Hi All
Thought I would just say hello and give you what has turned out to be really long update on how we are doing since our arrival 3 weeks ago tomorrow.
Well the hardest bit as everyone says was the goodbyes and the leaving. We left on a Wednesday and said our final goodbyes on the Sunday. We had agreed with everyone that drawing it out to the final day was not going to help anyone - there comes a point in those last few get togethers where from the moment you meet up you are mentally envisaging the fact that you are going to have to say ta ta eventually. We had many long moments on the doorstep where it was a wrench to walk away for the last time. But now we are here we all feel ok. I am sure it is different for everyone on how to cope.
The flight was good - we went with qantas and would highly recommend them. The flight crew gave us a bottle of champagne when we left the plane at Singapore as it was our wedding anniversary - unfortunately we only had an hour between flights and we were not allowed to take the champagne through the departure gate onto the next flight...
We are staying in Joondalup in the northern suburbs at the moment, that has been a good base as driving licence places, medicare etc right on the doorstep. We had set up an account with Commonwealth bank before we left UK so just had to pop into the branch when we arrived to activate it.
In the first week we got bank acc sorted, got driving licence (really easy just needed UK licence, passport for id and got a letter from bank for proof of address) . You need to do an eyesight test but no theory or practical test. You then just pay a transfer cost and either 1 or 5 year licence it cost about 60 quid in total. I would recommend getting it asap as you can then use it for photo id for other things you may need.
We registered for medicare which again was straightforward, WA driving licence and passport for visa.
Tax File number which you need to stop max tax being taken off you - we applied online (found business centre with internet access cost about 2quid for an hour) the application took about 5 mins to do. It can take up to 28 days to get the number through, we are still waiting).
Steve my 14 yr old started school on Monday and is enjoying it (as much as a teenager can) says everyone really friendly and he seems to be settling ok. We didn't have any problems getting him into school, phoned on the Monday, filled in some forms and he started the following week.
Denise - 19 yr old daughter has managed to get a job, working in a retail shop in local shopping centre. It was her first day today.
OH work gave us a few weeks to settle in and he starts next week - he has to go to Sydney next week.
We have bought a car - car buying slightly different than in UK. They give you a price, always ask for the on the road cost as they have stamp duty and registration costs. You then give them a price you want to pay and they 'check' with their managers. The key seems to be haggle for everything here.
Laptops and internet - we bought our laptop here (so we had warranty) and got 200 hrs free internet access. So it is worth looking out for or asking for deals. It is dial up and quite slow - but you need the internet to look for the better deals so it was good to get us started.
Friends and Family - Be prepared for a fight for the phone line for the first couple of weekends as everyone wants to ring friends/family, email, msn to reassure themselves that they can still speak to people. Our phone line is red hot at the weekend at the moment. You can buy phone cards from the newsagents for about 4 quid and you can get quite a lot of phone calls out of that to the UK.
Sorry for rattling on - in summary we are having a great time so far, finally starting to get some normality and routine. Any questions give me a shout - I am no expert but will try to help.
Lynne x
