ABL275

Gosh - how long is a piece of string! I'm sure there been plenty of similar questions asked on this site so with a little searching you will probably get a wealth of information but most of it you'll have to put together yourselves based on your own personal circumstances e.g. what's already paid for and what's not, what are you bringing with you and what will you need to buy, and do you already have any job leads etc.? Things to think about post arrival: Hotel costs and rental car for about 2-3 weeks while looking for somewhere to rent - Google hotels in the area that you're looking at and whatever car rental's are available from Melbourne airport. Google home rentals etc from - http://www.domain.com.au/‎ and http://www.allhomes.com.au/ - these will cover about 99% of what's available. Normally 4 weeks deposit plus 4 weeks rent in advance is pretty standard. Most homes (at least in Canberra) come with a dishwasher but no other white goods so budget for a washing machine and dryer. The main white goods suppliers include http://www.binglee.com.au, http://www.thegoodguys.com.au and http://www.harveynorman.com.au Getting a telephone line and internet connection from Telstra as well as cable from FoxTel can be expensive as there's often a hefty installation fee (see http://www.telstra.com.au and http://www.foxtel.com.au) as well as having to pay a month in advance for rental etc. Buying a car - http://www.carsales.com.au is the biggest national site, can't remember if you also pay stamp duty on more expensive cars so worth Googling. The National Roads and Motorists' Association, known as NRMA, is the largest RAC/AA equivalent and maybe worth investing in - http://www.nrma.com.au Petrol tends to be cheaper - about AU$1.40/Litre here in Canberra but often cheaper elsewhere. Caltex, Shell, BP etc are the main suppliers. Local rail/tram/ferry/bus travel is generally also cheaper than the UK, check out http://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/ - as in the UK, places close to train stations will be more expensive so maybe check this while looking at places to live. No idea how long it would take you to find a job but the main websites that I've used are Linked-In and http://www.seek.com.au which again, is probably the biggest national site. Hopefully someone else will be able to give you an idea. You'll also have to pay for Victorian driving licenses from a local state services 'shopfront'/office - only about $40 a head (I think) Food and drink can be more expensive - Coles and Woolworths (http://www.coles.com.au and http://www.woolworths.com.au) are the main supermarkets although Aldi and Lidl are now moving into Australia in numbers so check those and see what your weekly shop might cost. Household goods can be found at Big W and K-Mart, or Harvey Norman. The two main department stores are David Jones and Myers if you need anything more comfortable. Total it all up and then add about 20% just to be on the safe side as I'm bound to have forgotten a load of things. I've also assumed you have no children as there can be a pricey contribution to their schooling required in some areas. Sorry to leave you with so much work to do but hopefully I've shown you where to start.

Completed on the Friday and flew out early Saturday morning!

Ditto - we just informed our daughter's (independent) school before we left for Australia. Since then we've had no further contact from the UK authorities.

We brought pretty much everything and haven't really regretted it - here in Canberra winter nights are regularly below freezing (and even down to -9C) so our coats and thick duvets have been well used. Glad we bought our UK DVD player when we came over a few years back as we could then play all our DVDs without any problems - although technology advances have probably made that less important. The digital TV also works fine here so glad we didn't leave that behind. Do bring plenty of UK multi-plug extension leads - much easier to initially just change one plug on the end of the extension lead and plug four UK plugs into that instead of having to change every plug when you arrive. Really glad we bought our American fridge/freezer as it's got an iced water function and it's going to hit 38C here this week. The only other things I make sure I get when I go back to the UK are quality business shoes (I can only think of one Churches' quality shoe shop here in Oz and that's in Melbourne), a decent suit from time to time - and really glad I bought my car over as European cars tend too get hit with luxury car taxes making them way more expensive here.

That's exactly what it said on my Australian Federal Police Check and I've got citizenship and Negative Vetting level 1 security clearance on the back of it so you should assume you're good to go!

We took two cats (one white, one black) to Canberra which I seem to remember cost about £1,000 each all in. There where certain parts of Canberra where you were not allowed to have cats due to concerns that they would interfere with indigenous wildlife on the local reserves (this seems to be a nation-wide issue) but the only problem we had was our white cat suffering severe sunburn to her ears which we were warned could lead to cancer and/or the need to amputate the ears so we sent both home to live with relatives. Otherwise people do keep cats so I guess there's no real problems that can't be overcome if you're prepared to adapt a little.

Congratulations - stay in touch

I've travelled a bit too. I tried to be as accurate as possible wherever possible (mainly with more recent trips) and just gave best guestimates with earlier trips - didn't get any come-back

I guess I was lucky! I went through the process three years ago so it may have changed but I seem to remember several other POI'ers having similar experiences to mine at that time.

Hi can only give you my experience; we arrived on my 457 visa but switched to the 820/801 partner visa when I was made redundant. It took me about a month to get all the paperwork together, three weeks of which was waiting for police checks from the UK and AFP (Australian Federal Police). Fortunately you can part-submit so I submitted most of it after a week and then the rest once the police checks came back. Once I'd completed submission I was awarded an 801 visa in 10 working days. (Normally you get an 820 visa and you can then get this upgraded to an 801 visa if you're still together after 2 years). Possible variances: - we had already been in Australia for 18 months (not sure that would actually make much difference) - we applied while in Australia (ditto) - we'd been married for 5 years at the time of application My take on it was that while it can take 10-14 months for people applying from non-English speaking countries (thus requiring everything to have notarised translations, interviews and possibly translators) if you're British, South African or American you can go through a lot quicker - after all if you're a case officer in Brisbane and it's a hot Friday afternoon and you have to get your case completion numbers up, would you pick up the application written in English or the one's written in Hindi/Serbo-Croat/Swahili?

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Hi Mattt - I'm sure there's plenty of people here who live quite happily on less, but this may help: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/chart-the-average-australian-households-income-is-145400-heres-what-they-spend-it-on-2014-9

Apologies if I'm repeating anything anyone's already said but we're rushing to get out for brunch. Having been down this route and had lengthy philosophical discussions with immigration officials, the impact of bridging visas is to extend your current visa until a determination is made on your eligibility for an 820 visa. For me, having been made redundant by my 457 sponsor this meant that the 60 day count down was stopped I could stay until my 820 application was resolved. I assume that if I would have found a new 457 sponsor in that time then that would also have been OK but in the event I got an 801 visa granted only 10 days after submitting my 820/801 application.

A bit of both; age is a factor but you can't inject 6 million people into a population of 58 million in just a few years and not expect there to be some serious impacts on services. Many of these are people who've come from parts of the world with minimal public services and once let loose in the UK with free everything they tend to go a bit mad and claim everything they can, not just what they need - or so family in the NHS are telling me!

Nah, the Conservatives need him right now