Welcome to Oz...

After decades of complaints about whingeing Poms, Australians are at last welcoming us with open arms - but only to live in the baking middle of nowhere.

Emigrating Down Under will be much easier when a new fast-track visa scheme is launched this summer.

The only catch is that applicants must promise to abstain from Sydney's sun and surf and Melbourne's elegance - to live in arid desert regions.

The move is part of proposals to repopulate rural towns such as Boggabri in New South Wales and Mount Isa in far western Queensland.

Skilled immigrants under 45 will be welcome and legally bound to stay in the Outback for at least three years.

In the post-war years, Australia expected skilled Britons to join a wave of migration. Instead it got unskilled, non-English speaking settlers and the so-called '£10 Poms' who were offered a passage for a tenner in the 1950s and then stayed in the cities.

Brits already living in the Outback say the move is not for the faint-hearted.

Fiona Scott emigrated to Sydney from Northamptonshire ten years ago but ended up living on a cattle ranch near Willowtree, 250 miles to the north-west when she married.

She found herself in a 'one pub, one store town' amid a drought which killed 360 of her 400 cattle.

She added: 'The stench at night of dead bodies was horrible and my children got so immune to death. It's the survival of the fittest in country Australia.'

But she added: 'I'm here on the mountain with the most beautiful views. What more can you ask for?'