jimmyay1

what exactly is it you're unable to find in the shops / limited choice? genuine question- i'm not a teenage girl but would be surprised there's much you couldn't find here. Having moved from 21st century London , i don't find the shops in Melbourne like rural 80's uk in the slightest - or am i completely missing something?

I would just like to say a lot of the costs are a lot less in melbourne - quite shocked at how pricy Perth is.

to be honest i don't think cuisine in Kalgoorlie should be used as a benchmark on which to judge the rest of Australia!

no,it's not particularly expensive, i think perhaps even a little cheaper than in the UK. and from my experience last summer, when i used it every day, it does work ( I have fair skin and burn easily). You need UVA and UVB filters though - don't bring factor 10 UVA only from the UK or anything - it simply doesnt work in the Australian sun. You'll be fine, don't panic, withink weeks you will be into a routine of protecting yourself from the sun with creams, wearing hats and dark glasses when you go out. Sunglasses are not a fashion item here - they're an absolute necessity to protect your eyes so don't forget them when you go out!

Fact - Northern Eurpean skins NEVER get used to UV levels of 12-13 in mid summer and hiding from the sun or looking for shade when out is something you automatically do at certain times of the year. . You don't go to the beach in the middle of the day, within an hour your head is throbbing.

Cope with the heat o.k. Actually am enjoying autumn weather better than summer though, it's been around 20 degrees for a week or two with cool mornings and the sun has lost it's "sting" so little or no sunscreen required from now until September hopefully. Summer is fine , it's just a few days where the temperature is unbearable. Actually i found the temperature differences from day to day more difficult to deal with than the actual heat itself. But more often than not you get a cool breeze from the bay to take the edge off the highest temps. And you just treat the very hot days like " bad weather" and stay indoors as much as you can. Having said that i'm in Melbourne and we don't get months of unrlenting high heat and humidity here. Australia has a big range of climates.

Bloody immigrants! :-)

830 - 9 pm in Melbourne in summer's fine for me.

do you need to be a member in the RSL's? never been to one....

I've been here nearly 6 months in Melbourne, and absolutely love it. Have a generally standard of living than i had in the UK. i love the space, the fresh clean sea air and lack of pollution and being able to cycle on trails all around the city and beyond. the brightness and sunshine gives me more energy. Generally my work life balance is no better than the uk though, i work as many if not more hours than when i worked in London but at the moment this doesnt bother me as am still establishing myself here and it's made up for by doing more at weekends. i miss friends and of course family, it would be nice to have them close, but it's not the end of the world, we keep in touch and many of my good friends have also left the UK and live abroad anyway nowadays, and i've already had a couple of visits from buddies passing through so it's not so bad. i really have very little (and getting less every day) desire to go back to the UK and i'd say for me, coming down here was a great move - so far so good - and one i'd recommend to anyone.

i thought everyone knew the Aberdeen Steakhouses aren't "real" restaurants at all, but allegedly fronts for money laundering - operating in plain sight.....

We are always amazed at the high quality and amount of decent restaurants in Melbourne, its a foodies paradise with every budget and taste catered for. sometimes can be pricy but we generally think represents value.

Melbourne is a very different city to Perth. It's more European and doesnt have that new feel to it. there are probably more job opportunities too as its a much larger city. having said that, if you're really unhappy dont make yourself miserable. emigration is tough - not many live the dream from the word go. however if you have a good support network in the UK and really miss it, why not move back if you'd be happier. where in the UK did you move from?

i noticed this too , certainly from the coverage of these things. back in uk if some nutter got on the bus or tube and started racially abusing people other people would tell him or her to f off! here it seems to be people siding with the nutter! or have we just been shown a few unfortunate examples.

Been in Melbourne 5 months today. My partner's an Aussie who's lived all over the world for extended periods, probably having spent less time in oz than in other countries to be honest & so moving to Melbourne was a new thing for us both. We love Melbourne. Generally life seems bit easier here than it was for us in London, although we had an ok life there and had plenty of friends around which was great. However we just seemed to be running just to stand still and things had become a bit of a struggle workwise, with seemingly few career progression options for either of us. We are getting used to living here now and taking all the new good things for granted, i am sure, we've not had much time to stand back and take stock. I love cycling and the bay paths as well as the many quiet suburban streets with the cycle lane network is fantastic. The wide roads are a dream to drive down and we love the fact that congestion is the exception rather than the rule. The traffic in Sydney did our heads in when we visited a few weeks ago - we spent half the weekend stuck in jams just going a couple of miles around the place. I was rather sceptical about Melbourne before we came and wondered if i would have preferred Sydney - now i know that i'm a Melbourne person. I'm getting into a routine with a work contract which hopefully will become a permanent position in due course. At the moment, we're earning more than we were doing in our last jobs in the UK and hopefully this will continue and we can save money and build some financial security here. We kept our property in London so effectively have had to start again saving a deposit for a new place. We don't like living in our nice but noisy rental where we can hear neighbours banging around and dislike the fact that we don't have double glazing or noise insulation. Hey ho. When we buy a place we'll put it in and have it how we want it. The city itself is great and there's always loads going on - boredom is not a problem. However just at the moment i am working all hours at my job so i have little if any free time. Thankfully we didnt come here expecting it to be one big chill-out, or we would have been disappointed. We absolutely love the range of dining options and the fantastic quality of food and drink in Melbourne . The climate is interesting......not a huge fan of constant heat and the temperature variability suits us fine now we are used to it and we like the fact that it's not humid, unlike some parts of the country. Also we get nice long sunny evenings here in the summer which is gorgeous. The vast majority of days since we've been here it has been sunny. We've already had a couple of friends pass through and visit us from the UK, which has been really lovely. I do miss old friends and of course family, though i skype with some of them which is great, it's not the same as being with them. We've not got any home-grown friends yet, other than a couple of folks we know in other cities and see infrequently. i guess that will change as we get more bedded in. We're realistic about the time it takes to establish a new life, it doesn't happen overnight.

i read the UK newspapers on line, goes in phases really, sometimes i don't bother for ages then will check every day for a few days. I also have access to BBC tv channels via an app which is great when you can watch some decent programmes, without adverts all the time. Have checked out the BBC ten o clock news once or twice in the 5 months we've been here - recently to see the snow coverage to be honest! - but have found that rather weird and unsettling watching uk domestic news programmes. ditto radio 4 on the internet - great to keep up to date but feels odd listening in somehow.

Disappointing when you go to a pub and realise there's a Brakes or 6633 van parked in the car park delivering "no need to refrigerate" "fresh" food with extended shelf lives that the pub can hang onto for weeks. I think there are a lot more good gastro places in the UK than there ever were, BUT as NSP says a huge amount of bandwagon jumpers , it's mostly the urban chain pubs, with a few notable exceptions. The types that do 3 courses for a tenner offers, who are doing precisely that, reheat and pass off as genuine when in fact the food is from a special "gastro range" from Brakes Bros.

i'm fairly sure this assertion is nonsense.

Why the rush to sell up anyway? We certainly weren't going to wait - moved out even before the visa came through as a tourist & then validated when Australia House were good and ready! We couldnt care less about exchange rate. We left a house in the UK which is rented out - no worries at all. We'll buy something here when we've saved the deposit, hopefully in a year or so. yes we could have a bigger spot if we'd sold up in London, but to be honest it's not that big a deal these days with the modern banking and internet etc in terms of managing the place, it might as well be an investment property in another state of Aus. I don't always understand why people are so keen to sell everything up immediately and move - why not wait and see how things work out? Don't let " a bad exchange rate" stop you following your dreams.

This doesnt bode well for the UK economy , looks like the never ending recession will be confirmed in it's triple dip in a week or two.

God you guys in Perth get well ripped off. 2 x Fish and Chips in Brighton (well off suburb of Melb) cost me 15 bucks.

Cant understand criticism of fish and chips in oz to be honest. i find them much more tasty and of a higher quality than most chippies in the UK. The range of fish you can get here is great too. Give me shark and chips anyday!

Read online news a lot . sometimes watch ABC news 24 in the evening, they have a decent business and politiics shows which i'm slowly getting into. i still folllow uk news regularly via telegraph online and guardian, obviously bbc as it's streets ahead for in depth world news analysis. listen to radio 4 via internet ocassionally.

Boganbear's post above hits the nail right on the head. Don't expect to arrive and be the richest person in the neighbourhood with the "dream life". Unless you're bringing bags of cash , you will have to work hard to achieve things anywhere you move in the world. Emigrating to a foreign country is a big thing to do and is not without substantial risk. Do your best to calculate these risks and cover them off. Leave yourself options. There are great opportunities here and things you can't do in the UK. It's an amazing place. Whatever negatives you hear on PIO, unemployment and social disharmony is much lower than in the UK or Europe and by and large Aus feels more affluent and a happier place than the UK (bar the inner London bubble) does these days. But please don't think you can have a multi millionaires lifetyle or not need to work bloody hard or able to afford to be less than very smart with your money. The lifestyle is what you make it. At the moment i'm working my arse off like many do here in order to establish myself and to get ahead - it's not a piece of cake - but here at least i am fairly sure it will pay off, Australia seems to me by and large a very optimistic place, whereas in the UK, i could see years ahead of struggle and strife with no great advancement for me or my partner. We're both very happy we took the gamble and moved down here. Good luck with whatever you decide.

The link is last months figures,there's been a big fall this month.