NickyNook

While you do have to work somewhere for 10 years to be able to actually take LSL, you usually only have to work somewhere for five years to get paid out accumulated LSL when you leave a company. I've collected it a few times in my working life.

I grew up in Gosport and what remains of my family are still in the Gosport/Fareham/Eastleigh area so we did spend some time in Hampshire. Years ago in the early 1970s I worked at the Polygon Hotel in Southampton which was the biggest and best hotel in town. Demolished now. Remember loads of people staying overnight before sailing off on Cunard/Union Castle/P&O/French Line ships to various parts of the world. It wasn't cruising as such back then - people actually travelled to New York or South Africa by ship. Plenty of hotel staff had worked on the liners.

We sailed from Singapore to Southampton last year. Five weeks. I also don't really like lots of sea days - much prefer a different port each day - but put up with loads of them because it was the only way I'd get to go to some of the places en route. My OH is not a particularly adventurous traveller and would never have gone independently to some of the countries we stopped at. We stopped at Phuket, Colombo, Kochi, Dubai, Oman, Eilat (for Petra) then through Suez into the Med where we stopped somewhere most days. Took three weeks to get to Athens and then another two to get to Southampton. 18 (!) sea days altogether but totally worth it just to be able to visit Colombo and Petra.

The last stretch of unsealed section of the Eyre Highway across the Nullabor was sealed in 1976 - so almost 45 years ago. There's no red dust. Have you ever been there?

As I mentioned previously, there are two different types of First Home buyer concession. Skani’s link refers to the First Home Grant eligibility in Qld but Ausvisitor’s refers to the Qld Transfer Duty concession. Different concession, different rules.

I only drink coffee with cream, too. If you’re on a low-carb diet then milky coffees are a no-no (milk contains lactose, cream does not). In the old days (40 years ago) all Aussie coffee shops had ‘Vienna’ coffee on their menu which was coffee with cream. They also had cappuccino, long black, short black, mocha etc. Nowadays you only get the Italian names, plus the ubiquitous Flat White, of course. And rarely is coffee with cream mentioned, unfortunately.

And all this while the people of NSW and Victoria have been locked down and unable to travel to Queensland to view these regional properties? So the droves of Sydney and Melbourne people buying these regional Queensland properties are doing so, sight unseen? Amazing. I wouldn't necessarily believe everything you read about real estate. Particularly if the source of the info is the RE industry itself.

Assuming either you or your wife is British through being born in the UK then your daughter is already a British citizen. You do not have to apply for citizenship for her - she acquired it automatically at birth. You just need to apply for a British passport for her. https://www.gov.uk/overseas-passports

Not sure your terminology is quite correct. Most people who qualify for Medicare pay for it via the Medicare Levy. This is the bog-standard 2% that is either withheld from your pay via your employer or paid at the end of the tax year via your tax return. If you earn more than a $90k/$180k then you are also liable to pay the additional Medicare Levy Surcharge, if you don't have private hospital cover. This is in addition to the Medicare Levy.

My sons went through the NSW Uni system over ten years ago now but I doubt the system has changed much. I believe the system for applying for Uni whilst still at school here - rather than in your case, from overseas - is a different process. So what my sons experienced is not necessarily what your child will. In NSW no offers are made based on predicted Year 12 (HSC) results. You put in your Uni preferences during the final year of school and once the results are out at the end of the year you get offered up to 3? places. There are various offers rounds - places that are not accepted in the first round are re-offered to different applicants in a subsequent round. What you get offered is based on your preference and your results. The cutoffs for the previous years are always published so you know - roughly - what marks are needed for each course, though they can vary from year to year. I would have thought that the vast majority of students start Uni in Feb/March. Most kids go straight from school to Uni, so would start Uni as soon as they can. Only a tiny minority of students would start mid-year. And I also believed that most ordinary courses are three years, though double degrees are popular, particularly Law combinations and they are usually five years. This is because Law (and Medicine) are not available in Sydney Unis as normal undergraduate degrees and need to be done in combination with another degree or as a post-grad degree.

When I arrived in Sydney in 1979, as stated above, shops closed at noon on Saturday and all day Sunday. There was late night shopping till 9pm on a Thursday night but the rest of the week shops closed at 5-5.30pm. I was horrified when I realised but was told to think myself lucky because in NZ at that time, shops were closed all day Saturday and Sunday. Some stores here were allowed to open all weekend - mainly hardware and/or furniture, I think. I remember Birkenhead Point shopping centre was always open on a Sunday for some unknown reason. It all changed in Sydney about 1984. Went from the restricted hours above to the current free-for-all. It's still the same in some non-touristy country towns in NSW, though. Many times we've been caught out when travelling within the state because everything still shuts on a Saturday afternoon.

And here is the info from the Tasmanian government which confirms that you need to quarantine on arrival there - even though you may have already done 14 days elsewhere. https://coronavirus.tas.gov.au/travellers-and-visitors/quarantine ...What if I have already completed quarantine interstate? The Tasmanian quarantine period is in addition to the requirement for international travellers to complete 14 days quarantine in government-designated accommodation at the port of arrival in Australia.

Of course you are. You don't lose your British citizenship just by having a lapsed passport.

Quite right that you don't qualify for Medicare because you don't have the correct temp visa. However you do qualify for Medicare under the reciprocal agreement with the UK. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/medicare/reciprocal-health-care-agreements/when-you-visit-australia/visiting-from-united-kingdom

Just google 'private Covid test UK'. BUPA are doing them now, I believe. Or there is this - https://doctap.co.uk/services/coronavirus-test/ Designed for people who need to prove they are fit to fly. Not hard..