Success at Last

I used A Letton Percival - Ian was very helpful. All sorted very quickly and at 1.4% heaps better than the 5% offered by the shipping company!!

I am going to be shipping my books, dvds and cds to Canberra. I have rather a lot and they are special ones I have collected over the years. Does anyone have any advice regarding how to pack them so that no mildew/damp will get at them? The majority of the dvds and cds are contained in special zip-up cases (I've ditched the plastic covers). I gather I should avoid plastic, but presumably it will be ok to line the inside of the box with bubble wrap? Thanks for any ideas Linda

Hi Pam, good luck with your applications. No, I did not hear much at all while I waited - I put the application in, just over two years later they contacted me and told me to go for medicals, get police clearance, pay the first half of the visa fee etc, which I did. Then I received the letter in May 2005 saying I had been approved and was now in the Q. After that - nothing until October 2011 when they sent my daughter in Oz an email saying I had to re-do medicals, police clearance, etc (they only have a validity of 12 months so the first lot had expired) and it all had to be submitted within 28 days!! We scrambled around, got it all done eventually and I then received the visa on 31 January 2012. So between May 2005 and October 2011 I heard nothing. Only correspondence was to advise them of current address, stuff like that. I was watching the Q calculator and on my reckoning I was going to be in the Q for a further year, so I was taken by surprise (a nice suprise)! Kind regards Linda

It is all so exciting! I made it to my daughter's wedding in Oz in 2000 and have visited about 6 times since. But in that time she has got divorced, found a new partner, had a baby, is having another baby this year, and I have missed it all, could not be there for her when she really needed her mom there. But she will have me there soon (and at times I am sure will wish I was still back in the UK!). Can't wait to be a proper gran on tap.

While I was waiting for my subclass 103 parent visa (i.e. the regular, inexpensive parent visa, not the contributory one which is different), I was not able to find much on the forums in the way of support so I thought I would post this thread as information and encouragement to other parents out there on 103 visa applications. 31 January 2012 was a REALLY good day as that was the day I got the visa after an eight-year wait. When I applied in January 2003, I thought I would soon be on my way (how silly was I!). I was approved in May 2005 and received a letter telling me that I had been placed in the approved parents queue, that there were 13,880 approved parents ahead of me and that I would be in the queue for some time. But all things pass in time and now I have the visa label in my passport. I have to enter before December this year, so will be activating the visa with a two-week visit later this year and then will move over permanently first thing next year (the visa, after activation, is multiple entry for five years). Hope that bit of info will be useful to someone, it would have been to me, I had so many questions to which I could find no answers.

Talk about long queue waits .................. I applied in January 2003 as a (single) working parent, my daughter (an Aus citizen) is sponsoring me, under parent sub-clause 103. I was approved in May 2005 and put into the "approved parent queue" and told there were at that stage 13,800 approved parents ahead of me, that they only took 1,000 worldwide from the queue each year and that I should expect a long wait. No jokes, it is now June 2011 and here I am still in London! I check the queue every week, at the moment there are 2,390 ahead of me so I estimate I will be in the queue for another 2-3 years before my visa finally is granted. Yay! it is coming closer. Just hope I am still on the planet at that stage after having my life on hold so long:laugh: Are there any other folks like me in the UK also waiting in the slow queue? it would be so good to chat and count down the months (and years?) with others! Strong advice to other parents who will be applying: if you can afford the contributory parent visa (unfortunately I couldn't), most definitely go for that, avoid the sub-class 103 one, the Aus website warns of a twenty year wait in that now.