Phoenix16

Reminiscing about landing here on a 457 over 12 years ago and the rose tinted glasses, that many on here sought to shatter very quickly, still here, citizens and got PR within 12 months of landing.. things changed and it wasn’t so easy for a while, the doom and gloomers went into overdrive, posting messages designed to quickly shatter others roses tinted glasses, and constantly warn them ‘oh you can’t stay here forever’. Many of us came here on a whim and an opportunity and I feel it’s nice to see that for the determined, yes, there is a chance.. the chance we all got! Good luck to ya all xx

I would just comment that nursing is extremely competitive right now. Australian Universities are churning out many nurses each year for a much disproportionately lower number of available graduate nursing positions, which is realistically the only way many graduate nurses get their ‘foot in the door’. As a newly qualified nurse you would be competing with many Australian trained nurses in the same position, many of whom have had placements in Australian hospitals and made the vital contacts needed to even have a chance at obtaining an entry level role without securing a graduate placement. It is a harshly competitive situation at the moment and Australia does quite rightly prioritise it’s Citizens and Permanent Residents first. On the other hand, many nurses tell me the job market is cyclical and there may come a time when more nurses are needed, with this in mind my advice would be to get as much experience as you can and perhaps gain specialised experience and skills that would be attractive to Australian hospitals. I’m newly into a graduate role and it took me nearly 2 years to get it, my last chance really! We were told in orientation that for each of us here 5 others were disappointed, pretty humbling and very sad. As has been said previously, it would appear that some areas of nursing may be leaving the list, I know there was a time when many nursing graduates went into rural jobs after graduation as a way to gain experience but I hear even rural graduate programs and jobs in general are much more competitive now and no guarantee. My apologies to sound doom and gloom but the situation seems to be very much different even from just a few years ago...

We got our citizenship 3 days before my husband had to fly to Singapore for work, the Perth office issued his passport within the day, although it was a long day of running around getting documentation and stuff together for him!!

I am just enjoying reading the thread! When we applied we would have jumped through so many hoops to become citizens but it was all actually pretty straight forward. At the time we did it, I know it has now all changed so much. Our timeline was applied early June, sat test late June, citizenship ceremony July. It has all changed now, times are so much longer, it was much simpler for us however, I will stress and emphasis, citizenship to us was incredibly important and our priority, we would not have been making any travel plans that could/would jeopardise it. You have to decide what is most important to you right now, leaving the country for an extended period of time will without doubt affect your ability to apply for citizenship and quite rightly so, regardless of your reasons, Australia’s looking for people committing to stay and that does mean committing to living in the country. Your time outside of Australia will undoubtedly go against you for your current citizenship application. I would suggest you do what you need to do them make a firm commitment to live in OZ for the required time then apply each for citizenship at that point when you are able to make the commitments in the true essence that is required by Australia.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing! Saying that Australia is being tough on dual citizens and will strip you of your Australian citizenship if it believes it warrants it. As another poster mentioned the laws were enacted primarily to deter terrorism but many other are being caught up in them, and as another poster mentioned we don’t know the ins and outs of your brothers case, but on the few facts you’ve supplied if it is a first offense and non violent towards anyone whatsoever hopefully he gets a second chance. But yeah, ‘permanent’ resident is not as ‘permanent’ as many may believe sometimes, Citizenship, where it’s possible, it a no brainer if you plan to live in Australia for the long term xx

My understanding of the 186 is that she now has PR in her own right and regardless of what happens with her relationship or his job her visa, and as such her rights to remain in Australia, are completely unaffected. Best wishes to your colleague, it sounds like she’s having a difficult time, but at least she doesn’t need to worry about her visa xx

You might find that cancelling your private health increases your tax, it might just be tax savvy to keep your private health and obviously all of the benefits having private health brings, when you do need it it comes into it’s own but fingers crossed you never will xx

I’ve just started working a part time job just a few days a week and well Under the threshold and had a quite a chunk of hecs taken out of my first salary, I’m thinking as it was close to the end of the financial year they had assumed my wage annually was higher than it really is....

PS I will add it is very hard leaving family, it was a whirlwind but also very emotional, luckily for us family did support and encourage our decision, but the reality of life here without family support and a young child is difficult, it’s the sacrifice you make. The upside is that family visit often, for them it’s a great holiday (especially winter there being summer here!) It can be tough when they arrive for a few months expecting full board, full maid and full chef service, plus it’s expensive but that’s the compromise!!!

Ours is a similar story to yours, we moved here 10 years ago on a 457, we never looked to move to Oz but hubby got headhunted for a job and we went with it! He was flown out for an interview and rang me to say I’ve got the job get the wedding booked! So in 8 weeks we packed up our worldly goods, quit our jobs, got married then flew out the next day! We were pretty naive and just thought it would be a 4 year adventure but we fell in love with Oz pretty instantly and were lucky to gain our PR within the year, we are still here and citizens now, we feel incredibly lucky at the opportunity we were given and wish you all the very best xxx

Agree with Ali 100% but will add a caveat, at the time I applied to transfer my licence I was taking warfarin following a DVT in pregnancy 2 years previously. Every rational person knows this has no impact on your ability to drive a car, however, the licensing centre would not allow me an Australian driving licence until I had a full medical that determined I was fit and able to drive a car! It was a frustrating situation and my GP was simply ‘gobsmacked’ but nevertheless I was only granted a 1 year licence and had to renew it annually (at a pretty nice cost) until I finally stopped taking warfarin, which is another story as I should never have been taking it for the length of time I was, hey ho!!

Wrussell is a respected resource, I would give serious consideration to his response

I can’t find anything on these links that says CCS is subject to the waiting period nor via any other internet searches, it would be useful to get a definitive answer for other members who might be affected so Chrisso Gray maybe just apply and see what happens, you never know!

I’m sorry I have only just seen this. First of all you can say STOP, hubby might not be happy but the sale doesn’t go through and you get some breathing space... Im not a person of faith but I can tell you my ‘god’ is my gut instinct, when it tells me something isn’t right I listen and 99.99% of the time it is absolutely correct, it is now the barometer of many of my decisions!!! You are so far into the process that your job has moved on, I can imagine that is pretty stressful now you are rethinking, but if it helps at all I would say re-establishing yourself quickly back in the UK and close to home, will be much easier than starting all over again in Australia. Applying for jobs in Australia is a whole different animal, selection criteria is a big thing here and completely alien to many migrants, Australia can also be very networky and more about who you know not what you know. It’s not necessarily a bad thing it’s just not a system that UK migrants are used to so it takes quite some time to get established! All I can advise is that you follow your gut instincts, many have warned you on here about the Geneva convention and it’s really not something to take lightly if you have any doubts about your move and in particular your marriage. I have had that conversation with my hubby many times (and we are actually really happy!) and he assures me that if we got to that point he would never stop me returning to the UK with our daughter but that has no legal standing and whilst I know him to be the most caring, amazing and wonderful person, if he says NO then that’s it really. As an addendum it’s not a patriarchal law and I could do the same to him and yes if he wanted to return to the UK with our daughter because he didn’t like it here I would 100% invoke the Law to stop him. Our marriage is very solid and I don’t envisage us facing these decisions, also our daughter is growing and will eventually be able to make her own decisions regardless, I’m simply trying to highlight the issues you could face once you land in Australia as a permanent resident xxxxxx

Thank you so so much for this advice, I definitely want to pursue it, whilst I still feel 21 and invincible the reality is I’m not and retirement age is much nearer than I would like to think!!! Could I ask you, how do I begin to start to apply for this? Could you point me in the right direction? And once again, so many thank you’s Xxxxxx

Thank you! I do have some really old paperwork that’s been shoved in a drawer for many years but it will link up the gaps to enable me to get on top of this and up to date with where it’s at. Fingers crossed I can access it at 60 and it’s a nice enough nest egg to begin to consider the drive round OZ in a camper trailer hubby so dreams of!!!

ALDI are doing the prawn cocktail chips again this week but I can’t stomach them, horrible, totally agree, it’s SKIPS of nothing for me

I know I’ve been totally burying my head in the sand here but I left UK with a local government pension (27 years of contributions) that at the time was a final salary based pension final salary being 40K PA. That was 10 years ago, never thought about retirement, never notified them of my change of address, nevertheless thought about transferring it here?. Is it’s still worth claiming? S it worth anything?? Maybe I should let them know where I live first of all!!

And, on a practical level, keep every single GP, specialist, psychiatrist report, keep everything.

The most important thing right now is your mental health and welfare, that has to be your priority. I can completely understand your anxiety about your visa status but Australia does have rules and regulations on how employees are treated and your visa status is not affected by this. I’m not an expert on either visa or employment law but I do have a basic understanding that neither laws will tolerate exploitation and whilst I don’t know your circumstances I can say confidently that it is important you focus on your mental health and well-being for that will give you the strength to challenge the adversity you face, my thought are with you xxx

Or, get on pretty well but just not that close! We’ve always felt pretty secure and confident in our decision to move to Australia, we’ve never really felt the urge to go back for a visit and really because it wouldn’t be a holiday, every single living relative would be dragged out to meet us and us them, I know for a fact cousins who I barely recollect will be summoned and they will be literally as uninterested in me as I will be them. It is my mums nostalgia not mine, we prefer them to visit us because they do get a great holiday, we know if we went home it would be nothing like a holiday. However, I will say we are tempted to do a quick 48 hour hi and bye surprise and then chill in a few Greek islands, now that I do bloody miss!!!

There are some brilliant replies to your post, shared experiences from a diverse group all with very different motives and rationales for coming to Australia and all having different perceptions and experiences, it’s invaluable information in reply to questions you just can’t ‘google’ and get definitive answers for, I hope it helps. For me, when we came here we were both equally excited, both equally motivated, no doubts on both parts whatsoever, I think if one of us would have ‘wobbled’ we simply would not have done it. However, the reality was I gave up a great job because hubby had a ‘once in a lifetime offer’ here. And it was, and still is, his career has gone from strength to strength. We have loved our life in Australia and still do, for me, I found having built a successful career in the uk without a degree it was difficult to replicate that in Australia where a degree is everything, my experience and knowledge just didn’t count for much at all. But overall I would say that whilst I love life here and actually cannot imagine living back in the uk I have had a few wobbles lately, it’s only because me and hubby are getting older and not quite as invincible as we were and I keep having lots of thoughts about out daughter and what if something happened to us? Possibly irrational I know but my only wobble about being in Australia is the lack of extended family/support etc for our daughter in the future should anything happen to us (my GP thinks I’m menopausal !!!). In a nutshell, we both hopped on that plane as excited as kids and very much niaive and optimistic, we shared the dream!!, I think if one of us had had the slightest doubt we just wouldn’t\shouldnt have done it, I don’t think our marriage would have survived the complete stress, upheaval and emotional roller coaster that is moving to the other side of the world and all that you leave behind. My complete best wishes to you xxxx

We spend all of our holidays camping, hubby hates commercial campgrounds so we go bush or as near as we can! It’s his pleasure but we (me and daughter) have grown to love it, the biggest thing for me is seeing how he completely winds down and just gets into chill zone when he’s camping (big high pressure job in real life), that’s worth more than I can articulate, in fact he gets the best sleep ever when camping, snores like a trooper (never snores at home!). Camping is hard work wherever you camp, it’s set up, pack up and just day to day you are organising and just arranging, but it’s the best hard work and very fulfilling, the rewards are worth it xxxxxx

This is what hubby calls camping, you’re living his dream xxxxx

...