Thanks again for all of your suggestions and for taking the time to comment.
The move is definitely not our suggestion.
Previous to the fight we had suggested a 3-6month 'holiday' move to trial whether my MIL would enjoy living here, to happen when she wanted, we would help her get short term accommodation etc. but she wouldn't hear any of it & decided she wanted to just pack up and move. The move is entirely my MILs idea, she didn't even ask our opinion- she misses her son and wants time with her GC. She won't listen to advice. She didn't enjoy the 2 week holiday she had here on her last few visits, and her last visit didn't go so great (she was 20mins away from us staying in a hotel) and she didn't use the experience to really see how she liked it- she complained how she wanted to stay back with us (was 20mins away, we saw her quite often after our resolution to our conflict). She doesn't really like change, thinks Aust is quite strange, doesn't enjoy the food, the culture or shopping (not that I can blame her after experiencing Europe and all its amazing things, so I didn't really hear anything positive. She is purely moving for her son and his kid/s.
We have tried all we can to suggest it might not be the greatest idea, as her expectation of being the Gran (child minding 1 day per week, having GC for weekends/holidays etc) is not quite what we want...but again, she shut down all talk of expectation and wouldn't engage in a discussion, so not much we can do!
At this point we just left it as she is an adult and can make her own choices- we are still going to live our lives the way we live (I'm a SAHM and no need for regular Childcare. I was quite happy to get her to babysit on the odd Occassion for a few hours and did so while she was here (before our blow up!).
However, my thinking is that her utter disrespect for me, and lack of adhering to our parenting guidelines (I'm quite a relaxed mum with not too many rules but times have changed and recommendations are now different to when she was a parent) and her enforcing her standards on me while she was in my house, leading to our big blow up, I'm not quite comfortable with babysitting just yet (With time and healing I expect that could change) but I don't think I will reward her tantrums and inability to communicate and respect our decisions.
To the PP whose MIL hit her and then still visited and said nothing, I just can't live like that/ I'm so sad for you to experience that.
Unfortunately I just can't sit back and be treated like rubbish and take it! I think it's sets a bad example. I am all about respecting our elders and to be honest she and her hubby did a wonderful job with my son, it's purely the behaviours now that I can't condone. How can you treat someone so awful and still expect to have a relationship. If anyone else treated me this way our friendship would be off, but I don't want to cut off- I want a mutual respectful relationship for the whole family.
Like others have suggested, I'm letting hubby take the lead. I'm no longer being her advocate (reminding him to contact or suggesting he email photos) if hubby wants to do it- he can and I won't stop, but I won't say anything. With the move I think I'll see if she continues, and if it's the same disrespectful behaviour we can discuss not sponsorING her (though that will be very hurtful to her and very damaging to our future relationship). It's all very sad, it's definitely not the relationship I had wanted. I think I have to take it not personally though that's very hard!