silverbobby

cool thats good to know, hopefully it will be the only UK debt we have.

Cool i thought there wouldn't be, but it's always safe to double check. We were considering keeping 1 bank account open just in case anyway. Thanks for your response :biggrin:

Hi, We are moving to Oz at the end of Feb and we have a personal loan with a UK bank, ideally we would like to pay off all our UK debt but we are considering keeping the bank account open and continuing to pay the direct debit. Does anyone know if there is a problem with doing this? We were thinking that every 2-3 months we would transfer money from Oz to our UK account to make sure there was cash to cover the direct debit for the next couple of months. Long term we are thinking that after 12-18 months in Oz we would have enough just to pay the loan off outright. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks Mark

Hi, We are due to move out to Oz, Victoria, at the end of Feb on a 175 PR visa, i don't have job lined up yet and plan to spend all of March settling in, finding a home and school for the kids. So the earliest i would look to start a job is early April. What we are trying to figure out is how long to have a hire car for, 2 weeks or 4 weeks? Will we have any trouble buying a car on finance if i do not have a job? We will have plenty of savings to cover rent and food etc for several months so we could actually buy a car outright but we want to keep a hold of this in case we fall on hard times. Saying that i am confident of finding work, we just don't want to rush into finding work before we have settled in. Do Australians buy cars on a lease like we can in UK? Cheers Mark

We have a PR 175 visa so we qualify for the extra baggage, good to hear they can actually check with DIACs systems but think we will still take a copy of our grant letter. Thanks both for putting our minds at rest. Cheers Mark

Hi RAS, Thanks for the advice. I assume we should be able to get our medicare card as soon as we arrive, we have a 175 PR visa so i think we qualify for medicare. Do you know if you need to sit a test to change your driving licence to an Oz one? Cheers Mark

I've heard before that when trying to secure a rental in Oz you need lots of documents to prove you are a good or reliable tenant. Is there some sort of points system for all the different documents you can show with your application? We are moving to Victoria, Geelong we think at the minute in Feb 2013, can someone list the main or essential documents or references you should have with you when you apply for a rental? I don't have a job yet so i know we will need to show a bank statement showing our savings. We rent a house in the UK at the minute so i should be able to get a reference from the landlord or letting agency about how we were as tenants. But other than this what else do we need? Thanks in advance, Mark

Hi All, We have our flights booked with Singapore airlines (flying 26th Feb 2013 from Manchester), i understand that they give you double baggage allowance (of 40kg) if you have an unvalidated visa for Oz. What i am wondering is if you applied for your visa online, then the visa grant and all other docs from DIAC are electronic and just emailed to you, so what do you have to show when checking in for your flight that to show you have an unstamped visa? Do you just bring a print out of the visa grant letter? Are they looking for a stamp in your passport? I'm sure other people must have come across this before as i would have thought most people apply online nowadays with DIAC? I have emailed singapore airlines to confirm but it would put our minds to rest knowing others have been through this even if it was with a different airline? Thanks Mark

Hi, Thanks for your reply. Your advice is pretty much what our migration agent said, although we have the visa he is willing to help with the filling the forms and contacting DIAC. My wife has already had to change her passport and we'll need to do a change of name for her with DIAC as well, so other than the wait it isn't anymore hassle i guess to change the childrens passports. As you say it is probably best to have passports and birth certificates matching. I know it will please our eldest son, he's 6 and in year 1 at school and used to complain how difficult it was writing his name (when it was a double barrel name) lol. Thanks again. Best be filling in them forms now. Cheers Mark

Hi, We were granted our PR visa back in April (i think it seems such a long time ago now), but were since married in September (my partner was on our visa under the defacto relationship). We have changed the names of our childrens birth certificates as they weren't originally registered with my surname. What we're not sure of is if it is compulsory that we change our childrens UK passports now their birth certificates have been updated? If we were to get new passports then we would need to update the visa with the new childrens passports. We fly to Melbourne on 26th Feb 2013, so we do have a few months yet but we're still a little concerned with the timescales. Once in Oz would we need the visa/passports for our kids for anything like school, because we do want them to use my surname from now on? Does anyoe have any experience with changing passports after their visa was granted? Thanks Mark

Ok. So we're moving to Oz at the end of Feb 2013. We're looking to move to Geelong Victoria and we need to sort out some short term accommodation for when we first land. We have 3 children, aged 6 & under so would be looking for a 3-4 bedroom house/apartment. What i'd like to know is how long did other people stay in a holiday let before renting long term/buying? Initially we thought 4 weeks would be enough time to get settled, do some research and find a long term rental. But with exchange rates renting a holiday home for 4 weeks is a lot more expensive than we had hoped, we have been quoted $6,000 for 2 different rentals in Geelong. I know people can have different budgets but do you think this is expensive? Should we look to rent only for 2 or 3 weeks rather than 4 what do you think??

Thanks Petals Yeah have just joined life in victoria so will post on there as well. Cheers

We're not in Geelong yet but when we do arrive next year we would definitely be up for a meet up. Hope everyone else has a great time though !

Hi, We are looking for a holiday let, preferably a house but would consider an apartment or townhouse, to sleep 2 adults and 3 children oh yeah and we are looking for one in the Geelong area. Can anyone recommend a nice but not too pricey holiday let? We have looked on stayz and airnb.com and although there are lots to choose from there are not many available when we consider that we would probably need a holiday let for up to 4 weeks. I guess most people use short term rental for about 3-4 weeks before finding a long term rental? Oh and we would be landing on Thurs Feb 28th 2013. Cheers Mark

Thanks for the advice Petals. I did just that a couple of years ago when we first started our application, listing suburbs on the various lines on the eastern side of Melbourne. It just seems the sort of house we would like is only affordable further out in places like Frankston and Berwick. Then we found some distant family out in Point Lonsdale and Geelong started looking more appealing. We got our visa back in April (i think - can't believe i can't remember) but we just got married 2 weeks ago so all thoughts/planning for Oz have been on hold until now. We fly to Oz in Feb next year.