Should I move my family back to Australia?

Hi everyone - really need some input from strangers on this one as feel totally paralysed by indecision. This could easily be a long one but I'll just keep this as brief as possible. Please feel free to ask q's. In short:

- Moved from Australia to the UK after uni, ended up meeting girl and marrying and settling down early.

- Always planned to head back at some point, but due to infertility issues we went through years and years of traumatic IVF and had to stay in the one system. Thankfully we have a 3 year old now.

- Now almost 20 years since moving I am still drawn to being back in Aus, but maybe some of it is nostalgic. I am aware Australia is a different place now, but it's hard to tell from short visits just how different day to day is.

- Here financially we do ok. We both work as freelance creatives, so various AI and other industry concerns at the moment, but are on good pay, work from home, and can give our little girl lots of time and generally have a good work life balance. This means no typical government/school/hospital job that transfers across. In a way it gives flexibility but in another way we'd have to work hard to get in again (my wife also is a qualified teaching assistant so could do that).

- The big draw is to be near family; but my parents aren't getting any younger (70 and 74) so partly i'd fear going and they don't last long but also that seems a bigger reason to move. Otherwise we go see them once a year and while theyre able they generally come see us once a year too.

- But my parents live in the riverina, and my sister and her family live in canberra. I don't fancy living in either place for a few reasons, and we always wanted to live in the illawarra (prior to covid that was the plan, before prices went nuts). I also don't know anyone in that area, we just like the area, and find it the next closest place to be to everyone. But it's so expensive.

So the question im trying to navigate is - is it worth moving back to aus to be near family when I'd be so far, and are my childhood memories of australia being tainted. I hear a lot of people complaining about cost of living in australia but is it really that bad? Yes UK has gone up too but thankfully we're not in london, we are in a nice place near the coast where we've accidentally built a life.

A good example is this year; we saw my parents at xmas and now in the summer we're taking my van around europe (and seeing my parents in europe before coming back here with them). Is maybe that and being self employed and living by the sea attractive to someone in aus? Yes it's grey a lot of the time but thankfully the summers can be lovely.

Would so love to hear some perspectives of australia - is the grass really greener?