skiegirl14

My husband and I have just taken a holiday to sydney and loved it. We realise a holiday is different than living in a place but it was so nice to have so much more variety in everything than in WA. We also realise that sydney is out of our price range. We have a 2 year old and are hoping to have another next year. We have heard that Wollongong was nice and also Newcastle. My husband is an electrician working in the mines right now but we'd like to get away from the fifo life. Any advice on what the job and house markets are like would be appreciated! ?

I'm not sure what your circumstances are, but we applied about 2 1/2 years ago for our 175. We were looking on here and saw that it was taking people years to even get a case officer, so we decided to come out on a working holiday after being advised we could transfer our 175 application to a 457 once we got out here and found someone to sponser my husband. What we didn't realise was that since we were in the country, it pushed our 175 application to the front of the queue. We ended up being contacted by our case officer within 2 months of being here and once we had our police checks and medicals we were preapproved within the month. We just went to Bali (cause you have to be over seas for the final approval) and got our visa stamps. We have now had our permanent residency since last August. We didn't use an agent, because we had been told by a few people on here and others that they would rip you off. We have actually had a family member trying to get his sorted over here and has cost him over $17,000 throughout this last year and they still managed to screw up his application. We went to see a few when we were still in the UK and they just gave us dodgey vibes, so be careful.

Hi there! My husband and I moved here from Northern Ireland (I'm originally from California) about a year and a half ago. We were glued to these sites before trying to get as much info as we could. We both have iphones, but got them unlocked before we left and then just got pay as you go sim cards from optus. We have the $30 a month plan and do call the US and UK quite a bit. We rarely have to top up early. Make sure to take advantage of facetime and skype too. That helps keep all the costs down. The easiest way to get into the CBD (downtown) is by train. There are quite a few train lines that run through Perth and is really easy to get around. There are tons of nice suburbs around Perth. It really does depend on your price range. That website realestate.com.au is really good. There's also gumtree.com.au. That one is kind of like the craigslist over here. We have bought loads of stuff off there, but they also have jobs and people looking to meet friends. They have the same thing in the UK and I actually met a few girlfriends through the site there. I hope all that info helps! I love it here and have no plans to live anywhere else :biggrin: