Perez

My absolute favourite has to be "she'll be right mate!"

Hi,

We are moving to London next year and are planning to take a long holiday in South America (6 months) after leaving Aus. We are wanting to ship back personal effects (clothes, kitchen stuff, laptop, documents etc).

We will need to have our stuff stored prior to being shipped - ideally we'd be able to time it so our stuff gets to the UK around the same time as us.

Can anyone recommend a service that they have used? I was looking at services like Seven Seas (15 boxes - roughly $2k inc 15 weeks storage).

Thanks in advance, appreciate any suggestions.

Is it mandatory to apply for a passport - how much is it?

Not mandatory but if you want to leave Australia and come back then you'll need to travel on an Australian passport. I read on the DIAC site that when you get citizenship, your PR visa on your original passport expires - therefore no right to return on that document.

For details about passport applications, see this site - https://www.passports.gov.au/web/forms/entrypoint.aspx

Here's my timeline so far:

 

Date applied - 04/03/14

City/Council area - Port Phillip

Online / Paper - Online

Date received the acknowledgement email - 04/03/14

Date of the Citizenship Test - 19/03/14

Date of ceremony - 28/04/14!

Type of ceremony (Urgent/Normal) - Normal

Citizenship ceremony was yesterday, a nice feeling to have that certificate in hand! Now we just need to apply for our Aussie passports!

Good luck all, hope you get yours sorted soon!

Here's my timeline so far:

Date applied - 04/03/14

City/Council area - Port Phillip

Online / Paper - Online

Date received the acknowledgement email - 04/03/14

Date of the Citizenship Test - 19/03/14

Date of ceremony - 28/04/14!

Type of ceremony (Urgent/Normal) - Normal

Yes this 500KB JPEG stipulation is absurd, when every scanner I've used scans as PDF. So any ideas about how to convert my nice PDFs to smaller JPEGs?

 

The other option is to post - they keep repeating this on the site but never actually tell you which address, so I'm wary of posting it to the Melbourne office (which I stipulated online) in case they go astray.

 

Would they need the electricity bill and form 1195 certifying as well? Seems a bit strange to get a household bill certified...

I would suggest using photoshop or another image editor such as GIMP, Paint.net... capture each page and save as a separate JPEG.. upload as required. This worked for me although was a bit fiddly.

Bit of a painful process and not one for the technophobe!

With regard to certification, online docs don't need to be certified, but postal ones do. Conflicting information exists on the DIAC site, but I confirmed this with them by telephone.

So I uploaded all documents as JPEG, none were certified and I was fine. I took the originals to the appointment and they checked them.

Good luck!

It took us hours to do Form 80, I did it for my wife and I proactively (front loaded) so no idea whether they needed it or not. I merged a spreadsheet into the end with my travel calendar (which I gave 10 years of, 30 pages long). I imagine it would be a nightmare if you don't have reason to keep records.

Wow, 30 years is a lot! I guess the only thing you can do is give it your best with whatever information/records you have.

When I applied for PR it was 10 years. I was able to get around the last 9 years by searching for booking references in my gmail account - i.e. seraching for anything from airlines such as Easyjet, Ryanair, any holiday companies I could remember, along with any stamps in my passport. Managed to pretty much sort it, but it was a pain to obtain all that information!

With regard to visits to Europe where there are no stamps, I doubt they have any visibility of such trips, so if you miss a few I'm fairly certain there will be no comeback.

Mine was similar. Applied 24-Feb, got an email on 27-Feb saying the test date was 14-Mar. Sat the test, online tracking system was updated the same day to reflect "applicant approved". On 18-Mar received a letter (dated the same day as the test) notifying approval. Now just have to wait for the council to organise the ceremony. My council is Monash, and their next date is late May, so fingers crossed.

My wife had her appointment yesterday and online it's showing as approved, so we just need to wait for a date.

My council is Port Phillip. The immigration officer said it's not one of their busier councils so hopefully it won't be too long. No rush really as long as it's in the pipeline.

Letter received today - application granted!

It was dated last Weds (the same day as my Citizenship appointment). Didn't take them long!

Just need to wait for a ceremony now!

Hi,

Just a quick question regarding Form 80 (providing I get asked to complete it)

The overseas travel question may be a serious problem for me as I've been working on a ship for the last 13 years and have travelled to probably 150-200 countries multiple times in that time.

Apart from holidays which I can most likely get accurate dates for, the overseas ports I've visited by ship will be nigh on impossible for me to remember where I've been let alone when.

I'm hoping that I won't get asked for Form 80 but I suspect that I might.

I would like to know if I provide a list of countries that I can remember, would this suffice?

Thanks

Your best bet is to call DIAC and ask for advice. I'm sure this situation will have occurred before (and no doubt regularly with people applying under the same code as you!)

I imagine if you answer to the best of your ability you will be ok. You might wish to include a letter with the P80, describing your situation.

Thanks for your replies veryone, so hopefully I will hear in a few days.

 

Just to get a few things sorted. I am not required to do a UK police check, just an aussie one? I havent left Australia for more than a week since I came here four years ago?

 

 

Thanks

Correct... a police check is only required if you have spent 12 months or more in a given country since being granted your permanent residency (as per http://www.citizenship.gov.au/applying/files/pid_docs/conferral_checklist/) - Good Character Documents section.

The Aussie one, you have to complete a police checking form and submit as part of your application (or provide the details during your online application) - you don't need to apply for an Aus police clearance certificate like you might have had to when applying for PR.

We did our test in Dec (also in Melbourne), we were advised of the test 2 weeks before we did it. However, we are still waiting for a ceremony. I have called my local council who were able to give me the ceremony dates but said immigration are the one's who inform you when you will have the ceremony. Called immigration and they were unable to tell us when we might have the ceremony, simply saying it can be anywhere from 3-6 months from the test.

Hi SKW... can I ask what local council you fall under?

Hi, just sent all my documents back for the citizenship, applied last Thursday. Just wondereing how long it will take until I get a test date I live in the Melbourne area? I have elected to do my test under melton City Council, if anyone knows if I can get processed slightly quicker in another area please let me know. I am keen to travel on a holiday this year to Asia so hope the process is not too long!

I applied (online) last Tuesday, and received an email today with my citizenship interview/test appointment. Also based in Melbourne.

My test is next Weds.

Hope this helps!

Just take them with you to the interview. That's all we did as we did both of our separate applications on an iPad and couldn't upload. It didn't cause any hassle.

Thanks. Submitted my application.

I called DIAC and they advised to do as best as I could with regard to attaching the images. They said that if images couldn't be attached then certified documents would need to be sent to them by post. It was suggested that this could be done at the same time as the application, in order to reduce any delay caused by them having to ask for them.

In the end (with a bit of fiddling with image qualities), I got all the pages under 500kb (and still readable).

So now I just have to sit back and wait to get invited to an interview!

Hi all,

I'm about to put in my citizenship application but am a little confused. Hoping someone has already gone through this successfully and will be able to offer some advice.

With regard to attaching documents to the application (scanned forms such as the police checking one) as well as documents, the site guidance specifies that the files should be jpeg format and less than 500kb per file.

In the case of multi page files (such as the police checking form), what needs to be done? At the moment we've scanned each page as an individual jpeg, and will upload individually making sure the page number is in the filename. Is this the way to do it?

It's a bit weird that they won't take other formats such as pdf as this would make it much easier!

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I thought the rotten, lousy drivers were the most dangerous things in Australia! How come they weren't mentioned?:huh:

+1 for this... why do so many drivers here drive so dangerously - tailgating in particular is a big problem.

We just got our visa grant today. I put the application together myself, to save money. A colleague had done it himself, and gave me plenty of tips and let me look at his paperwork so I could get an idea how thorough to be.

If your application should be fairly straightforward and you're not afraid to spend the time researching, drafting and redrafting, then I would recommend applying yourself. Just make sure you're as thorough as can be, and if you have any queries you can always call DIAC's information line for advice. Don't underestimate how much time it will take you, the form filling took me every weekday evening for 5 days, and that's not including the amount of time I spent getting the required information together!

If you have any doubts at all or your case is complicated (e.g. health issues, any sort of criminal history etc) then it would probably pay dividends to consult a professional.

Hey Sophie,

For the first week after arriving in Melbourne, we rented a private room from a hostel type place in South Yarra. Then we worked hard to find a rental to move into after that, and luckily were able to find one pretty quickly. You probably won't be able to rent somewhere without viewing as that was the general reply I got when asking for information before we moved - a lot of letting agencies won't let you apply unless you've viewed the place.

With regard to visa in passport - with a lot of visas now they are electronic so no need to have them in your passport unless you specifically request them to do so. I think you should be fine if you take visa grant letter with you when arriving, in case of any queries. With regard to employers, they can check your eligibility to work on an on online system called VEVO, so again no need to have visa in your passport.

All the best and good luck for your move!

Barry

Hi all,

I'm looking at the forms required for PR (already here on a 457).

It doesn't look like the form 80 is mandatory, and I have read a few articles by people who have and haven't submitted with their initial application.

So... who didn't submit up-front? If so, did you get asked for it?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the information! I called my previous employer, the only company reference they are able to provide include start/end dates and position held.

They are sending this to me, so hopefully this will be enough. I can probably also get hold of the Job Description for my role there + a copy of my employment contract showing the number of hours per week, so this should cover any requirements.

Hi all,

I'm in the midst of getting all paperwork together for my PR application. With regard to references, I already have one for my employment in the UK, however I haven't got one yet from my previous Australian employer (before my current sponsor).

I can contact the HR department tomorrow and I'm sure I'll get a bog standard letter of reference (assume Aus is the same as the UK in that respect) - is this sufficient? I was hoping to get my previous manager to provide it but he's on leave and not sure when he's back at work.

Would appreciate any advice regarding this, if anyone's already been down the same path.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a PAYG sim for use in the UK please?

We're going back for a holiday in a couple of weeks and I'll be taking my iphone. Will be using a combination of calls and data, so something that's reasonable for both would be great.

Thanks in advance!