D'oh! Ok, so we took advice from GollyWobbler and dropped our case officer a sneaky email, just reminding her that we exist. Meds, PCCs and all other doc have been with DIMA for eight weeks. AoS letter from Centrelink has been with DIMA since the 4th.
Got an autoreply back saying our case officer was out of the office from the 12th (the day we emailed) to the 16th (Monday). D'OH!
So, another weekend of hanging around. It seems to me that the "few days" at the end of the process are a lot harder then the other 17 months of the process.
Don't chew me out! I'm not the one who has naffed off on holiday leaving you in the lurch, mate! Anyway Monday is the 16th so she'll see your e-mail while you are asleep and if she's also heard from Centrelink, you might have your visa waiting in your in-box when you wake up.
I do know how you feel, though. It almost happened to us too. We were just lucky that the CO was in another part of the building and able to access her e-mails, though she couldn't access the Grants section of the computer. However, she was able to get one of her colleagues to get into the right bit of the system and do a sort of proxy-grant of the visa.
I don't know whether another CO would be able to step in and grant your visa tomorrow if it isn't possible for the other CO to contact your own CO to get the OK from her. I really don't know and wouldn't like to hazard a guess. Also, I've never had dealings with the ASPC, so I don't know how helpful or otherwise they might be.
You could try ringing the ASPC and wheedling, though. If you wait till around 01:00 tonight, they should be up and about by then. It might not be possible for one of the others to grant your visa tomorrow, but eve if not, it might persuade whoever answers you to leave a message for your CO, saying, "Choobs is chewing his nuts off for his Grant. That's a bad thimg fr a bloke to do to himself and won't please his wife. Could you be very kind and grant his visa first thing on Monday, please? We don't want a half-eaten migrant rolling up in Oz, after all."
Please give Daisydeeds my love and tell her that I feel for her, having to cope with you in this ratty state. Who gave you permission to be ratty, anyway? Men need permission for that from She Who Must Be Obeyed and you lot forget that at your peril, my old son!
Don't worry, Golly - I wasn't being grumpy with you. Just with THE WHOLE FECKING WORLD! I got the autoreply through this morning and just thought SNAAAAARL!
Of course the girl is allowed to have holidays and, after all, it's only TWO DAYS - but it's on the back of the skills assessment being delayed by four weeks, the main lodgement being delayed by six, the whole awful 9 month wait for a case officer, the two month delay caused the the accountant, etc etc.
Our planned departure date has gone from May 1st to June 29th to July 29th to August 29th, to October 1st to yesterday to October 23rd, etc etc and all these two days here and there seem to add up :)
So yes- I'm a grumpy old bar steward, but I think I'm entitled to be :)
As to gnawing off my own appendages - don't think I haven't thought about it - if only to club our case officer to death with it. God knows what a psychologist would make of this posting :)
I knew you weren't really having a go at me. I was just trying to find something that might help to cheer you up up a bit. You deserve to be grumpy after all the nonsense that you ahve had to endure with this thing.
I knew you weren't really having a go at me. I was just trying to find something that might help to cheer you up up a bit. You deserve to be grumpy after all the nonsense that you ahve had to endure with this thing.
Sleep tight
Gill
Bizarrely enough, I've just come on here to say "incidentally, your post has really cheered me up!" :)
It's kinda difficult to keep context, sometimes. Tomorrow, I reckon I'm going to learn a new programming language to give me something to keep my mind busy. Hopefully it'll keep the number of rants down ;-)
Dr Gill prescribes a stree-busting remedy. Spend the weekend in bed with Daisy, oysters and champagne. Sex, alcohol and aphrodisiacs in equal measures should get rid of the stress, as long as the oysters don't cause you to upchuck over the carpet, which happened to me after guzzling 18 of them once.
Dr Gill prescribes a stree-busting remedy. Spend the weekend in bed with Daisy, oysters and champagne. Sex, alcohol and aphrodisiacs in equal measures should get rid of the stress, as long as the oysters don't cause you to upchuck over the carpet, which happened to me after guzzling 18 of them once.
I'll pass on the Oysters, I think. And the kids would probably just get in the way ;-)
Think it's probably safer all round if I stick with the programming language ;-)
8)
