Addy

We came on a 475 to South Australia nearly 7 years ago. While we were applying we suffered several delays due to both Federal and State rule changes. During this time there were also people badly affected by the sudden closure of the financial deposit route which was a disgrace. We followed the rules of the visa to the letter and stayed in SA for the required 2 years. During this time my husband could not find work despite being the visa holder and being on the skills in demand list. There simply weren't the jobs in SA for him to apply for. The heartbreaking thing was as he had registered with several agencies to try and get work, he would get calls asking him to apply for roles in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane which he couldn't do. We had decided that as soon as our PR was granted that we would move to another state but just before then my husband finally found work. I swear he is in the only job in SA for which he is qualified as no other roles like it have been advertised in the last 5 years to our knowledge! We are happy and settled in SA and will stay here for the forseeable future but I wish we had not taken the moral highground and had moved early on to another state where there is more work as we will never recover from the financial hit we took. I don't blame people who do it, it is morally wrong to condemn people to struggle to live without any support and not allow them to move to where the work is. We were lucky that we had enough equity from our house sale to cover us but a lot of people aren't as lucky.

When we emigrated we both deliberately took a year off to move, get a house, sort out schools etc. Plus we deserved a break after 25 years work! I got the first job I applied for with no questions asked about the gap on my CV. Chill out and enjoy the break, you won't get another opportunity for a long time! Good luck with the job hunt.

Thanks Andy, what a nightmare.

Hello. I have been told that there has been a change in UK QROPS regulations which means that only on QLD super fund is currently eligible to receive funds from UK pensions. I can't seem to find anything about this and as i was just about to transfer my UK pension fund to my Australian Super fund which was QROPS approved this is a bit of a blow. Can any one tell me if this is true?

Makes you wonder what the hell is in it!

That explains it then! I tend to freeze my bread and only thaw what I need as a result of natural bread going mouldy when I was a kid.

Maybe there are more preservatives in Aussie bread? Maybe Tesco's freeze their bread which makes it more likely to go mouldy when thawed? What happens to bread from other shops does that do the same? When I was a kid in the UK I remember bread going mouldy very quickly so I am inclined to think that nowadays bread is full of all sorts of stuff to keep it 'fresh'.

We flew business 7 years ago with Emirtaes - Birmingham :Dubai: Melboure and return. We found the business lounge in Dubai to be far too small for the number of people using it - in fact we couldn't get a seat which was horrible as our body clocks thought it was the middle of the night. Plus my husband's seat would not recline on one flight which meant he didn't get much sleep. The rest of the journey was good however and the food was lovely. I would recommend flying the leg on which you are intending to get most sleep in business.

That's good news that the GP has found something. It's possible that the flight affected your ears and caused this or it may have been a coincidence. Whatever the cause, fingers crossed that the treatment works and you stop feeling nauseous.

You are factually inaccurate here. It is very common to develop lactose intolerance in later life as you stop making the lactese enzyme which digests lactose. In fact it is also common to develop gluten intolerance in later life as the damage which gluten does to your intestines can be silent for many years until you develop symptoms which alert you. I know both of these things as I became lactose intolerant at 44 and discovered I had coeliac disease (gluten intolerance) at 46. In reply to the OP, have you had your ears checked? It strikes me that the flight might have casued problems with your ears which is leading to nausea. There is a condition where the liquid in the ear moves and has to be rebalanced. Sorry I don't know what it is called.

We have just bought one. The capacity is smaller than a regular deep fat frier but for a family of three it is fine. As Paulanddeb said they are very good for pastry items and for chips. We make lovely roast potatoes in ours too. We have never used our deep fat frier and it sat in the cupboard for years until we gave it away but we do use the air frier every couple of days.

We have private insurance which has come in handy to get seen quickly when needed, however we are more than happy with the care Medicare has provided. For example, a few years ago a lump was found on my thyroid gland by a Medicare Dr who sent me for a scan covered by Medicare. The dr was anxious to rule out cancer and sent me to a private endo surgeon for further investigation. He asked if we had insurance as this would mean I could be seen immediately which he thought was imperitative and on medicare the wait would have been longer than he was happy with. I saw the surgeon privately, thankfully he ruled out cancer and I now see him through Medicare for regular scheduled check ups as I can wait for those. It doesn't seem fair that someone without insurance or who couldn't pay would have to wait but for me personally it was invaluable to be seen quickly in this case. I find it wonderful that on medicare you can choose your Dr. We moved house recently and have visited a few local GPs when we needed to, before we chose which practice to go to. Feeling confident in your GP is essential in my book. I also see a different GP for one issue in which she specialises and travel to the other side of the city for this as there is no one in our area. She gives me her test results to give to my normal GP to keep her in the loop too. It all works very well for me and I have several ongoing health issues.

Sorry that you are having no luck getting a job. The same thing happened to my husband a highly qualified and experienced IT manager. He finally succeeded by taking off some of his work experience from his CV and going for less senior roles than he had been applying for. Once he got the job he slowly revealed his experience which has now been acknowledged by promotion. It's a tough road but an income is better than no income. The other thing you can do is to remove early work experience and any reference to your age on your CV. Your age is none of the employer's business. With regard to an RP accent, don't try to change it. It doesn't matter what UK accent you have, people will notice it and possibly discriminate against it. In fact, have an RP accent and have received both criticism and compliments for it in equal measure. Most Aussies can understand it and you will feel more comfortable speaking naturally and not having to think about your accent all the time. Good luck with it all, it's tough but there are jobs out there.

We get far fewer bugs here in Australia than we did in the UK. However our daughter was 9 when we came and perhaps had just built up enough immunity to stop bringing the viruses home to us!

My feelings are similar to Maryrose's. We emigrated because we loved Australia when we came on holiday and kept coming back for more holidays. We also realised that it was now or never on the visa front as we were getting older. We initially said we would come for two years to try it out but after a few months we realised we were staying. Same here. Some things are better and some things are worse. For now we are here but it doesn't mean that in the future we won't change our minds. As I said above I think we are the sort of people who see the good in situations and could be happy in any first world country.

His company sponsored him and his partner to enter Australia on the understanding that he would support her and their child, not abandon them, I dare say they wouldn't like the company name in the press etc. if things went public. He should also have advised Immigration that he had split from his partner and is therefore in breach of his visa conditions. Companies can be prosecuted for employing people in such circumstances. If the company are advised they will try to ensure that the issue is remedied.

It may be worth advising the ex-partner's employer about his behaviour. They may be able to intervene or they may not wish to employ someone who is bringing their organisation into disrepute. Before your niece does this however, I would suggest taking visa advice in case the employer advises Immigration as is their duty.

I studied for my degree and a post grad diploma in the UK and am currently studying for my Masters in Australia. I have also spent the last 3 years working for Australian Universities. I would say that the main difference between UK and Australian courses is the flexibility Australian students enjoy. I am not sure if things have changed in British Uni's as it is a good few years since I studied there but when I studied in the UK the study patterns were inflexible and the academic year started in September and finished in June. Whereas in Australia there are at least two starting points in each year and students have the option to study anything from full time to one topic a semester which makes it easier to fit in with work. The culture in the UK seems to be study hard for as short a time as possible and pay the debt off when you start work whereas the Australian culture seems to be to fit study around work and finish with as little debt as possible but take a longer time. The UK system has end of year and end of degree exams, (or did when I was a student there) whereas Australian uni's seem to go for continuous assessment and if there are exams they are at the end of a topic rather than the course. My Aussie colleagues find it hard to believe that I sat 13 x 3 hour exams and produced a dissertation at the end of my degree. As Quoll mentioned Aussie degrees are ordinary degrees not honours degrees and as such there is intrinsically more work in the honours degree. However if you are living in Australia you only need an honours degree if you intend to continue in higher education. Employers are happy with an ordinary degree. I don't know how an Aussie degree translates in the UK - perhaps there are people on the forum who have experience. As a Brit moving into the Australian system my qualifications were marked differently and that caused problems. For example a mark of 80% is a first class degree grade in the UK and at the very top end of the marks given whereas 80% is a grade frequently given in Australia and equates to a Higher Distinction. There are computer programs used by the Uni's to try and get over these inconsistencies in marking. Having said all that I think the actual difficulty of the work should be of a similar standing between the two countries as the Times Uni rankings indicate.

I love living in Australia but I can recognise some truths in this. The trick is to recognise the faults and accept them if the benefits outweigh the negatives. For some people the negatives out weigh the positives and for them they weigh heavy and become unacceptable.

Thanks all. We aren't planning to travel for another 7 months so plenty of time to get Aus passports. I was hoping it would be simple but obviously not. It's the last hurdle in the whole paper trail that is Australian migration so we had better grit our teeth and do it.

Has anyone had experience of travelling to and from the Uk from Australia on British passports once they are Australian citizens? Our visas are in our passports and expire in 2016. However we received citizenship last year so in theory those visas are cancelled. I believe that so long as you carry your citizenship papers you can travel on UK passports but I can't get a straight answer out of the Australian passport enquiry line. Many thanks

I think the problem with the NHS is lack of funding and inconsistency. Practice and Trust managers are well aware that the funds just aren't there to provide the same level of care to all patients and they devise ways to deal with this and some are better than others ie the ring at 8am for a GP appointment madness. I moved 2 miles up the road in the Uk and forced to leave a GP practice with which I was very happy to move to one with this ludicrous appointment system. I have written on here before that this surgery told me to take my daughter who had an ear infection to A&E as they couldn't see her. My previous GP surgery had an emergency surgery every morning and everyone who turned up between 9am and 11am was seen. Sometimes you had to wait 2 hours after they locked the doors, but that was Ok as you knew you would be seen. The afternoons were devoted to appointments so those people who needed a monthly check up or to get test results could book in. I was actually given blood results over the phone by the receptionist at the new practice and completely the wrong health advice. So far here in Australia I have been very happy with the care I have received and the choices I can make. I love being able to chose my GP practice. Since being here I have been diagnosed with two conditions which should have been picked up in the blood tests I mention above. I have had additional tests which are not done on the NHS as they are too expensive and have access to drugs which the NHS does not cover and you cannot access in the UK. I pay a $38 every 3 months for my meds which aren't covered by Medicare. That's a hell of a lot better than not getting them which would have happened on the NHS. There are many dedicated professionals working in the NHS but the lack of funds and the hard decisions that creates are causing poor patient care in some areas. It breaks my heart to hear of the medical neglect in some of the posts in this thread. I know incidents like these could also happen in Australia but at least there is more money coming into the system here which may reduce the likelihood.

Just a bit of info for the thread to show that things vary from area to area in both countries. We still have a property in the UK in South Wales which we have had on the market for a year at 50 thousand pounds less than the purchase price 7 years ago which hasn't had a sniff of interest. Our neighbours house in Adelaide which is very similar to ours sold after one open for 130 thousand dollars more than the purchase price a year ago. Out of interest we had ours valued and the estimate was 100 thousand to 130 thousand dollars more than we paid 14 months ago. We were told our suburb is going up very quickly. I don't think you can generalise as I know areas of the UK are shooting up but others are stagnant and the same in Australia.

That's the most sensible theory I've seen so far.

Hi Auslish, Your children will be eligible for British passports by descent (I think) - You should check out the passport info page for the UK. your husband will have to apply for a spouse visa. you should check out the Uk immigration webpage. I am sure many people on here will have experience of doing this so hold on and they will be along soon.