rikyuu

her fault, she hit a stationary object because she failed to look properly when reversing, how could it possibly be anyone else fault but hers?! She is VERY lucky she didn't hit a child through her carelessness.

I don't know about Perth, but we did it in Melbourne in 3 weeks, along with buying 2 cars, getting a job and everything else that goes with arriving in Australia (medicare, licenses, insurance, banks, TFN etc etc.) and with 2 young kids to hinder us!

after about a year, I started to feel cold in anything under 25C, set the heating to 23C instead of 17C (in the UK) and still wear thick fleeces inside the house. Yesterday, 42C was a bit too much, but ok once the aircon was on in the house/car, set to about 27C. About 30C outdoors is nice now, but would still wear long sleeve shirt and thin jacket for work.

It's hard to say whether it would be a better quality of life away from the rat race and with young kids it's hard to predict how your life would have panned out anyway. As kids grow up your life changes in so many different directions. For me personally, I had a fairly comfortable job (it was at risk, but since leaving the company has gone from strength to strength, of course I could not have predicted this), would have had a nice final salary pension, 10 minutes drive to work in light traffic, low living costs, a house, mother within 2 hours away for emergencies, free health care. Now I have a job in an unstable company with high work load, long commute in horrendous traffic, renting, high living costs, no emergency support, pension losing money, no health cover (and have developed a bone diseases since coming here), missing my family etc. My kids are loving it, school and kindy is great for them, my wife doesn't work (as she looks after the kids) and has nice coffee chats, shopping trip, drive in light traffic, short distances etc with the other mothers and kids and had no family in the UK. So for me it's an increased struggle and more of a rat race, I'm worried about my health, pension and not being able to afford a house. For my wife and kids, they love it. So even in the same household, the move has affected us very differently. Now if my wife was the main bread winner and I looked after the kids and chatted to the other nice mothers at school each day, drove in nice traffic, it would no doubt be the other way around.

very difficult as we were also taking a 3 and 4 year old away from their Grand parents, Aunties and Great Grand parent (who is very old and might never see them, or me again). Also had to delay it a few months as my mum's father died. Also my mum is single, so lives alone and only has her sister and mum to visit. Very, very difficult....and still is. We were very independent though, my wife's family live abroad and we were used to managing on our own with our kids as my (small) family lived 120 miles away. I'd also lived independently since the age of 18 anyway. We were already used to never having a second to ourselves or a break from the kids, lovely as they are, and financially supporting ourselves.

I lie on the sofa with my 2 kids on top of me and for that brief time it seems nothing else matters.....then the missus speaks.....

UK Forex worked well for me every time. Their transfer was fast, in fact I remember it taking longer to transfer from my UK account to their UK account than it did for them to then send it to Aus, which was next day!

strange how they didn't have a go at muscle bound Mike Nayna for his dark appearance, but instead picked on a young woman. What tough people they are.

it very much depends on how long before you get a job, the area and what is comfortable. We (me, wife and 2 kids) managed to get setup, bringing very little items from the UK, buying furniture from Ikea, reasonable rental ($350pw), 2 older cars, job within 3 weeks, with about GBP20K. But haven't really stopped spending since then and haven't saved much supporting the family on $70k pa.

I hope it falls, but can't see it doing. For my entire working life in UK manufacturing, the industry was crippled by the high pound, having started the same work in Oz, it's now crippled by the high $, plus my UK money is worth half what it was, so I do hope it drops.

For me personally, each of those reasons would be reasons to go back! (I'm only specifically replying to the original post) 1 job - stable job, would have got a promotion (didn't know until after I left and company did a sudden u-turn into profit), large and now stable company, great final salary super vs now, unstable job in a loss making small company with a loss making super. Wife had good job teaching at Uni, now she needs to spend $$$$ and years to retrain to do the same job. 2 house - would have had mortgage nearly paid off on a modest house close to work vs now renting (a nice house), miles from work through the traffic from hell and no hope in sight of affording our own house 3 area - could have lived in the country side or anywhere really, still close to work, vs now ok area, but a bit false (new build) and can't afford decent established area 4 family - although about 100 miles from family, mother retired so help with kids available and would have seen Grandmother before she died and wouldn't feel so bad about taking our kids away from their close family (no one else in the family has young kids) vs here, nobody. so I guess each persons situation is different.

didn't manage to get up north, but got this picture at I got into work this morning, about 8:10am from Melbourne, not the shapest focus, but you get the idea...

We used Crown and it was hell. Good quote, fast shipping and lots of positive posts made us go with them. My first worry was then they were packing (we'd put most of it in boxes already), they simply labelled our boxes with my surname (spelt wrongly in some cases!). I queried it and they joked that the stuff usually gets there! Fortunately I'd prepared my own labels with full UK and Oz contact details and quickly stuck them on all the boxes. So off our stuff went and off we went to Japan for a month before on to Melbourne. We started worrying again after we couldn't log in to track our stuff. It took a few phone calls to sort out some 'strange' problems. Then after 3 weeks, we worried even more as our stuff hadn't left the UK. They were apparently waiting for the container to fill up. It was hard to imagine they were doing so few shipments that it would eventually take months to fill the container. They started ignoring our emails, so we started phoning them every other day. Finally after packing our stuff in August, we got it in Melbourne just be for Xmas. Nearly 4 months, and I was told that was a special favour as we phoned so much! Imagine 2 adults with 2 young children managing for 3 months in Australia with just our suitcases off the plane. We were furious. Add to that, Qantas didn't both to put our suitcases on the plane, so we actually had the first 4 days in Oz with nothing! Then they smashed up the kids twin push chair when we did get it!

we were turned down by Victoria a few years ago. 2 professionals, both with degrees, one teacher and one electronics engineer with years of experience, simply said we were unemployable and they wanted more money to back up that statement. We were planning to sell up and live here almost mortgage free (our UK house was reaching it's peak, GBP-AUD at about 2.8 and houses were still cheap in Oz). So that set us back a few years and a few more $10k's applying for a skilled independent visa. When that finally came through (electronics engineer was on the critical skills shortage list by then), the GFC happened, UK house prices plummeted, pound plummeted and Oz house prices had doubled. Now we can't afford a house in Oz. Just one person's decision, sat in an office, had a big effect. All I can say is keep trying and look at what other options are available.

my colleague lives with just him and his partner in an apartment in Melbourne, but it was all electric (including hot water and heating) so his electric bill was astronomical, but of course no gas bill. I think typically your bills will be about 70% of a larger family home, but it really depends on how much you use the heating, hot water and aircon as they are the big hitters.

yeah crown included our Aqis fee in the quote too. What they neglected to tell us was that after collecting our stuff in August, it wouldn't be delivered until the end of December and that I'd have to phone them nearly every day from Australia to get such a speedy service!! :mad:

Amazed that Australia is number one seeing as though nobody on a median wage can afford a median house in Melbourne metro and I doubt the same people can afford health insurance or private schooling either. And we're always hearing how hard Aussies work to make ends meet, 12 hour days and weekends. I guess owning your home, health, education and work-life balance aren't a priority.

it gets a bit complicated because if you have a 5kw system and a 5kw aircon then the system will power the aircon for free at max power and max sun. But you don't always use the aircon and don't always get max sun either. In a grid tie system, anything you don't use will be put back into the grid, but it's not one for one, you don't get the same price you sell your electricity for as what you buy it at. You typically sell it for less. If you sell it for half of what you pay for it, you'd have to use the aircon for half the time that you sell your electric back to the grid for (if that makes sense). I have a little stand alone system that I mentioned before installed on my camping trailer, just 320W max. That charges 4 batteries. The house lights run off the batteries at 12v and the TV and a few other bits and pieces via a mains invertor. But this system is difficult to size because once the batteries are charged, any excess solar power is 'wasted' ie. not used. But some days you don't get much sun, so the batteries run down low. So you need ample batteries to manage a couple of days with no sun and then ample solar power to recharge them in a short time. Batteries are expensive, especially the deep cycle type and you can only discharge them about 40-50% before adversely affecting their life. I got mine 2nd hand for about 1/4 of the new price, but it's anyone's guess how much life is left. I don't know if it would be a viable option, but I have one of those fridges that runs off gas, by absorption, using heat to heat up an ammonia solution which then expands and contracts to cool the fridge section. I wonder if a scaled up version could use the sun's heat for the same process? Although I think they are less than 50% efficient, it uses about 90w which would be about 45w cooling. So for 5kw cooling, it would need to be 111 times bigger, which is an awful lot of ammonia!

sounds like a nightmare, may be worth looking here; http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/consumerprotection/content/Motor_Vehicles/Buying_and_selling/Buying_a_vehicle/Used_vehicle_%28statutory%29_warra.html

any details on what her mum did to save her? Any special procedure or a case of calling the emergency services ASAP?

as a decent aircon system takes about 5kw, you would need 25x200w panels and a 5kw+ invertor. Cost would be about $15-20k, although you could power the rest of the house when the aircon was not in use.

another interesting link http://www.simplesustainable.com/topic/2463-melbournes-median-house-prices-vs-wages-1965-2010/ the jump in 1999 just shows how much of a control the government have on house prices. They have so many ways at their disposal to artificially interfere with house prices (CGT cuts, grants, negative gearing, restricting land, increasing immigration, allowing foreign purchases etc etc), and such an incentive to keep them increasing, that they will never let the prices drop and become affordable. PS, if you are wondering what the government inventive is for high prices look below. Tax accounts for about 40% of the cost of a house and they get about $42b a year from it. http://australianpropertyforum.com/topic/9652760/1/ and the incentive to the banks is of course to make more money from the interest on bigger loans, then there's the whole construction, real estate market sectors who have vested interests. Safe to say, they'll never let the prices drop. The government has a history of artificially interfering with things they have a financially vested interest in.

it's distressing that as a professional qualified electronics engineer with 17 years of experience, I can barely afford any median property on that map.

$20 for a DVD player at Safeway (advertised at $30!). more stuff here; http://www.ozbargain.com.au/

Can't really do much of that stuff myself as I just work all week and try to recover/do house chores at the weekend, but my wife gets involved with the kids' school and kindy, helping at summer festivals, teaching Japanese etc.