sunniecat

short term let till you're here and can work out where you want to be. Then allhomes.com.au - rental process moves very quickly so you do need to be on the spot. For jobs look on seek.com.au but you may find it hard to set anything up till you're here. Good luck!

my OH cycles a 36km round trip to work more often than not but we also discovered we needed 2 cars to get us to evening commitments in opposite directions. Welcome, Commander Max! Hope you enjoy it, we love the place

We're in Wanniassa, with St Anthony's primary followed by St Mary Mackillop within easy walking distance. I don't have personal experience of the schools but I have heard good reports from people who do. We like the area, enough to have bought a house here we plan to stay in for a long while. Happy to tell you more about the area if you're interested - pm if you have any q's.

not sure we're living in the same city, Bora. I have an over-full life, feel surrounded by friends, regularly watch cracking sunsets over the hills from my back deck, and love the ever-changing seasons and colours in the landscape. I think it's a great city (though I'll agree with you on the driving etiquette!)

Well, I don't watch the 2am kickoffs... Our foxtel is streaming though so we can't record, so if we wanted to watch a live game we'd have to go out for it in which case we'd probably end up at the club easier now that the UK timezone means the early kickoffs are 9pm or thereabouts! If you want someone to watch a footy match with do send us a pm (me or my OH pntaylor) - we're pretty friendly but not very good at checking in on here

whereabouts are you? We're members at the Calwell Club, we've asked them to put the EPL matches on for us before, they're usually happy enough to do that. That said, we've got Fox now (as of about 2 weeks ago)!

we've barbecued the last couple of years. big meal in the evening, not at lunchtime in the heat.

That cost of living link is pretty good I also made sure to compare the cost of living (it's HIGH) to my expected income, to make it clear that although it costs us a lot more comparatively to live here than it did in the UK, we are also paid better and therefore better off overall... good luck!

It's pretty nice south of the lake too Honestly, most of Canberra is good for families. The Catholic schools are considerably less costly than the big private schools but they do require children to be baptised - and being Catholic moves you further up the list as well! But they're still worth looking at if that's what you're after. We love Woden, but it's nearly as expensive for housing as the Inner South... we live in Wanniassa, north Tuggeranong, where the prices are a bit lower, and we've got pretty good access to schools right through, along with a kidstart centre, kids activites at the local library, parks nearby etc... I find that the north and south have fairly different characters and people do seem to pick a side once they've been here a while and explored a bit!

we know how frustrating that gets, Louise! Hope you find something soon. Has your boyfriend tried the Murray-Darling Basin Authority? I know another water engineer that moved up here from Victoria at the start of this year and I'm pretty sure that was with them. Best of luck

you can get a passport in a day if you're prepared to a) pay the extra and b) spend the day at the passport office or nearby. my other half's done it. you can probably get it in a week through the mail guaranteed (I can't remember exactly now). ask at the post office, they'll give you the options personally I'd say it's probably ok based on the checks you've made but if you can, renew it now anyway to make sure you're not worrying about it while you travel!

keep looking on seek, keep looking on mycareer.com.au, and ask anyone and everyone you know. I had some success getting temp roles with agencies, it is worth applying to them too and seeing if you can get a short-term contract, short-term can often lead to longer term. govt jobs are on a freeze, but there are private companies out there too. without knowing what you're looking for/where your skills are it's hard to know where else to point you. I've got a lot of experience of applying for admin jobs, but not much else! It took my OH 3 months to get a job when we arrived last year, in IT, because he came up against the citizenship issue as many of the IT jobs are in the federal government and that does require citizenship for security clearances. State government often doesn't, though, and you can get their jobs off their website act.gov.au - they have a job list and there's often some lower-level temp roles around that again might allow you to get a foot in the door. The other thing I would recommend is getting someone local to check your resume for style, and if you have to write a response to their list of 'required skills/abilities' (forget what it's called now) get someone to check that too. They are looking for a fairly specific style of response and type of response (this particularly applies to the ACT govt and institutions like universities), and if you haven't been through it you probably won't get it first time. I got a couple of friends to check over my more recent ones and the difference between my first effort and my second after their comments was astounding. If you're looking to meet locals so that you can start networking - join clubs. sports, families, hobbies, whatever you can find of that variety that suits you. I posted on another post about where my hubs and I met our various friends, and others will suggest other places you can look. It *is* frustrating, and I know the hubs really struggled when nothing seemed to be happening early on, but do keep persevering - if Canberra is the place you want to stay, then I'm sure you'll find something to enable you to stay! It's very like it was a couple of years back in the UK where last time I was looking for a job I think I applied for about 60 or 70 over the space of 3 months before I got an interview - but I got a job out of that interview. Just keep on clicking 'apply' to everything you see that you think you may be able to do! Good luck with it.

I've tended to reckon for all my (relatively short) life that it's the decisions you make. I worked for several years in fairly low level admin, where you just rock up at 9, get on with your day, lock the office at 5 or 5.30, and forget about it for the rest of the time. I've now just taken on a job that is technically 40 hrs a week, but is turning out to be more like 8.30-6 with some Saturday work (RDOs during the week to make up for that). That's a choice I made. The money's not better, the leave certainly isn't (they won't let me take more than 2 weeks at a time which other jobs have often agreed to), but the job is potentially considerably more rewarding for me than the day-in-day-out admin I was doing. Choices, choices. Hubs and I have both chosen to pass over higher incomes for better work/life balance (mortgage not withstanding). We both reckon it was the right decision

they're coming to see you, not where you are. how about you ask them what they'd like to do? particularly if you don't think the beach/bush is necessarily 'their thing'. They may be happy to head into the city for a day while you take the kids to Rottnest, and all meet up for dinner...

I don't see why firms wouldn't take you on, I used to work for a landscaping company and we had someone on a WHV - they needed people with excavator tickets, so that sort of company might be worth trying - someone else's point about whether UK tickets will be recognised here is valid though and you'd have to check that out with the firm. Maybe look into whether you can get Australian tickets and whether that would be worth doing while you're here? Shouldn't think it'll make much difference where you are, but I'd be having a look on something like seek.com.au before actually committing to going somewhere to try and get work, to see what sort of volume of work is around - you'll want to be where the building industry is strong and that does vary quite considerably. Apply for your visa online, it shouldn't be a difficult process.