Katygrace

Depends which state you are thinking of moving too. You will also need to get a licence to work as an electrician once here, the UK one will not suffice. http://www.seek.com.au is the best place to look for a job.

I have not been in your situation but have added a couple of links and suggest you drop them an email or give them a ring and get professional advice. Sorry I can not be of further help, unfortunately I do not know of anyone in your situation who I could ask. http://www.border.gov.au/Forms/Documents/1127.pdf http://www.visaaustralia.com.au/immigration-services/family-and-spouse-visas/

Bungo makes a good point about buying things until your container arrives. We used the salvos for plates, cutlery etc... Radio Rentals for a short term rent of a fridge and Spotlight for bedding. All reasonably cheap and easy to access in any city. Our container arrived quickly 4 weeks after it left the UK and two weeks after our arrival but some can take a lot longer. Expect it to take a while clearing customs too.

http://www.realestate.com.au is the best place to look for rental, however you may not be able to rent without actually viewing the place, this was policy in Melbourne. You will get an idea of the best areas by the prices of the houses for sale... but be aware that if you plan to buy be in an area you can afford before putting the kids into school otherwise you could have a long commute. I wouldn't personally wouldn't recommend Ispwich but Southport is nice. Other than that I am not sure of the areas. Check out stamp duty costs https://www.cua.com.au/personal-banking/home-loans/calculators/government-fees?gclid=CPe-wKDCgccCFVAIvAod0wsB3w&gclsrc=aw.ds

If you can avoid using an agent try too. We did it ourselves, the immigration office are brilliant at keeping you up to date and doing it yourself can save you a lot of money. When we came over 8 1/2 years ago to Melbourne it cost us Seven thousand pounds including visa application, medicals, police checks and shipping of our container. I am guessing it has gone up a lot since then. If you plan on bringing a container of effects put as much in it as possible, we brought our fridge, husbands motorbike, sofa's, beds (not mattresses), vacuum cleaner, table chairs etc... we had a 20ft container and filled it. It saved us heaps as some things are more expensive over here. We even brought our aga rangemaster cooker which was a good move as they are around $7k here and much cheaper in the UK. We used Britannia and they provided excellent service. Be aware of a cost some may suggest... a cleaning of the container insurance if it arrives dirty and customs do not let it though... check their small print they should be covered in their insurance and you should not have to take out an extra insurance for that.

ABC, 7, 10 and 9 tend to over run previous programmes so add at least 30 mins to the end of your recording. Nightmare at times, particularly when they do not tell you they have rescheduled the programme or even stopped it for a couple of weeks. UKTV is good for catching up on programmes missed on the previously mentioned channels later in the year. So do not be surprised if it suddenly disappears for a couple of weeks. Yes commercials are annoying, best to watch programmes on record. In some states the channels have different names... 10 here is called TDT and 7 is called Southern Cross, that is confusing.

No test in Victoria when applying for a new driving licence.

You need to roadworthy and rego your car so it can be given a new plate and get a new licence every time you move states. A costly exercise but necessary.

We got our licence the same week we moved to Melbourne from the UK. No waiting period

We applied for Citizenship and got a call within two weeks to do the tests. We then received a call a week or so after completing the tests advising us of a date. We were given a choice of two dates, one just happened to be Australia Day 2011 which we took. There are set dates for citizenship ceremonies so you may have to work around one of those, but your test date should come through pretty quick. Whilst I used to live in Melbourne we took our test in Launceston Tas where we now live.