Our story
starts with the DIMA requesting for us to take our medicals, which we believed
would be the last hurdle in obtaining our permanent visa, so all the planning
started from there (most of it). One of our main concerns was our Sons education,
he only had around 7 months to go before completing his final exams in the
UK. If we waited we would have had to travel to Oz to validate our visa, which
would be all extra cost, our house was on the market and we all wanted to
get here ASP. After a few E-mail's to some local School authorities in Queensland
it seemed he would have to complete a further 2 years schooling to gain the
Oz equivalent. This further 2 years is what most Australian students take
out and in our opinion perhaps more needed and excepted here than the UK equivalent
exam paper, so with that in mind the decision was made.
The all important employment issue had
many questions to be answered, being on the "occupations demand list"
as a Chef, I did not feel it was going to be to much of a problem finding
work, but I wanted to know how much my potential earnings would be. I found
a Australian Chef site on-line and asked him many questions, he was very helpful
and came back with some rough figures. I also bombarded the Chef agency's
with my CV, a few got back to me asking to see them once I arrive in Oz, many
did not reply , there is more on employment later.
Housing cost was easy to find out as there are many online Real Estate agents
to look through. The problem with these is not knowing the areas, we looked
at many photos of lovely looking houses online, until you get here and find
out the small gap between the next house or the 30 mile car ride to town.
Prices have shot up and are increasing all the time...more about that later.
Where to live????? many of you will know
where you are heading for, we could only research in books, Internet,TV and
many other sources. For us this was the exciting part as we planned to do
a little traveling once in Oz and make a decision later. This was more difficult
than expected, each town or State had its own different qualities and trying
to find the perfect balance more so. It took us 6 months in Port Macquarie
NSW to realize it was not for us, as much as we tried to persuade ourselves
it was. We ended up on the Sunshine Coast 9 months later at great expense,
we had heard it takes at least a year to settle and sort things out, well
its coming up to a year and I believe that's right.
Like a lot of immigrants, it was our intention to rent
for some time before taking the plunge to buy our own house. We found this
impossible to sort out any rentals from the UK even if we knew where we were
going to settle. Again, the Real Estate agent sites had many detail's of rentals
on there books. Once we had done a little traveling and decided on Port Macquarie,
getting somewhere to rent proved very difficult. Most agents did not want
to touch us, I assume as we had no rental references or ANY Australian references
to give them. Many went on a point system which was made up of trying to prove
who you were by producing electric or phone bills with your name on or present
Australian employers references....imposible as we had only just arrived!!!
In the end we found one agent who gave us a chance in renting a small 2 bedroomed
villa and this was only after having to show our bank balance. When we moved
up to the Sunshine Coast I thought we would have a better chance of securing
a new rental due to renting for some six months now, same problem!! we had
a reference from our previous agent which did not seem to be enough....they
still wanted proof of employment. In the end we had to agree in putting three
months rental down....so beware. Back to the questions:
Apartment's, where would we stay while traveling?
We have stayed in all types of accommodation, motels, apartment's, hotels.
It all gets pretty expensive, we have stayed in some lovely apartment's overlooking
the sea, motels are cheaper, but not that much, it all boils down to what
you want to pay. Upon landing we booked into a hotel in Brisbane for 3 nights
before setting off to tour, then it was mainly apartment's until we found
our rental in Port.
What to bring and ship over was a hard one,
the expats forum had much advice, but the rest is up to you. We booked a visit
from a shipping company to give us a quote and had a little idea as to what
we would take. Much was left behind due to a cash buyer purchasing our house
and wanting as much stuff left in it, to rent out I assume. Main items sent
over were beds, stereo stuff, drawers and around 50 large cartons. Our decision
was to buy a load of new stuff here and virtually start again.....wrong, a
lot of items are just not the same and it is surprising how much we have had
to buy by leaving so much behind, including a single bed and a futon to get
us started before our beds came over. We are always saying "I wish we
had brought this and that over". Perhaps you might time it better than
we did regarding shipping your gear over, as we now have a lot of things twice.
Just a little warning on freight insurance,
I shipped over a decent pair of speakers and felt they were well packed from
damage, I under valued them on the insurance forms to keep the costs down.
They arrived smashed so I tried to claim the full value for them, no chance........I
only got what I had put on the forms which was a fraction of there real value,
no one to blame but myself on that one!
We find electrical items are a little more expensive here. You can buy all
the white goods from many chain stores including Retrovision and Harvey Norman
to name a few. Decent Hi Fi gear is around, but at a price and mainly in the
Cities. Plugs, plugs and more plugs, we have
have spent a fortune on them as well as adapter's and extension leads. I find
the Oz plug takes twice as long to fit-up, but perhaps that is just me?
Will our TV work? we had a lovely big Toshiba
TV back in the UK, the expat forum had mixed views as to whether it would
work here, so we decided to sell it and buy a new one in Oz. I now wish we
had brought it, as I understand you can buy a Oz Video recorder and the UK
TV could be tuned into the Video???? I am sure this is right. Anyway, the
search for a TV was on, you get tons of silver ones here, funny thing is they
all seem to stick big AV connectors on the front which totally spoils the
look of them. Wide screen is only just beginning to get popular here and you
have to pay a fortune for one. Our UK video recorder plays tapes through the
TV, but cannot record or display a Oz TV channel.
Getting back to what to bring, we could not decide on what clothes
to bring over on first arrival, we would arrive in November the start of Summer,
but was still not sure. As a guide, we have only worn trousers at a interview!
It is now in the middle of winter in Queensland as I write, today it reached
27, all my jumpers and sweatshirts we bought over have stayed in the wardrobe.
Maybe once or twice have we needed to stick a jumper on, perhaps because we
have never had heating on a nighttime (we have no heating!). I believe it
gets colder towards the South but here on the Sunshine Coast you can leave
all the woollies behind.
How many cases can we take? When we booked
our flight tickets (Singapore Airlines) we told them at the time of booking
that we were emigrating which allowed us double baggage allowance. So we had
6 cases to pack out the best we could. I had all my chefs knives and clothing
to take, tons of CV, papers, School papers, in all about 8 fat files. We sort
of done a dummy run and found that it all went in pretty well, trouble was
that we then had to lug all this around Oz before we finally settled!
Next was to find a hire car to accommodate
all the cases and three of us as well, after surfing the net and asking the
company's their opinion, we hired a Ford Falcon to be collected at Brisbane
airport on arrival. Panic set in, would the whole lot fit in?.....just about,
each time we stayed somewhere the whole lot came out and back in again . We
finally gave the car up after around a month when we bought our own Honda
CRV.
How do we get our money into Oz? we opened a account with the Commonwealth
Bank of Australia, which had a branch in
London, then once in Brisbane (our nominated branch) we just went in and activated
it. We hit the exchange rate at just the right time when it was on a high.
Transferring our money was a worry, we had
a date to exchange contracts on our property just one day before our flights.
We knew the deal was going through, but did not get confirmation the transaction
had been made until our actual flight day, and nothing in writing until we
finally got to our Brisbane branch to see the balance on the statement!!!!
If there is one bit of advice here, do not do what we did, and make sure you
give yourselves plenty of time.
There is much talk about making sure you transfer your private pensions
within 6 months of arriving in Australia, I believe this is to do with tax
reasons, I do not know to much about the subject. It is one of the things
I knew I had to sort out, however, too much has happened since and I never
got around to sort this one out, I will perhaps regret this. It is one subject
that is always discussed on the Expats forum and a guy named Alan Collette
can be reached to discuss this.
Would we keep our existing Life Insurance
going or start another policy in Oz, one call to my agent confirmed I would
still be covered as long as I keep up with my payments, which is what I do.
There was not much else to sort out, the day had finally come that we had
been waiting for, all packed and ready to go. The Taxi took us to Heathrow
and off we went. Of course there had been the good-byes to the family which
we had done a week before leaving, didn't want to do that on the day.
So to the things we had to do once we arrived,
firstly we needed a phone. We had took a few Nokia mobile
phones expecting to get a new sim card in Oz. This was a mistake as
we have since found out we needed to unlock the phones back in the UK, so
a brand new identical phone had to be purchesed. We finally did get the other
phones unblocked by requesting codes over the Internet, but at a cost.
Next up was applying for a Medicare card to
enable us for medical treatment, this is just a formality of obtaining forms
from a local Medicare office and handing them back (a address is needed).
As for dental treatment, we have not had
a check up yet and I am not to clued up on this one, I know most of the treatment
has to be done privately but am sure some of the basic stuff can be claimed
back on Medicare? We then applied for a tax
file number, a matter of phoning the national tax department number requesting
the forms, this took around a week to arrive, then around a further 2 weeks
once the forms were filled in and sent away. A car
was purchased around a month after arrival, you have to pay rego which is
the car tax, this also includes 3rd party insurance, then you purchase your
usual fully comp insurance on top of that. We knew we had to take a car test
within 3 months of arrival, firstly you take a simple test on a computer,
then a driving test soon after. We were dreading the car test and I had planned
to take a few lessons just in case, but as luck would have it, the day I went
in to book the test, NSW had changed their licensing laws and declared all
Brits only needed to take the written test....what a relief.
A new phone was put in our villa allowing us to phone home, we signed up with
Telstra and took out a plan which enables us the first half hour free when
phoning home, the next half hour is only
around $5.00 so a couple of hours on the phone does not work out too expensive.
We also bought a new computer to get us onto the Internet
and chat to folks back home. When you sign up with a ISP you generally have
different monthly scales to pay depending on the amount of downloads you will
be using. We sign up for a maximum of 500 megs per month, you also have to
pay your phone company the cost of a local call each time you log on (17 cents).
We have used 2 local ISPs, one in Port which was pretty good, the one here
on the Sunshine Coast is lousy at times, very slow and often down (or perhaps
it is my computer?). You probably are aware that there are not many benefits
you can claim for until you have been here for 2 years, we claim for child
allowance which is paid into our account every 2 weeks, however, we have not
attempted to tap anymore benefits as yet, I believe it may be worth a try.
After a month in Port sorting ourselves out we then went out looking for employment,
the local paper had just about one page set out for job vacancies. There is
a government site which you can search for employment by region and type,
this is the same site that all the large agencies use, which means you can
walk into any of them and start searching on the screens which they all have
(we do it from home). To apply for any position you see on these screens,
firstly you have to apply for a job seekers number at any one of those agencies
then you have to register with the agency who is hosting the position that
you may be interested in. I went armed with my CV and bombarded all the Restaurants
(I am a Chef) as well as phoning around. I finally came up trumps just after
Christmas at a Restaurant very close to where we were living. We have found
that most positions are filled by "who you know", many are not advertised,
especially in the office type work which my wife does. This can be very frustrating
as you do not know too many people straight off. You have to go out and make
many Friends, this leads to chat as to
who works where and where the vacancies are, in our mind and depending what
you do, it is definitely the best way. I sometimes cannot make employers
out, I am never sure if they trust you are or for that matter, you trusting
them. I have found it hard to bargain with them when it comes down to salary,
it always seems there is someone else to step in your shoes if you are not
careful (there generally is). In my trade they work off a set of salary scales
called "award pay", this is the minimum wage
set out by the government and they seem to keep to it.
It has now been 10 months since our first arrival, we have been to many places
working a few months on the way, to cut a long story short we are looking
for our own business to run and have been living off our savings for most
of this time. The bills just keep flooding
in, telephone, rental, car, to many to mention, each day the post box brings
a new bill which brings us to the cost of living.
Here is a rough guide only as to what we shell out: nice 4 bedroomed house
with spar $310, petrol around $35 depending on where we go, food and drink
around $275, electric $20, telephone $25, contents insurance $22, as we rent
we do not pay local rates or water rates. There are other bills such as car,
bank fees, personal, credit card, and gas which all vary. Housing
costs seem to be going up all the time, a lot of people by a plot
of land and build their own. The land within towns are getting expensive,
it gets much cheaper the further you move away from town, but then you have
to rely on your own water supply. Where we are, the average price for a 3/4
bedrooms, 2 baths, double garage would come in between $200,000-$300,000,
the more you pay, the better your view and the larger your plot will be.
Well
that's about it, I hope this may have been helpful as to how you go about
your own situation.
back
to top
