fensaddler

You really need to get some professional advice on this. Get this wrong and apart from anything else, you could fall seriously foul of the immigration authorities. The 90 day clock does not start ticking when you are given notice, but only when you are no longer employed in that capacity on your 457 visa. For example, if you are given notice, but then work, or are given pay in lieu, for say 60 days, the clock does not start until that 60 days ends. Your visa situation and options at that point I am not qualified to comment on - but if you only have a 457, you can't legally work during that period. 457s don't have any recourse to arguments of hardship.

For those who want the full facts and figures about how flipping hot it was, BoM has published a report here (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs48.pdf).

I wonder whether the subtext to this is that the new rate would be below the minimum threshold for the 457 visa, and hence could not be lowered until the OP has another visa category? Otherwise the advice is sound - put up with it pro tem but find someone prepared to pay better. Advice from a good agent and/or recruitment consultant would appear to be essential.

Good for them. I'm all for capable people being able to move around the world to fill vacancies where their skills are needed. What is in demand and where will change over time - right now Kent wants paramedics from Tassie.

Both of the major Melbourne papers, the Herald Sun and the Age, are reporting that this is the first time the city has seen four continuous days above 41C since records began. Its nothing, I guess, for the west coast or for many inland areas, but its a bit of a shock for Melbourne. And the air conditioning in my office has died this afternoon... :-(

Monitoring the weather data, it looks as if the cool change has just hit Geelong in the last half hour. Here it comes Melbourne...

Yes, ringtails don't usually come down to the ground, let alone go for a swim in your pool! I notice a lot of people have put bowls of water under the trees on the nature strips - these have been there since the heatwave started so I imagine a lot of people have been concerned for the wildlife during this hot spell. Roll on 8pm, it would be nice to get back to normal Melbourne summer weather...

Disown her. That sort of shame can break families.

[facepalm] Yes, of course I get the humour about Collingwood. That's why I said it. It's just that you don't get that I get it.... Still toothless ferals though. Up the Tigers.

And there was i hallucinating that all my local colleagues were telling me how hot it was...

Wish I was off work - these high temps, sleepless nights etc are coinciding with a blowout in my commuting times due to the Belgrave line closure. This heat and 3-4 hours a day commuting is a bit of a trial. Usually cope pretty well with the heat but this extended heatwave is a bit much...

Absolutely - be open about difference, and positive about the new world you live in. Different is not worse, or better, just different. See the positives, embrace change, look at what you have gained, not what you have lost. And in Victoria, an absolute essential, adopt an AFL team - I'm not being entirely lighthearted about this, as the locals are obsessed with AFL and you need to fit in. It does not matter which team (so long as it is not Collingwood, who seem to be universally loathed) since it is an infinitely greater social stigma to have no affiliation than to have one different to your questioner. Initially, this will seem arbitrary and you will not understand the game or its culture. Give it a couple of seasons and providing you have thrown yourself into it properly (ie. watched your team, made an effort to understand the game etc) you will find yourself sharing that same irrational loyalty you do for your UK football team, and actually looking forward to the new AFL season.

To a significant extent Scott, the answer will depend as much on you and your kids as it will on anything else. If you and they make friends OK in the UK, you'll do it here too. It helps to have experience of settling in new places and new situations - people can struggle if they have lived in one place all their lives just round the corner from their family and friends they made whilst they were at school. Your kids, almost certainly, will have a close circle of friends faster than the adults in the family. What advice I can give is that you need to get out and meet people, accept invitations, and offer a few as well. People bond on shared interests, so what is it that you want to spend your time doing, or have an interest in - where are you going to meet people? In that sense, whilst some of the opportunities are different, shared interests from golf clubs and scuba diving to choirs and political parties are all just as effective at building social networks here as they are in the UK. We expected to get some flak for being British in Australia, but we've had nothing of the sort. We've worked at it, but we've actually made good friends relatively easily, and continue to do so, whilst our teenage daughter has an extensive network of good friends. Generally we've found people to be positive towards us as poms, and as everywhere, a good sense of humour, honesty, warmth and empathy go a long way. For sure you will meet people you don't like, and who don't like you, but in general Victorians seem to be a warm and friendly bunch.

Having hooked up with the (very small) Caribbean community in Melbourne, I've realised how much I missed and appreciated those accents. A soft Trinidadian and Barbadian accent is very soothing. Particularly effective for cricket commentary, where it acts to enhance the generally soporific and hypnotic quality of watching or listening to test cricket.

And those of us with unfashionable accents just have to work harder... One of the delights on coming to Australia is the number of people who tell me they really like my accent. Believe me, that's a novelty for a blackcountryman...

This was the article I remembered when raising the 'flag issue'. Not a new discussion by any means, and one actively engaged in by many Australians. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/21/australias-flag-represents-neither-the-nations-past-nor-its-present

Sorry Paul - I should clarify my own post. There are two statements - one about the flag, and the second about whether Australia should look to the US or the UK - and they are responding to different lines of discussion in this thread. Putting them together (my fault) means that I've made a link between the first and the second which was not intended. So the bit about being in anyone's shadow or having to get past anything are not intended to relate to the flag - its a response to the 'should we look to the US or the UK' discussion - and my view, for what its worth, is that Australia is a mature and capable enough country not to need to feel particularly tied to either. I guess the only way that does relate to the flag debate is that is having the Union Jack on the flag can look like we are facing in a particular direction. I think Canada probably has a better solution - in the Commonwealth, forging its own way in the world, and with a flag which doesn't tie itself visually to its colonial past.

I think like the rest of Australia, they might display a diversity of opinion on the subject, and be able to engage thoughtfully with the issues. It is hardly a new issue and has been debated for a long time here. I don't think I'm expressing a view which many Australians themselves have not expressed before me, and probably far more eloquently.

IMHO, the flag is a bit of an anachronism these days, particularly the UK flag in the corner - it is backward looking and hardly represents what Aus has become, or the journey it has made in the last 50 years. And Aus needs to get past the whole 'should we be British or American?' thing, and just be itself. It has no reason or need to sit in anyone's shadow, or feel inferior or chippy about anyone - and it has its own future in Asia to pursue.

I'm not comfortable with overt displays of nationalism of any stripe - but I tend to the view that the British are just as bad at it as anyone else, but different to its manifestation in Australia, and different again to the US. I was never comfortable with Last Night of the Proms - too much about it felt like people hankering for the empire, and the UK being top dog. And whilst the Empire, inevitably wasn't all bad ('what did the Romans ever do for us') it is not an era I'd want to go back to. As many have commented here, many pretty appalling things were done in its name. But like many of us living in a different country to that I grew up in, the experience of being a migrant has helped me to understand just how much of what I am is owed to that background, and how British I am in my attitudes and customs.

I'm not commenting on the result of the test series, but about your dismissive attitude to mental illness. Trott was as incapacitated by his illness as if he had ruptured his achilles. I do hope that no one you care about suffers the misfortune of mental illness, because you'll no doubt tell them they are making it up and they should pull themselves together. I suggest a quiet information gathering visit to a site like beyond blue to understand a little more - about a third of people, so I understand, will suffer an episode of mental illness at some point during their lives. Chances are, someone you know and care about is among them. I'm sure they appreciate your comments.

I see you have an enlightened attitude to mental illness Bob. I imagine you're from the 'snap out of it' school of support?

There is a UK equivalent though - you only have to look at the press coverage (especially the tabloids) around a World Cup, or if England are playing Germany, to see the same sort of jingoistic, immature rubbish. And in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, sometimes the same 'have a crack at the English' mentality. Stupidity is international. Over here, I tend to find it is helpful to find the many Australians who have their brains plugged in, and hang out with them. Channel 7 and Channel 9 are frequently moronic, but then so is the Sun.

Whilst I wouldn't describe our UK property as special, I'd love to be able to lift it over here, fit aircon and live in it. But we can't - so come the UK summer, we are selling up and burning our last boat, because we can't see ourselves going back. In time you will find a place to live here that you love, but it will take time. And you certainly won't really begin to settle until at least one of you has got the job thing sorted a little more (and you have to start again now wherever you are). To me from your story, the big thing is your child's future - you say he is happier and healthier, and you prefer the educational experience he is getting. I'd imagine that by the time he is grown you will have enough roots to settle here anyway. We moved here two years ago with a 12 year old, and her life and education is better here too - growing up a little less fast, a better peer group, and just simply bigger and better horizons. And you're like us in other ways too - we'd have no jobs, no school place etc to go back to now - we could not create our old lives even if we wanted to. All good reasons to build new ones here.

I sense you are over-planning? Nothing in life is final except death. Life will throw you a lot of unexpecteds, and you will end up having to roll with a few of them and go down roads you didn't expect. This may be one of them. At your ages, you will probably make a life for yourselves anywhere. Two years is nothing, believe me. And yes, presuming you can prove at least a de facto relationship, one of you getting sponsored should secure the position of the other.