and a year later, the 20-year-olds jetted off to live and work in Canada for four-months. The travel bug had well and truly bitten them, and in 1997, with little money and a couple of supermarket tents, the pair took off across the globe.

Once they got back to the UK, Lee got down to work setting up and running a successful construction company before joining an international recruitment agency – Hays Specialist Recruitment – where he quickly progressed and prospered. And when his achievements were rewarded with an offer of a transfer to either Australia or Canada – the decision was simple. “We jumped at the chance of moving to Australia.” And, of course, Sydney was their number one choice. “We thought it had everything the country could offer – fantastic weather, beaches and lifestyle.”

Lee and Melanie moved in 2003 and haven’t looked back. “My parents come and stay for a month every year; last year they came twice. I think once they saw our lifestyle, and when we married in 2005, and then Elliot was born in October 2007, they could see that that Australia was the perfect place for us to raise our son.”

Read the full story in the February issue of Living Abroad magazine