Eera

Contact Engineers Australia directly; they have a specific resource for helping with assessment of qualification for potential migrants. Start with this page :https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/For-Migrants/Migration-Skills-Assessment/MSA-StepByStep-Guide and take it from there. they are actually quite helpful and will point you in the right direction.

In terms of..? Climate wise, fairly similar, not as sticky as Cairns. There's more industrial-type jobs in Mackay, and like Bobj says, more beaches. Rental situation is getting a bit tight at the moment as there are some large construction projects going on. What are you concerned about / interested in the most?

As above. Also bear in mind that some companies will not deal with recruitment agencies as they charge something like 15% of your salary as a fee. We are one of them, and we have our own recruitment and HR departments so aren't going to pay for third parties to do their job. Check out who is actually recruiting on Seek and other job sites, there's no harm in firing off a letter of interest; previously we've ended up employing some people who weren't in the country when they applied as we liked the sound of them and were willing to wait, so it can happen.

We've found from experience that ongoing irritations like you describe maybe symptomatic of an underlying problem: OH developed really watery eyes and ongoing cough / aches and pains. We did the anihistimine and codrel thing but nothing would shift it. Eventually he went to the docs for a blood test to find out what he was allergic to. Turned out to be no allergies but really high cholesterol, Started on statins, after six more months of blood tests turns out he has hypothyroidism. Since starting on thyroxin all his other symptoms have cleared up. If it's really affecting you get it further investigated; we had no clue about this chronic immune system thing until we dug deeper because of fairly innocuous symptoms.

It's true that universities have the authorisation to make the decision as to whether a student is Home of International - that was my job for a time - but it's generally based on whether the parents are basically *forced* to move overseas, rather than make the choice to do so. For example, there's no issues with military families stationed overseas, and if the parents were seconded overseas we would look at it sympathetically. If the parents are basically moving out of their own volition then we wouldn't charge Home fees. Bear in mind that the previous post regarding government attitudes is (was) correct - for student loans the three year residency rule sits. However, in terms of the three years, they took residency in the UK on a certain date as being one year regardless of how long the potential student has been in the country - used to be 1st September. So if you turn up on the 30th August, as far as fees were concerned you met one years'residency a day or so later. So if you were to move over to do A Levels under this ruling, there's not necessarily any need to do a gap year - though check this is still the current rule, though I was in International Students for a good time, that was also a number of years ago. There's also another part of the ruling that gets overlooked a lot ; for home fees to be charged the student has to be resident for three years for reason *other* then higher education. Effectively this means that if they were to move over to attend university, their fee status would not change after three years if they chose to do post-grad.

Sent you a PM

I find it really frustrating that people seem to refuse to consider "regional" areas - even when those regional areas can be excess of 300000+ people. We have huge, I mean HUGE problems recruiting employees - to the extent we offer wages 30% higher than they'll find in Metro areas, and still they bugger off at the first opportunity. It's a waste of our time training them up when we lose them as soon as they become assets. In the IT field we are sick to death of having to wait days to get someone flown up from Brisbane or whatever to do something to the server: there are regional opportunities, especially for companies who don't have a statewide presence and no IT pool to call on. I also recall the recent thread from an IT professional who could not get a job in Melbourne despite the impression it was a golden area in the field. Of course there are different areas within IT, all of which use acronyms I don't understand and may be based in localised areas, but the point is there are opportunities out there which don't involve waiting tables if you are willing to consider them.

"Regional" does not necessarily equal "countryside". It's pretty much all of Australia outside a few metro centres. Here is Queensland everywhere apart from the south-east corner counts as regional, and funnily enough we have systems engineering needs as well.

check carefully what site classification the package is based on - a lot of the ones I've seen are based on Class S soil which is basically the thinnest slab they can put in. Adelaide particularly is notorious for highly expansive soil and you may be looking at Class H2 or even Class E soil which would potentially add $20k+ to the house build cost. Same if you're on a slope or they've filled the site: footings then may be non-standard and add many thou to the cost. These prices will be determined by the composition of the soil and how much works have been undertaken. If you're not on town sewerage an effluent will cost $5-$20k, depending on the system. If the site has been cut / filled check that there's a Level 1 Certificate (might also be called an Engineering Certificate) for the lots, otherwise you're going to have to pay for compaction yourself.

I remember years ago seeing a Horizon program that found evidence of tsunami something like 200m high on the east coast; they linked it to catastrophic failures on the flanks of Hawaii. Years following that I was a PhD student studying volcano sector collapse (think Mt St Helens) and had a great deal of dealings with various people who were studying the tsunami implication of island collapse on Tenerife. Only two months ago I had to write a report fro the Asian Development Bank about the potential of catastrophic flank collapse on a pacific island where we are currently doing a large job. It's something that is considered in risk assessments on a commercial scale, though frankly having been working in that field as a professional geohazard assessor I can't say it's something that bothers me too much: the stats of fatal injury driving to work are far, far worse. I noticed that my last insurer had an automatic tsunami premium that they added to my house insurance: I asked them to remove it as I live on a hill and frankly, if there was ever the need to claim on it I'd have far bigger things to worry about.

You're hard pushed to say there are suburbs which are safe or unsafe - you tend to find there are bad streets or local areas and the next road over is fine; when I first bought a house in Mackay the neighbour two doors up had a meth lab, the lady over the road was a known dealer and there were hoons a couple of roads down. However, over a year they all variously moved away or got incarcerated and there has been absolutely no issue since. It's the same most places; traditionally Andergrove, South Mackay and Blacks Beach had bad reputations, but there are thousands of people living there and there aren't barricades and barbed wire on the streets so it tended to be very localised parts within those areas There is violence around town late at night; the consequence of too many young people on high wages blowing it on booze and maybe stronger stuff, but does that generally spill over into the suburbs? no. The largest proportion of crime (according to police reports) is vehicle theft. There are areas which have a higher proportion of less desirables (the local nickname for one such area is Ice Island), you can generally tell these by seeing where the really cheap rents are, and having a drive around you'll see the same ones tend to be unkempt and overgrown. Take all the normal precautions of being stringent about your home security and you are very unlikely to have problems; in the 15 years I've lived here the only incident that has ever occurred to me personally was when a drunk teenager mistake my house for his, came in through the unlocked back door and fell asleep on the sofa. Of course crime happens as it does in every city, but take some responsibility for your personal security and you are very unlikely to have issues. In terms of flooding, look up the Mackay storm surge evacuation maps online. If your house is not in an evacuation area you don't have much to worry about. For reference my first house was in Zone 3 of the 5 zones, and during the floods of 2008 (which people are still talking about; it doesn't happen very often), I got maybe 10cm of water through the bottom story of the house. East Mackay and the lower suburbs particularly south of the river are the ones that would be most at risk.

The online application for provisional licences has a section on eligibility where it states that you must be resident in the UK - by that they mean live in the UK for at least half a year. Apparently they ask for addresses you've lived at for the last 3 years and your NI number to speed up identity, though it's a bit vague as to whether they ask for proof of current residency in the UK - that sort of thing would likely be flagged by the identity check. This is a screenshot of the bit that might prove sticky for her:

As above. I've had fairly tokenistic medicals, I've had ones where I had to show I could pickup weights and do sit-ups, I've had full on ones that involve chest x-rays and hearing tests. They probably just want to establish that you can are fit for the job and aren't likely to get injured and claim compensation.

Are you sure you're a citizen by descent and not a full citizen through your father? For people born before 1983 the rules are a bit different: the British government website states that: You became a British citizen on 1 January 1983 if both of the following apply: you were a citizen of the UK and Colonies (CUKC) on 31 December 1982 you had the ‘right of abode’ in the UK This includes people who were born in a British colony and had the ‘right of abode’ in the UK. It also includes people who: were born in the UK have been naturalised in the UK had registered as a citizen of the UK and Colonies (CUKC) could prove legitimate descent from a father to whom one of these applies. The last point would apply to you. I'm in the same boat too - I was born in Australia in the 70's but was granted full British citizenship through my UK-born father and my children are citizens by descent. I agree that the site is difficult to navigate and could do with a few "?" buttons when they start talking legal terms. Second the above and talk to a migration agent who would know the answer pretty much instantly.

Check out Engineers Australia and they will have examples on what sort of jobs you can go for with that qualification. You wouldn't be classed as an engineer per se, but likely an engineering technologist or similar.

NSW Fair Trading refers a few times to the lease break fee being included in the lease agreement. As far as I can make out, if it's not written into the tenancy agreement you signed, the landlord cannot simply opt for it to be paid.

Did you get it sorted? The sites we stay up just use regular 15amp sockets (a normal 10 amp will fit and as long as you don't draw serious power will be fine. we normally just have a LED light and the Engel plugged in). I read somewhere that it's illegal to hook up a caravan using a 10 amp lead though. Your UK socket will not fit - I recall them being a round pin arrangement. We use a regular 15 amp lead (albeit a weatherproof one). There are some vociferous arguments on various camping forums as to whether you need this rating or that rating, though I've been on a lot of camp sites and yet to see any inspections happening.

Doesn't the human body have something like 10 ppb? Better off hanging around the cemetery.

I used to deal with a hobbyist on a regular basis who was convinced there was gold to be found locally. So he'd go collect rocks, get them assayed and bring me the results quite proudly that there was, in fact, gold present. Turns out he was taking samples from a rock wall down the harbour and the assay was showing amounts on the limit of detection at 2 parts for billion or something. But yeah, gold was there. Though i suspect the harbour master wasn't about to let him quarry the harbour wall.

Husband has a decent metal detector, so we consulted the geological maps to find rives with gold lodes up stream, found a likely area areas where gold is most likely to accumulate behind a boulder in the dry creek, cranked up the detector and "wooooooo" - something there. Dug down a bit, retested the site "wooopwooowoooooo". Something large. Dug down a bit more. And found a fork. Went home one fork the richer.

OH is currently a mechanical fitter / sheet metal welder in the mines. Those wages are from when he worked in town on that award. How it worked for him is that they did (and still do in new company) rotating shifts, originally he was 4/3 12 hour day, then went to something like 5/4 10 hour day, so they got loading for the effective daily overtime, plus weekend loading, plus public holiday loading (and a heap of others like tool allowance, commute allowance etc). So their yearly wage is forecast then divided into hours and that's what they got, so while the base salary worked out at 80k, the effective salary with all those loading factored in was a lot more. Whether whatever company you end up with does the same thing I can't say - and it's really confusing to work out to say the least. He got standard 4 week's hols then and 6 now (and because he's always done shifts with long breaks if he takes one week off effectively he gets 2-3 weeks' hols due to the breaks either end of the shift) but has to work through public holidays. If you want more info please feel free to PM me and I can ask him to clarify anything.

Hi Lavers. Slightly different circumstances as the OH is Aussie born and bred; he moved from country Victoria to regional QLD and found work without any particular issue - at the time there was a huge need for tradies in regional areas (as there is increasingly now), so I can't talk directly for Brisbane but the award will outline the basics wage so if you budget for that then any increase will be a bonus - you might see places advertise as "above award wages", and that's what they are referring to. Best of luck!

Those sort of jobs come under industrial awards - there's a sheet metal workers' award and a manufacturing and associated industries award among many. Google them and it will show the minimum wage that he's entitled to, plus penalty rates etc (there's a *lot* of numbers in these things so be prepared to plough through a bit). My OH was on the sheet metal workers award: his base salary was about $75k a year, but they did a 4/3 shift with 12 hour days which meant that there was penalty loadings, weekend and overtime loadings also applied which brought him up to about $110k without additional overtime outside of his shift. Overtime wasn't particularly common as they were already doing long days, but periodically they did a night swing which was 2 to 2.5 x pay. Bear in mind we are regional QLD and they had a fair bit of competition for tradies, but the basic award is still the same and he can't be paid less than specified.

Waffle slabs work, but generally under very specific conditions - do you have access to the site classification? If you do and it's and A or S and the site is flat and free-draining, there's no real issues. If you're on H or some M (since 2011 H has been divided into H1 and H2) you may potentially have problems. I say potentially, because if the house is 12 years old and the slab hasn't cracked you're probably in the clear; we see most structural problems arise in the first year or two as the house settles. There have been problems in some reactive clay areas where waffles were thrown in (cheap to build) during a prolonged dry spell, then when the rains returned and the soil expanded, they cracked. What's the local geology? if it's sandy or non-reactive fill then you should be alright. If there's clays around then really go over the walls and see if there's evidence of cracks that have been bogged up. You can normally expect fine ones around windows but anything a couple of mm wide is cause for concern. Don't instantly dismiss the place because of the slab - as a geotech we hold engineering liability for 13 years from construction, but make sure that the slab fits the land it's on.

That's fighting talk around here! Mackay is weirdly proud of the fact that the population is bigger than Rocky, though they have the edge when it comes to random cow statues. I do a fair amount of work in Rocky and have to say I'm impressed with the amount of investment and beautification that they've done, particularly along the river front. it's also the seat of a number of local government offices (if you are looking for Department of Mines and Department of Main Roads, I generally am). Plus as PQ says, there are some wonderful spots around there - Mt Morgan, the caves (whose name escapes me), good camping areas). But as previously mentioned, avoid the flood areas; they have been working on a levee in recent times but I can't say how far they've gotten with construction.