Eera

Can't answer the duck feathers thing, but as for the tog question; don't be fooled by comparisons between UK and Australian weather; you adapt fast and will find nights that were mild in the UK as freezing after a few months. I'm in the tropics, our nights rarely get below 10 degrees and I use a mega-thick duvet in winter, sometimes with an electric blanket as well. Down south (Brisbane, Sunshine coast etc, especially inland places like Toowoomba) get very cold in winter, relatively speaking - it'll seem lovely the first time you're there, and after your acclimatise you'll be shivering like the rest of us.

Do you want the freedom to paint it hot pink and bash walls through or the lower price? no doubt, renting is cheaper, and if you invest the difference between renting and owning long term you will be better off (according to internet gurus at least). However, renting means you will never have security long term as you don't know whether the landlord is going to sell, or drop dead, or anything like that. By buying and building up equity you also have the option of offsetting against investments yourself later down the track. It's something only you can answer ultimately. Yes, it is a big commitment but don't over-commit yourself and get a place where you can make more than minimum repayments with ease and then it's not a huge worry.

They had a security guy on one of those consumer shows a few months back. He said the best thing we can do is to get strong passwords and change them regularly. Interestingly, he also said to ignore the old advice about not writing them down - which is one of the reason we don't change them often enough - after all, as he put it, the sort of people who break into your house are generally not the same ones who hack into your accounts. I keep my passwords written on the inside of a book cover.

as a landlord I wouldn't lower my rate for getting 6 months' worth in advance; I can potentially get a lower mortgage rate if i pay a years' worth off in advance, but that involves me having to actually go to the bank and negotiate, which frankly i can't be bothered doing, and if I'm on fixed rate i can't do anyway. The rates are generally set by the agent who have a very good idea of what the market rates are. if I stick with what they advise, I'm sure I will get that rate (from experience). You might have luck if the landlord has over-valued their property and has had it vacant for some time. As having a lump sum doesn't actually advantage me and actually screws up my accounting somewhat, it's not something I would consider accepting.

Salary sacrificing. Presently I sacrifice about $1000 a month which gives me a fully serviced car (downgraded from a Prado to a Tucson as we don't need the huge space of the prado anymore). They assume the amount that the extras are going to cost like fuel, insurance, servicing etc and part of your sacrifice is allocated to a kitty for those, and at the the end of the lease you get any extra back. You have a balloon payment to make at the end of the lease (35% of the purchase price of the car if it's a 4 year lease) and if you sell it for more you pocket the difference. You also don't pay GST on the vehicle so it's cheaper in the first place. When we ended the lease on the Prado we had to pay $21k as a balloon payment but sold it for $38k, plus got $6k back from the excess we had paid for fuel over 4 years. We won't get anywhere near that on a Hyundai though. I really like the arrangement, though I believe there are people here who have had bad experiences with it. They've had to change the scheme recently so you pay both a pre- and post tax contribution: something to do with fringe benefits.

I'm in my 10th year of novated leasing and love it! The savings you make aren't huge (about $2k a year) but i like simply that everything is taken care of and I don't have to worry about fuel, servicing or any unexpected bills that comes up.

In my field of engineering geology / geotechnical engineering it's highly relevant: the difference in soil reactivity across Australia is massive, not knowing what the local soils are like will either cost your client money or end up with you being sued for wrong classification. When I was working in the UK I'd never heard of an acid sulfate soil, never had to deal with collapsible soils, never had to have an understanding of risk management under mining legislation, never dealt with analysis of tropical weathering... It's all stuff we would teach a graduate, but if I came into the job in my present Principal classification, I could not have hit the ground running at all and would have cost *a lot* of money playing catch-up. So I would tend to say the more senior you are (in my field, at least), the more important local knowledge is as your charge-out rate is too high to fanny around for extended periods of time, learning.

To put that in perspective, my OH was getting that wage as a heavy diesel mechanic in rural Victoria 15 years ago. Is it flat rate or with penalties? As he was on a rotating roster by the time his OT was taking into account it was nearer $80k. Find out what the roster is as it can potentially add a lot of $.

Don't fear Bathed, we do have electricity and even computers north of the Sunshine Coast; I have friends who have moved to the tropics from Sydney to take up web developer roles for local companies; there's a market for local people who can talk face to face and work with the client directly. There also a number of labs where someone with that background can get jobs - there's the major environment labs for one of the nationwide testing company in Cairns (any samples we need tested for sulphate, chlorate, pH and acid sulfate invariably ends up there), there's also a large market for coal quality and minerals assay in the tropics, and a decent number of enviro consultancies. If you want some specific details pm me.

Bungo, it's exactly that; I am not covered by damage caused by animals which are allowed to be there as part of the tenancy, page 22 of the PDS. the simple fact is I have had major damage caused by pets; in excess of $5000 worth in fact. Tenant absconded, and because under legislation I cannot charge a pet bond n QLD, the bond did not come anywhere near covering the amount I needed to outlay. No pets inside. Sorry. Keep them outside, fine.

Said it numerous time but will repeat. It's often a condition of insurance that animals are not permitted on the property - in my case I can't allow animals inside the house but outside is fine. My hands are tied by Suncorp so it's not a case of the landlord hates dogs; the landlord might not have any choice.

Reports of this kind of stuff really peeve me; I have three properties, when something breaks, I fix it; it's in my interest to keep good tenants happy. I want to assure you that not all landlords are money-grabbing tightwads. I hope the OP finds a good resolution.

You may have a nominated repairer / sparky on your tenancy agreement. As it's an essential appliance the agent doesn't need to consult with the landlord and you don't need anyone's permission to get it attended to. Find the factsheet from your state and it will tell you the steps to go through.

Failure of an essential appliance counts as an emergency repair. The QLD factsheet is here: https://www.rta.qld.gov.au/Renting/During-a-tenancy/Maintenance-and-repairs/Emergency-repairs Check with your state body. I imagine it's the same

I've got a good mate who's a panelbeater and he's always had issues having to store or dispose of cars from people who have had insurers who refuse to pay out, so they can't afford to fix the car, and they can't fight the insurer either. the main culprits are the cheaper end of the market. Personally I use Suncorp and Aami; they cost a bit more but they don't argue and fight you either (in my experience).

Oh, how sad. Thoughts to her friends and family, and the people here she helped.

I always think you can get a good idea of what goes on in a town by listening to the police radio over the internets. Not many Catagory 1's in Mackay but they did attend a disturbance at my bosses' house a while back. I had to ask the next day. You don't get many "bad areas" in Mackay, normally bad street within the area. There are also some lovely places south of the River near the hospital; it's an older, established area of town so you get the nice Queenslanders on big blocks and the open spaces that were parks before the land prices shot up. I've always had a soft spot for West Mackay, just check out the flood map first. This summer was the hottest I remember. Usually it doesn't get above 32 degrees, having 35 degrees this year was quite unusual, and yes, with the humidity it was a killer. 40 degrees would be unknown but you get that as an effective heat with the humidity factor thrown in. The other side of the coin is that the winters are glorious; 24 degrees by day, 11 to 15 at night, and no rain for months on end. If you're not after huge amounts of nightlife and don't mind being a bit regional you can make it work.

Thanks Vicki, yes I'm in the guts of town. Where are you working? Most areas at at tops half an hour from each other, at present there's only one major road between Northern beaches and south of the river which can get a bit exciting around school run time, but outside of those hours it's a clear run. There's an absolute motza of local clubs and activities; it was sports sign-on day recently and something like 130 different clubs and sports were represented. It's a renters' market right now; we've gone from having to beg landlords for a rental a few years ago, to having about 10% vacancy so you can pick up good places cheaply. Be wary of Blacks Beach; there's a load of cheap rentals on the market (particularly in The Cove) for a reason right now; local nickname for that development is Ice Island...Outside of that particular cheapy area is not too bad. Dolphin Heads tends to be very large houses and a bit exxy but if you want to pay for a sea view go for it. Cape Hillsborough is good for wildlife, all the Whitsundays are there, you can go hiking on the islands, there's a few national parks within 2 hours' drive, plus plenty of diving up Airlie way - there are local charters for it as well. I've only ever seen three snakes in the 12 years I've been here so not a major concern. Have only seen one redback too; the geckoes eat most juvenile creepies (apart from the industrial sized cockroaches) There's about to be some big developments happening and a lot of money pumped into the local infrastructure by State Government. You'll see people say that it's a dying town but when you work with town planners then you get a good idea of what's happening in the background.

Exactly. For me, running in the UK was brilliant. Here? Well, did less than 4k yesterday and ended up with heat exhaustion; it is simply not enjoyable. Winter, on the other hand is beautiful to run in, trouble is I don't want my former passion to be only a half year activity. Like you it's a case of making the best of it with a treadmill. Still sucks though.

Was a mad keen long distance runner in the UK. Here, can't even consider it for half of the year due to the heat and humidity. Also have hideous hay fever pretty much year 'round.

It's never the right time to have kids; they cost too much, you have better things to spend money on, you have a career to get on with, places you want to see, things you want to do. You just manage somehow. TBH the thing I miss most is freedom; I can't go where I want to when I want to. I can't go for a run whenever I want to. I can't be selfish anymore. I manage somehow. I'm just hoping they grow up rich so I can move into their house and make a bloody great mess on the floor. That'll show them.

Just a word of caution about the post-graduate medicine route; she'd probably have to do GAMSAT (which is the graduate medical admissions test, rather than UMAT which is the undergraduate one). GAMSAT assumes you have biology and chemistry to a first-year university level, so if she's likely to do it this way she'd be best advised to do something like biomedical science or another course that has those componants. Post graduate medicine tends to be 4 years, as opposed to 6 years for the undergraduate (depends on university).

My experience is that there's such a lack of mining engineers that if you show an interest in that side of things they're more than willing to train you up. I did a shotfiring certificate and the store, handle and transport explosives one as well, then came to the realisation that it's very rare the shottie actually designs the blast. We have applications from people who have been employed as project geologists by labour supply companies who don't actually have a geology degree - we've had geographers, architects and environmental engineers come from the same mob simply because there's not enough professionals to go around. Frankly if I was the senior geo I'd be getting up the labour supply company. Certainly the big boys of the industry will put their geos through a mining engineering masters if you ask nicely, I know several people who have gone through the course at Curtin free via their companies. Has your ultramafic gone through a heap of metasomatism or is the gold syngenetic? I have a large chunk of lherzolite with marble-sized chromite nodules (from the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe) at home. Can't every recall talk of mining ultramafic for gold though, but then again my resources lecturer was very, very dull.

Is it placer deposit? Iron ore never struck me as being particularly interesting; it always seemed to me that you could do the mining with a big vacuum cleaner and not bother with the geo work too much : "if it's red, dig it up and sell it." (I apologise to iron ore geos if you're mortally offended by that and I'm completely wrong). Hanging off the drill rigs in coal is pretty dull but periodically made more interesting by recovering some perfect Glossopteris fossils in the core. Finding geotech much better and would dearly love to move into drill and blast but small children have ended my full time site career now.

Hi Simon. You'll need a HR licence at the very minimum. Here in QLD you can do a Cert 2 in drilling which is designed for newbies and takes you through the whole mining process in a 2 week course (you'll have to google it, I can't remember the name of the provider, they're in Cairns and Brisbane). It's one of the few "mining" training courses that actually hold a bit of chop with the industry and we've put our own offsiders through it. Once you've got that start targeting the big drilling boys like Lucas, Pheonix, Macdrill and send out CVs, as I've said before, they have a fairly high turnover of offsiders (because it's hard work) and if you've got cert 2 it saves them the expense of putting you through it and risking you quitting and wasting the money. To join in the geo job convo, it certainly can be an interesting way to see the world. In Bowen Basin coal it's a bit dull though; Quaternary, Tertiary overburden, unconfomity, Permian sandstone/siltstone, black stuff (repeat ad infinitum). I was at one point mining a dormant volcano for gold in PNG, periodic gas explosions used to enliven the truckies' jobs occasionally, and we had a surveyor fall into a blast hole with 80 degree water in it, but is was way cool geology and possibly the only time having done a PhD in volcanism ever came in handy.