Eera

Please don't take offence. I lived in Sydney, I was looking in Brisbane, and had the same experiences as you - couldn't get a foot in the door and literally two interviews in six months and moving to regional town is what I had to do to get employment. The cringe remark wasn't directed at you personally - you'll see loads of posts on here from people who are determined to live in a very specific area where there isn't necessarily the jobs they seek in the area. I've found very much that Australians value Australian experience, regardless of whether the acronyms and minutia of the job are applicable internationally. Once someone has that foot in the door - which may be gotten by living regionally, then doors open and people get a much broader area to choose from. You've had some positivity here so hopefully something will come your way soon

I was unemployed for 6 months when I came over, couldn't get interviews as my experience was not local, in the end had to move to a regional city as in general they have trouble filling vacancies from Australian candidates. I cringe when i see posts saying "we want to move to X suburb"; you move where you can get a job and worry about where you actually want to live further down the line. I'd also be very wary about recruitment agencies, sorry to any genuine people who might be here, but I've found they tend to advertise and re-advertise the same job (at least in my field, which is not IT) to get people on their books which they will then occasionally hawk around; I read an advert from one once which effectively was one I had put on a jobsite a year or so before; they had taken off the logo but used the company slogan and everything - we weren't looking at the time either.

I only have a 10GB plan, once they use it up speed drops to painful levels so they've learned to self-regulate pretty well.

Never had hay fever at all in the UK, have it bad here. Turns out my triggers are wattle, eucalyptus and sugar cane flowers. I'd be fine in the desert.

Bangkok has a huge airport. We had a long stopover (7 hours) between our flights from Yangon to Brisbane, and I knew they had a spa there so thought I'd google to see what therapies they did. Suffice to say putting in "massage Bangkok" brings up a whole amount of websites my company's smut filter doesn't like.

Because we live in the tropics and have white sand, blue sea, palm trees blah blah I avoid places like that to holiday like the plague; no point paying to go somewhere when I can get it for free five minutes away. We tend to save our leave and go long haul, particularly Asia but also the various Americas. Haven't yet managed to get the husband to Europe but he's starting to show interest. I suppose you holiday in places you are interested on regardless of where you live; when I was in the UK I never took a single beach holiday; heat and sand has never been high on my list, but I went to some very interesting former soviet countries and saw a lot of history. Same here; I work on a lot of Whitsunday Islands and to me, those are work places (in a year or two, when you're marvelling over the lovely sweeping view over Whitehaven beach from the spanky new lookout, remember, I vomited doing the fieldwork for it), but going along the various sites of the Thai-Burma railway was sobering and brilliant at the same time. It has to be said though, I don't appreciate all that Australia has to offer. I'm in a couple of photography groups where people from overseas talk about where they are going to go in Australia, and that makes me think that we do have a great country and I should go and see it a bit more. Though I'm still going to Patagonia next year.

Always use them, then if the resultant agent for ticketing has a good reputation I'll buy, if not (and there are some duff ones out there) I take the quote from them to Flightcentre who then match it. For reference, I saved roughly $200 per person on flight to Japan over the airline's own prices, and currently watching flights to Korea which are about $250 cheaper on skyscanner over the airline's prices. I've flown Thai, very good airline; staff couldn't do enough for us.

Which course, the JD one or the Cilex one? Here's a link to the online JD through ANU, I was seriously thinking about doing it at one point. it is post-grad and for domestic students, but it means you wouldn't have to rush through everything before getting PR https://law.anu.edu.au/study/study-programs/juris-doctor-online

A friend I went to school with has just gone the Cilex route and is now a legal executive, rather than a full solicitor; the difference she said is that she can only deal in a limited number of jurisdictions rather than the full gamut, however, most solicitors specialise too so there's effectively little difference. But no, there isn't an equivalent in Australia, though some universities offer a Juris Doctor post-grad course which you do part time and with work experience in law practice.

No. You pay home fees but you're going to have to pay them up-front. Permanent residents can only access FEE-HELP for very specific professional recognition programs. If s/he is a top student the university may have scholarships that could be investigated. My uni had hardship funds which you could apply for if the course had additional costs over and above what student in other courses were charged.

International students are a massive cash cow in the UK; each university has a department specifically there to deal with them, and the British Council (from memory) publishes a tome which lists the equivalent UK qualification for every country. I recall the volume that was on my desk actually went into detail as per the rigour of many overseas universities - there was always issues with diploma mills so we had information as to whether the institutions were actually legitimate or not. Based on that, there's no real problem presented by having Australian year 12 qualifications; the issue would be as presented above - your daughter would be assessed as an overseas student and charged accordingly. I was never aware of anyone being turned away for not having an IB or anything - all we did was go to the book, check they had the equivalent for admission and let them in.

We use OHSC like Snifter. Ours is an independent (though still registered for child care rebate). The PCYC also does a scheme at another school. Our fees are $25 for after school - we don' use the before school option which I think is and additional $18, with 50% rebate, so it works out at $25 per day for two kids. Full day during school holidays is something like $60 per child before rebate. Our scheme is good also in that it lets me book them in only the days we need it - OH is a shift worker so is home half the time. It's been a nice saving over the cost of daycare fees! Whether you get child care benefit / rebate will depend on your visa status and income. There's a new system coming in July for fee assessment.

Wow, my brother was either very lucky to get on it, or the area he lives (Gosford-ish) is well served. I was talking to a lady who was after the same kind of thing he gets for her daughter - a part time carer to come in a couple of times a week and make sure he doesn't stink and get him out of the house every now and again, and she was turned down. It seems that postcode might be the determining factor!

My brother is on the NDIS, and while I can't comment on starting the application from overseas (though there's nothing that states that you specifically can't), you do have to have *a lot* of evidence which literally took my mother months to compile, so maybe in order to get a head start, gathering school assessments, Drs certs etc will be a good start, especially if you've been living overseas, as the scheme wanted to see pretty much every aspect of his life relating to his disability since being a small child.

553 according to a quick, unrefined search on realestate.com.au with a max price of $350k. Can't be bothered trawling all the way through to see what's on offer, look at the first few pages show a variety from older freestanding homes on large lots, through to modern units on the river. We had a few hard years but there is a turnaround happening, southern investors are coming back into the market and overall there's a very optimistic feeling around here right now.

You can appeal against excessive rent increases. This link tells you how: http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/ftw/Tenants_and_home_owners/Renting_a_home/During_a_tenancy/Rent_increases.page Effectively are you paying fair rent compared to the rest of the houses locally? Try negotiating with the landlord (via the agent if that's who they go through). Sometimes it's not in the landlord's interest to lose a tenant as generally the time the place is vacant plus the advertising costs is greater than the amount that the rent would have brought in.

This was my job, and from the information given there'd be pretty much no chance of being assessed as a home student; we waive the international fee if the student had been temporarily away due to a parent's overseas employment - particularly relevant for the armed forces, but also things like long-term overseas secondments. Just moving back with a British passport is not grounds for home student status. However, it's not as bad as all that; the three year residency basis (or as it was officially put at the time was that you had to be ordinarily resident for reasons other than higher education) can only be two years if you become resident before the 1st September, as that's the date taken as being the cut off point, so if you become ordinarily resident on the 30th august, as far as fees are concerned you've been resident for one year the following day. How this works with the Student Loan Company I don't know, they are independent of the university. Bear in mind too that your fee status is set at the start of the course and does not change, so you wouldn't be able to pay international fees for a year then drop it to home fees once you've been there three years. Things have changed in the last couple of years, and Scotland may have a slightly different system, so it is worthwhile checking with universities as VS suggests, however, I would not be assuming there's much of a chance of it happening.

Please let me know how you go with your decision. We need doctors here, especially specialists. They've completely rebuilt the Base Hospital recently, they've almost finished the construction of a brand spanky new cancer centre which mean we won't have to go to Brisbane for treatment anymore, as well. The Ring Road is one of a number of large projects happening at the moment - there's a couple of big bypasses and road realignments in the works; a massive new athletics centre being put in right now, there's longer term plans for the airport to go international though the authorities are being a bit schtum on where that'll be to (NZ is front-runner at the moment). There are also a heap of new pit developments happening within a few hours of us which is attracting the investment back into town and according to the radio we now have one of the lowest regional unemployments in QLD. If you want any further info please don't hesitate to pm me.

I moved out by myself and cranked out the kids in Mackay, however, I know several families who have moved out here from the UK with their kids, settled in, bought houses and are happy here. Kids are adaptable; in reality it's no different for them to moving to another city and starting a new school; my parents moved me between Australia and England four times between the ages of 2 and 15 and while I resented them at the time, I soon made friends and settled wherever we ended up. While there may not be the attractions of the city, frankly I find the complete lack of commute time to be totally worth it, though you do have to alter your schedule to get things done in the day due to the lack of evening light; being near the equator we have fairly even day/nights, so not that horrendous long darkness in winter, but also we don't get that lovely twilight in summer either. I won't lie about summer - it sucks big time, however, you just get on with it. Personally I walk the dog at 5.30 in the morning to avoid the heat, and it's not uncommon to see families doing their bike rides together in the early evening when it's not as sticky. The trade-off is that winter is absolutely glorious; think constant 25 during the day, 15 overnight and no rain for months - that's also when the outdoor sports season is. Can i ask what you do for a living? Most of the people who move here from the UK seem to be attached to either medical professions or heavy industry. There is a huge resurgence in the town right now and there's a very positive feeling around.

Mackay is a pretty family orientated town and there's loads of people who have come from the UK, so your kids won't be regarded as freaks, don't worry. Do they do sports or anything? yesterday was the big sign-on expo and 130 clubs were there so there's loads of different things for them to do. You may find Mackay a bit of a culture shock after London, though we are one of the largest regional towns in Queensland, we are just that - a regional town so don't expect bright lights big city sort of deal. The plus side is you can accidentally leave the garage door open all night and no one has a poke around in your house (as i did last night, oops). If you use the "search" button you'll find lots of recent threads about Mackay and good places to live, good schools etc. If you have any specific questions please ask, I have two kids and know the feeling!

We used to be able to employ WHVs for much longer periods as our engineering company was split into 4 ABNs and a holding company. If we liked the person working for us we would just transfer them between the different subsidiary companies. Doesn't answer your question directly, but ask your boss whether they have that sort of arrangement, it worked for us for ages until we were bought out by an international company.

Is that Qantas codeshare with Latam? I've seen them down to about $900 out of season from Sydney, though sometimes it's via Auckland. It's very early to be getting prices that far ahead, normally 300 days out you'll be getting all the airlines. Last year Latam had a good sale on which was in October for travel early / mid 2018. I'm doing that route April next year so have been monitoring prices.

My daycare was $7.50 p/h, $10 out of hours and different rates for sleepovers. Be aware though, there are a *lot* of extra things the daycare are expected to do on top of that (assuming you are part of a scheme and not just advertising on FB); you have to do daily observations, risk assess everything, have a home that meets regulations for ceiling height, daylight and temperature etc, plus if you have your own kids under 13 they count towards the maximum number of children who are allowed in the house at any time. My lady is actually trying to get out of it now as the red tape is getting unbearable. If you don't own your own home also bear in mind that the landlord's insurance may not allow it - my insurance with Suncorp had a clause specifically forbidding a tenant from running their own business within a home. I queried it as my tenants were self-employed concreters but insurance said it was for things like daycare that could potentially cause damage (don't shoot the messenger on that one, it's what they said!)

You can download stat dec proformas, is that what you're after? Here's the link to the Australian High Commission's choice of form https://www.ag.gov.au/Publications/Statutory-declarations/Pages/default.aspx

Just arrived back on the weekend. Found Japan very easy to get around - station announcements are in English and Japanese so not difficult in the slightest. Did a couple of Viator day trips to Mt Fuji and on the bullet train, but did find the governing factor was the endurance of Mr 5, but didn't expect too much otherwise. Didn't like Tokyo too much; it's kind of seedy but the people are friendly and really cannot do enough to help you out. If you've seen the original Total Recall, with the constant noise and advertising, you kind of get the idea what it's like. Skiing was fantastic in Sapporo, went the Club Med route which was exxy as a single payment, but when you consider that it includes all meals and ski tuition, the numbers aren't too much different from New Zealand. We loved it so much that a return trip is on the cards, though this time I'll go via Singapore on a daytime flight and stopover for a couple of days - we went ANA via Sydney direct, and the return leg was 30 hours of travel which was hideous - got the kids a couple if cheap tablets to play which were sanity savers! Next time we will fly via Osaka as we elected not to do too much travel with kids and ski gear in tow. I'd really, really recommend that anyone in the same position books airport pick ups; while the trains are great and relatively easy to navigate, doing it after an overnight flight with a fractious family is not the greatest start to a holiday.