Strick

Hi Em and Ad, From what your descriptions of yourselves and what you are looking for, combined with the fact one of you has obtained employment, I think that you would fit right in in Hobart and I don't say that about everyone..! I have a couple of dogs and get out almost every day on long walks. My favourite spots are: 1. Bellerive and Howrah Beaches parking behind the Blundstone arena. Im my opinion Howrah is the best beach in the city generally. 2. Lauderdale Beach/Roches Beach from one end to the other - you can sometimes spot dolphins. Note that, although these beaches are off lead all winter access for dogs is more restricted in summer. 3. Kingston Beach is also worth a mention although only the far end is dog friendly but remains open all year. It's more of a dog park on a beach than an actual walk in my opinion . 4. Queens Domain - The oval area is off lead as are many of the bushy parts. The jogging track which has great views is on lead but recommended. Also a good place to run obviously. 5. Montrose Foreshore - from the High School to Wilkinsons Point. On and Off lead. This initially looks like a terrible place to walk as its so close to the Brooker Highway, but if you look the other way across the Bay, the views are great, especially at sunset. 6. John Turnbull Park, Lenah Valley. Not the biggest park in the world but a very active dog group meets at 5pm every day if socialisation is your thing. 7. Jim Bacon Reserve - very local to me and the best spot in the Moonah area which is not overburdened with dog walking opportunities. Off lead. 8. Lenah Valley Track to Newtown Falls and Junction Cabin. On lead but all in the beautiful forest of the Wellington Park. 9. Knocklofty Reserve, West Hobart, Beautiful views, on and off lead, watch out for snakes. 10. Long Beach/Nutgrove Beach, Sandy Bay. On and off lead but I think dog access to Nutgrove has become more restricted recently. 11. Natone Hill Circuit, Geilston Bay. Mostly off lead and has suffered fire damage recently. Great views. Links with Eastern Shore bike path which goes on for miles and is on lead. There's a few to be going on with anyway...

I don't think you'll have problems converting an American driving licence to a Tasmanian one. You probably just have to present yourself to a Service Tasmania office and they'll convert it for you. When you take out insurance don't forget to check if you can transfer your US no claims bonus. I was able to use my UK bonus and saved a 1000 bucks that way with the NAB bank.

Hi Nikki, not to put a downer on things but when I emigrated in 2012 getting my qualification assessed by the Australian authority was by far the hardest part of the process. My problem was my course was too short, it was a masters from the University of Bristol obtained over two years. In the end, they assessed my qualification at 'Welfare Worker' level, which didn't really bother me too much as I'd had a belly full of social work anyway and welfare worker and social worker carry the same point score. I have to say that the gentleman who assessed my qualification in Melbourne was one of the most officious and unpleasant characters I'd ever had the misfortune of dealing with in my life. I really felt he was enjoying his little piece of power over my future in Australia. He had me going back to Bristol University to ask them if they could reissue my degree certificate with the word 'postgraduate' removed, that sort of thing. Good luck with your application

In Tasmania it doesn't rain very much expressed as total annual precipitation. It rains little and often. Usually just enough to ruin your day - just like England and with temperatures to match. It is also spectacularly windy, I believe several of the buses have been in danger of having their top levels removed by natural forces only this week - so we may get the opportunity to test your zany theory...

I haven't found the Yorkshire Tea sold in the supermarkets here to be of inferior quality to the British variety. It still makes a really strong brew, in my opinion. I haven't been to the UK for a while, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the strings had started appearing there too! I generally don't order anything from the UK or miss very much at all - except the cheaper price of a pint. Having said that, I'm having trouble tracking down a regular towelling bathrobe which is not really expensive, or with short little arms or both. I am considering ordering one in from M and S and taking advantage of the free shipping. Many of the threads on this forum that moan about the expensive prices in Australia are rapidly becoming out of date as we hit the two dollars to the pound mark once again. Things are certainly about 25% 'cheaper' now than they were in 2012 when I emigrated.

What an awful place Australia would have been if it wasn't for the likes of Gough...

I have no idea Tantastic, how people managed to emigrate before t'internet. I think, like my great aunt and uncle, they put all their stuff in tea chests and hoped for the best. You should probably be aware that the distances between some of these suburbs ie lindisfarne and Bellerive is miniscule. Today, for example, I took the dog for a walk at 4:00 pm from West Hobart to Bellerive and then all the way across the beaches to Little Howrah beach and back again with plenty of time left over to give my Landlord a lift to the airport at 7:00pm. The lack of traffic, even at peak times, is one of the big attractions of tassie, in my opoinion.

I live in a house in West Hobart with a really nice view of Bellerive, the river and the Eastern suburbs. Although West Hobart is probably superior in terms of its proximity to town and beautiful old streets, I can measure very clearly from my window that those buggers over there keep the sun about an hour later every evening than we do over here in the shade of the mountain. And that's a big deal, unless your're an early bird. Have you considered Lindisfarne? You just turn left rather than right right as you cross the bridge from town. Slightly cheaper house prices and possibly rents and great views. Shopping better and people always seem very friendly in Lindisfarne for some reason. It's quieter and the only disadvantage, as far as I can see , s that it doesn't have a beach (beautiful little harbour though) and the age profile is a bit old.

Most of the disability work in Tasmania is casual. You'd be unlikely to get offers a permanent position straight away. I've turned them down as it meant losing four bucks an hour on my hourly rate. The organisation I work for is crying out for staff in its child protection unit. The kids are hard work though. Drop me a private message if you're interested and I point you in the right direction. However, you won't find work before Xmas, they take the police checks and references pretty seriously, though the former come through much quicker than in London. Rick

It's mainly the private sector that's impoverished in Tasmania, practically the whole state works for the public sector in some shape or form and jobs in this area are not particularly hard to track down. I work in disability services and got the second job I applied for. I'm snowed under with work at the moment and there are many other organisations like mine in Hobart. If you are not particularly choosy about what you do and are not a slave to one particular profession, then you can do quite well in Tasmania.

I work in disability services in Tasmania with the intellectually disabled and my impression is that society here is much more medicalised than in the UK. I think the reasons are many and varied but, in Tasmania, we are much closer to the days of the big mental hospitals/asylums than seems to be the case in other parts of Australia and most of the UK. So much so, that many of my colleagues worked in those places and some are stuck in a patient/nurse paradigm that pathologises clients who are often simply not ill - in the sense that a person with Downs Syndrome is not ill, but might well have found themselves living on a ward a few years back being attended to by doctors and nurses to cater their daily living needs. In terms of the general population, the culture seems similar to the USA with ads for various obscure medications on some channels all the time. Moreover, diseases themselves seem to be advertised as though going down with a case of them might actually be in some way desirable... It's enough to make even the healthiest of us begin to morph into raging hypochondriacs! I'm sure the evil drug companies have a lot to answer for..

That's an excellent point. Thanks for that. You can also pick up flights extremely cheaply if you play the game. The ready access to Melbourne is one of the things that undercuts the potential feelings of isolation from living in Tasmania. I've been in Hobart for 7 months now and it's going better than I ever imagined, even if the current rainy spell is a bit hard to take!

Yes, but when's Aldi coming to Tasmania, that's the thing?

Really? I usually just used to buy a bag of frozen potato scallops and a party pack of diet pepsi....:biglaugh:

I have found work in the disability support sector. It's true that Tassie has the highest rate of Unemployment in Australia but the picture in Hobart is slightly better than the headline figure suggests and Hobart's unemployment rate is not far off the Australian average. I am not sure what line of work you're in, but Tasmania does operate a large (subsidized) public sector and there appears to be quite a bit of work around in this area. I believe that, for those in employment, life can be pretty sweet in Tasmania.