Everyone dreams of the glorious sunshine, the succulent barbecues and the azure ocean. But living in Australia offered other pleasures: a sense of unimaginable space, friendly locals, proper power showers, cute wombats, and, best of all, never having to wear socks.

After two years, however, I gave up the Antipodean idyll for the dribbling showers of cramped, chilly Britain once again. And I am not alone. According to a new study, thousands of "Ping-pong Poms" emigrate to Australia only to return home again. Almost 107,000 Britons settled in Australia between 2005 and 2010 but over the same period more than 30,000 decided to permanently leave. Despite its booming economy, 86,300 people left Australia for good in 2009/10, the highest emigration ever recorded. Why? Are Ping-pong Poms classic "whinging poms", unable to appreciate the wonders of Down Under? Or is Australia an achingly dull cultural desert? Is it us? Or them?

Economics may cause people to leave but emotions tend to bring them home again, say sociologists Mary Holmes and Roger Burrows, who studied the reasons for returning given by Britons in Australia on an internet discussion forum.

After six years in Victoria, one woman bounced back to Britain despite having a smaller house, smaller car and less money citing the joys of "walking everywhere, wrapping up warm, politeness, greenery, quality TV, cosy rooms, good driving, friendliness of people, sense of humour, being part of Europe, pubs, accents, shops" and disparaging the Australia of "macho culture, the bush, terrible driving, cliques, awful TV, heat, boredom, four-wheel drives everywhere and dumbing down".

Finding Australia "boring" cropped up more than once while another disaffected migrant spoke of their Australian street being like "post nuclear holocaust" with everyone "sealed behind closed doors, blinds, roller shutters … with air conditioning units blaring". They also complained that everyone was morbidly obese. Oh, and there was only one pub to each suburb.

Their observations may ring true but they probably say more about these Eurocentric individuals than the country they are living in. Ever since the first white settlers arrived more than 200 years ago, Europeans have struggled with the alien character of the Australian landscape, light and climate.

Burrows, professor of sociology at the University of York, cites the destructive power of having a "dream" about Australia, and then having that reality dashed. "There's a sense of loss and displacement. Often people are trying to escape from something and they think if they are somewhere else it will solve itself, and it often doesn't," he says. Returnees are often "very local people" who grow up in close extended families and are deeply enmeshed in their local communities. "It's not necessarily about moving to Australia. If they moved to another town in the UK they would have that sense of displacement and loss," says Burrows.

Other studies have shown how British men in particular suffer loneliness in Australia because there was less of a culture of going to the pub after work. "There is a profound sadness out there," says Burrows.

Surprisingly, Skype and social networks that enable expats to stay in touch with friends at home may make things worse, reckons Burrows, because keeping close ties at home means that people are less likely to make new friends in their new country.

Ping-pong Poms often keep on pinging. It is the curse of the exile to return home and find everything has changed. People who make their lives in two countries often feel they belong in neither. Many of those who return to Britain never settle back into what several refer to – both positively and negatively – as "a pair of old slippers", and head back to Australia once again.

I sometimes wonder why I returned. I had my dream job in Australia; I swam in the ocean every day; I was never ill; I had a brilliant Aussie best mate and even some family out there as well. A little piece of my heart still loves Australia despite British friends deriding it as dull or as a cultural desert.

Australian TV is pretty rubbish and I found the materialism of Sydney hard to take, but then so is the gap between the rich and the poor in London, and in Australia at least the poor can snuggle up to the rich on the beach. British immigrants who find Australia a cultural desert need to meet some native intellectuals – Australian intellectuals really are supremely intellectual. And if you dismiss Australia as an ahistorical cultural desert you need to look at history and culture in a different way.

"What is most important is feeling close to family and feeling 'at home,'" write Holmes and Burrows of returning migrants. I agree. My reasons for returning were banally personal: to be with my girlfriend and family. But I also experienced a profound pull back to Britain. I missed football on a Saturday afternoon. I missed grey days in November. I missed my mum and dad. I yearned for the green meadows and soft light of home. And for all the glories of the ocean, I pined for the sea. The grey-brown North Sea.

As another ecstatic returnee put in Holmes and Burrows's study: "Seeing the North Sea for the first time, finally being able to prove to my sceptical children that blue is not the only colour a sea can be, was magical."