Hi Martin, Sorry me again.
I just read one of your earlier posts when you said you had visited the Newcastle area and checked it out for quarters etc. We are expecting to be posted to Williamtown after a training period in Victoria and wondered if you had looked around that area or any area in the north of Newcastle. What are the quarters/hirings like? What sort of entitlement do you get? We have 3 kids 14(m) 12(f) 8(m). Thanks again, Sarah
Was so excited to hear where you are and how close it is! It makes it seem so real to know that someone is actually right at the end of this wait. We are back in the "waiting for the written offer stage" and I can't imagine what it must feel like to be where you are now. Are your children of school age and if so how much info did you get form the redlo to sort out schools etc? Also which airline has the contract for your flights and where are you stopping off? We hope to be going to Melbourne next October. My OH out of Military here on 22nd and has been told he can sign 23rd, was it that close in dates for you? Thanks again for any info. Have a great trip and enjoy the start of this adventure!
Blessings, Thistles and Gum Trees...........
The ADF use Malaysia Airlines to travel to Oz. You travel business class and you get a 2 night stayover in Kuala Lumpur if you want it. Once your OH signs on, he has 7 days to start work in Oz.
As far as schools are concerned, REDLO have been helpful and I have been in contact with the local school to give them a heads up about when we are hoping to come over. They emailed back their prospectus which was helpful. Perhaps you could contact your nearest school to where you will be based?
Sorry but this is going to be a long winded one.....
Just wanted to know if there was any of you out there who had the interview in October but are not going until the next financial year?
We had our interview in London on 23rd October and were told there and then that we were accepted, but as we cannot go until this coming financial year (July 2007-June 2008) we had to wait until the targets were revealed (within the next few weeks I guess).
Are there any of you out here in a similar position. We are waiting with baited breath (just incase it all goes wrong) and hubby is out in only 9 months.....
For those of you who have been through it, a question please.......
We are overseas and staying here until a couple of weeks before due to leave the UK.
What do we do about our removals.
How long in advance do they send your things etc?
We have a container in storage and have to send our things back from here also.
DHE say they cannot give us a quarter as due to work committments, we can only get back to UK at best early Septbember and they will not issue one if you are out of the Military within 6 months.
Our plan at the mo is to stay here until last minute - schools, quarter etc but perhaps send our stuff back in time to meet our storage stuff a few months earlier (in time to get it all off to Oz).
Can anyone give me advice on
A] how long does it take to ship
b] does an assesor come
c] how long to pack and send etc
d] do you think its possible to have an assesor come on the same day as packers etc and have two shipments delivered, combined and sent to Oz without too much hassle!!!!! I know v unlikely - just don't know how best to do this............
Thank you for any tips or information at all. Very very sincerely appreciated.
Re the removals - shipping takes approx 64 days, although if there were problems with AQIS/Customs then it could potentially take longer.
You can influence when it is shipped - we are having ours shipped well ahead of our flights (then staying with friends) so it will arrive only a week or two after we do. I know other people choose to keep it all as late as possible and then they don't get it for a couple of months after arriving.
An assessor does come to do a 'pre-pack survey', they were lovely. We are having the house packed up next week, they're expecting it to take 2-3 days. That is for a three bed victorian terraced house, in the UK.
We are selling the house before we go, and they have been great and said they will come and pack it all up properly then store it for us before shipping. We pay for the storage, but it should all go smoothly as opposed to us packing it and transporting it and storing it and then them picking it up and repackaging it and shipping it! Which I was not looking forward to!
So basically everyone has been really helpful and we haven't had any problems with them at all so far. (But ask me again in three months when we're there!!)
Hi all,
A bit of advice; if you can release your consignment early in the UK in order to recieve soonest this end then do so. We have been in temp accom for four weeks with two young ones and its not good! OAC will org temp furniture if necesary but nothing like your old slippers is there !! Our container arrived Sydney 23 Dec and looks like it will be released in another 7-10 days.
Another point re shipping furniture is that with the ADF you get four weeks free storage once your stuff clears AQIS/customs in Sydney.
We're having our house packed up in 2 days and stored for a couple of weeks then shipped in Feb- we don't actually fly out ourselves until mid-April, so with a bit of luck our things will be available quite quickly, and if we go beyond our free four weeks storage in Australia then we'll pay at that end rather than paying in the UK then waiting for our things at the other end.
(Bit longwinded that, hope it makes sense!? The gist is that it's best to ship earlier rather than later!)
Take your temp discharge proforma to the AHC when signing.
Bring a copy of your UNICOM record to Aus.
A copy of marriage cert (If appl) with you; also req in work.
Try and include your PC/printer in Air freight, we req regularly.
Don't expect PMKeys No 'til you get to work.
Bring medal ribbon with you- they are mounted in diff order.
Martin
A very useful forum and some exceptional threads that greatly assist. Sometimes though advice given raises more questions !! Being at the stage of having lodged Visa Application (not sure how long that will take ?) I was advised to contact Australian High Comm in London to get ball rolling ref furniture/travel which I understand takes some time to arrange. The question I ask is will appointed removals company (I believe it's allied pickfords) accept your consignment prior to discharge from British Armed Forces to enable consignment to be in Aus in good time ? If they won't, I assume it could be up to 2 months before you receive it at the other end !! Additionally where do you get the discharge notification proforma (mentioned previously) from ? Currently serving in SE Asia is not helping me especially considering 90% of my furniture is currently in storage in UK and I only wish to transit through UK to "sign up" and say goodbyes - do you think Pickfords will be able to pick up directly from storage ? Not many fingernails left now !! is there light at the end of the tunnel ?
We are in the same position in that we are out in Cyprus and have 60% of our life in storage in Scotland..... If you find out anything re moving it from storage, can you let us know? So far we know that we cannot get a quarter for a short time in the UK (we expect to leave here 13th October and fly to Oz 23rd) and as we don't own our own house, we have nowhere for our stuff to be dropped and sorted out before then being re-shipped.
Hope all goes well, drop us a line if you want to compare notes.
