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With the home baking thing, there are very strict council regulations, but they do vary depending on where you live. If you google the council where you think you'll end up, or even where you dad lives as a point of reference, and enter something like "home baking" on their website they should come up with a list of requirements. The ones in my council say that all your lights have to be recessed, you need two seperate sinks, a seperate fridge to store dairy products, a commercial bug zapper, not located over a food perparation surface, at least two doors between the kitchen and the bathroom, no window coverings in the kitchen and a whole heap more. it takes about a year to get the permit through (have a friend who was granted her food licence recently after 2 years of trying). It's not something easily done from a rental as you may have to make changes to comply with Council. Of course, this only applies to you if you're selling food. If you make cakes and give them to friends, and they accidentally drop some money in your bag it's not council's concern (and how my friend managed for a couple of years before her permit came through)

You can rent furniture pretty reasonably, all you really need is some beds and a fridge. Second hand joints will sometimes sell you tables and chairs and agree to buy them back for $50 less or so, or else buy from the small ads and sell the stuff again when your bits turn up.

The bomb will probably kill it; normal fly spray kills geckoes too. I bought a heap of them, then couldn't do it as I like my collection of geckoes and skinks running around downstairs; we've never had a spider in the house in 5 years of living in it which I put down to the geckoes. The place I rented which the landlady was obsessive about getting bug sprayed used to have massive huntsmen running around in it.

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).

I did a lot of the footings and ground investigation for the staff accommodation on Hamilton and Keswick Islands which I'd image are much the same; they are pretty basic donga-style (converted shipping containers, very similar to what you get on a mine camp). You get a single bed, cupboard, maybe a TV and the newer ones are ensuite, usually with a communal mess and recreation area. You probably won't get rooms in the resort itself, they tend to be hidden out the back somewhere. But on the other hand they're simply places to put your head at night, and you get to be in the Whitsundays during the day (except when there's a cyclone)

As you're Coloundra I assume you'll want it for Queensland. We have the Coal Baord medical (also known as CBM or Section 4), I assume there's an equivilent for metalliferous mines but never had to do it so don't know what it entails. First up, you'll do a drug and alcohol tests - wee in a cup, don't drink too much beforehand; if your pee is too weak they can't test it, if you're on any form of medication bring the package with you as it's pretty sensitive; I had a false positive for heroin after eating poppy seed cake the day before. Then it's hearing test, blood pressure, the normal going over that you'd get at a routine medical. If you're off to an underground site you'll probably be asked to get a chest x-ray beforehand and the doc has a look at it. Sometimes you're asked to do squats and some other minor things like pick up 10kg, but I've only ever had that once and for a specific site. Honestly, there's not much too it, and it's nearly impossible to fail. If you get something that flags up a problem such as previously undiagnosed diabetes, all they do if refer you to someone else to have a management plan put in place before they'll sign you off; for instance if you're partically deaf or wear glasses there's a section which the doc will write "requires hearing conservation methods" or "to wear glasses" and that's about it.

Good for him PG! Honestly, with the slowdown happening at the moment he's better off staying where he is; two mines shut down locally, massive cost cutting going on within existing sites; there's a hell of a lot of uncertainty right now and it's not a good time to be trying to get into the industry with a whole bunch of redundent people from sites looking for the same vacancies.

You can go onto any length lease you want with the consent of the landlord, the normal ones are 3/6/12 months, but I've had 4 months and 2 months before. there is the 1 month rolling lease option, but it doesn't give you much security if they want to put someone else in there - I think it's 2 weeks' notice on either side, plus some landlords won't do it as it's a specific exclusion on the insurance policy. If you've been a good tenant, you can ask the agent if you can have the new lease set up with a 2 month notice option; they can do that with permission, but it's not a usual thing to do.

Leave entitlements are set out in either your award, or by Fair Work Australia. Four weeks for normal work hours, five weeks for shiftworkers. My OH manages to get six weeks but that's something to do with they only take 9 hours out of the accrual and give him 12 hours off. Don't quite know how that works but on the other hand he doesn't get public holidays off.

Spas come under the same regulation that pools do in terms of fencing, this can include a garden fence providing it meets certain criteria (have a quick google for pool laws in South Australia). You can request the council inspector to come have a look and then plead ignorance to the agent once they get a serve as they're supposed to do random checks anyway. Locks aren't the landlord's problem - unless you point out that their buildings insurance will probably state that all accessable windows have to have them, mine does, and you'll probably find your contants insurance says the same so you might find yourself without cover in the event of burglary. You can buy temporary oes that are like little thumb screws in the mean time, they just bolt to your window frame. I have them in my upstairs windows to stop my son openeing them and playing superman off the deck.

Are you actually in Newcastle proper (which is a bit of a dump) or in one of the surrounds? There's are many nice little towns readily accessible along the motorway, some of the larger ones have fast trains into Newcastle and Sydney. My parents live in Toukley, which is a bit like a walking graveyard to be honest, but in that general area there are places I'd happily live.

A tenant cannot be forcibly ejected at the end of a tenancy, nor can a landlord change the locks. If a tenant refuses to leave the landlord has to go through the courts to get them out which takes at least 30 days. One of those things that landlords have to put up with periodically, and shows how one person's disrespect can impact others down the line.

My son had to be referred as he had a huge lump on is jaw they thought was tuburculosis, the wait was about 3 months but in the end he got in after about 3 weeks due to cancellations from other parents so you may not have to wait as long as you fear. From what I can gather the peadiatician is the one who makes the referral to the specialist service (in our case a mycobacterial surgeon specialist). We had to go to Townsville in the end for the operation but we had costs of travel and accommodation refunded as they couldn't provide the service locally. I don't know what the procedure is for that on a 457, but ask the paediatrician for a form to get it done as it has to be signed by your local doctor and the specialist.

All mines have security manning the boom gates, have a google for mine security contractors and go from there. If you can get a gig it counts towards site experience and you can move into other positions with relative ease.

With seven billion people in the world, coming second isn't so bad in the wider scheme of things.

We are after a specific model with various criteria that it has to have two ovens, five or more burners and the OH has to like it, so yes, $8k standard price, though you can pick it up for $6.5k when they have a sale but it's still twice as much. We get the same with the matching rangehoods - 110cm ones are hard to find anyway, $1800 here, $700 from the UK, so we're doing a bulk buy and shipping over.

I'd put in an anonymous call to the workplace inspectorate as well

Tarby, I was assuming your other property was in Aus, however, one minute of googling found a thread on Britishexpats forum which links to a UK mob who "do depreciation reports for Australian tax purposes" Link was old but put something like that in the search terms and you should find something similar.

Arrgh! long reply, internet explorer error and crash! Shell, just saw your question. You son needs to figure out what he wants to do long term - no good just chasing money if he ends up in an area he hates and gets caught up in the wage-slave thing. there are apprenticeships on offer in auto electics, boiler making, diesel fitting etc, and if he's that way inclined it's a good route in, but there is a MASSIVE caution; if he does an mine-based apprenticeship, he may have trouble getting work in town when he gets sick of the lifestyle - if you're trained as a fitter, you don't learn diagnostics and can't transfer into vehicle machanics in a straightforward way. Some of the mines around here advertise for fitters (as an example) and state that they will only consider people who have done a proper vehicle mechanics apprenticeship rather than a fitter one for that reason. He's 19 and has all the time in the world. An apprenticeship will take 4 years, but so will a degree, so if he's inclined look at geology or mining engineering as an alternative, it sure beats being crammed into the hell-hole of a D11 dozer in the tropical sun (though at the moment they're fighting to do that on site as it's the only warm place). He could consider applying to Downer or Orica as a trainee shotfirer, again, takes up to 4 years to qualify fully though can be faster if you're a hard worker and vaguely intelligent, or there are field assistant positions where you go mark out locations for the chief geologist and help out with the exploration logistics. there are trainee surveyor positions on site, document controllers, admin, OHS and numerous other things. But if he rocks up and says "I want a job in mining, don't know what" he won't get anywhere. Find his skill set and inclination and go from there.

Too right it is; there was a bit of hoo-ha at my OH's site, so he joined CFMEU on the offchance it might help. Hoo-ha got resolved and he resigned from them, it's just a case of going into the lodge and telling them you want to quit. Incidentally, I had an ask at a site I was on yesterday about training courses, the operator supervisor said that as of December last year, the industry (in QLD at least) does not recognise "certificates" achieved on a simulator (which a lot of dump truck and excavator mining courses are). If you want to go down that route check that the course is actually done on a real machine.

You can still earn fairly good money doing a much shorter roster, you just have to look elsewhere; my OH does 3/1/3/5 (days, not weeks) in Queensland and earns the same hourly rate as the longer rosters in WA, it's a question of how many hours they do in the day. Whether you can cope with it as a couple is a function of how independent you are, and how much you trust your parter; the opportunities for a bit of playing away from home are immense for both sides of the partnership, and suspicion will destroy it. I didn't like the being apart thing at first, and resisted him going away for a long time, but once he actually made the leap I grew to quite like it; I get "me time" for half the year, and yes, it is harder when you have dependents, but frankly, if he was doing the ten hours a day he was in town on 5/2 rather than the 12 hours at site with the day/night shift then he'd being seeing about the same amount of the kids anyway.

Ultimately, if you're getting tax deductions on a mortgage it means you're making a loss somewhere. If your house is paying for itself with no deductions in place, or if it's positively geared and you're paying interest on the rent, you're not making a loss, so if you don't need the money here right now keep it that way. Once you have a residential property of your own you're better off consolidating the money into your non-deductable debt (your residence) and increasing the deductable one (your "investment", though at that stage check whether you can still claim a deductable debt if you use the money to invest in a residence from the UK property; in Australia you can't.) Investigate if there's deductions you can claim from the property itself rather than the mortgage repayment; here you get a depreciation survey from a quantity surveyor and can claim all the fittings and the depreciation of the building itself, and you don't have to be negatively geared to get back a substantial sum. I have no idea whether there's a UK equivilent.

Yes, absolutely - we're on the verge of buying an induction range as well once the kitchen designer finishes up. Incidentally, if you think that you'd want one further down the line over here, compare prices and seriously look at importing one from the UK; the one we are after is $8000 here, and you put an order in at the shop and they send it from the UK. Go directly to the UK for it and it's $3300 including transport fees, import tax and GST. We wondered about the Australian compliance thing and warrenty and have found out from the company themselves that while you lose the 2 year local warrenty, you get a 1 year international one, and according to a sparky who we hit up about installing it, depending on state you only need compliance plate if you're onselling it (different for gas ranges though), and that he honestly wouldn't look for one anyway.

We looked at doing this as the car we were looking at was a few thou cheaper in Victoria and we were going to combine buying it with a family holiday, but we were told that when you re-register it in the new state you have to pay stamp duty again, as well as in the state of purchase which wipes out any savings. there was mentions of getting some kind of temporary rego specifically for going into a new state but the hassel of it all just didn't seem worthwhile. I'd be glad to be proved wrong on this.

We looked at going through one of those "wealth creation" companies a while back. they wanted $9k for the initial consultation, then an additional $500 per month to monitor our bills, then they were going to release the equity in our place using a line of credit loan at a higher percentage than our variable for no advantage at all. Complete waste of time and money. In the end we offset our equity against the new properties for $0 upfront and watched the market carefully, chosing houses that were underpriced for their rental return and positive cashflow if not positive geared and saved a fortune over what that company would have done for us investing in a high growth, high demand area we knew well. My experience is that you can do it way better yourself if you're prepared to put time into thoroughly researching the market; we invested in about 1.5 mill worth of property, none of which has caused us debt at any stage, and did it by having a fairly crappy residential place that we threw every cent of spare cash into paying off early, thus generating lots of cash equity.