Goingbackagain

No, I'm a 'ping pong Pom' and ticked 'permanently leaving Australia' on my departure card both times! The man at passport control still said 'welcome home' when I returned!

If you think that you are going to have to buy new machines before you leave, maybe you could pick up a second hand machine in the UK and sell it on Gumtree before you leave? Depending on where you plan living here, your Meile tumble dryer might never get enough use to justify its initial cost. I very rarely use my tumble dryer for a full load of wet washing, usually I just need it to finish things off so they don't go damp smelling in times of high humidity. If you are just going to be using it like that, it doesn't need all the bells and whistles. There's also the issue of buying a new machine, shipping it to Oz only for it to break down, and you then would have no warranty. At least if you buy new in Oz, it will have a warranty should it break down. If you decide to bring out a washing machine there are a couple of considerations. Firstly, try to get one with the lowest water useage you can if you are going to be on metered water here. We are on the Gold Coast and water is terrifyingly dear. My first bill made my eyes water and we are living in a water efficient house and shout very loudly if anyone dares take a shower for longer than 10 minutes! If you are on tank water, you are really going to want a machine with low water consumption! A lot of British washing machines have very long running times so consider a machine that can do a load in 20-40 minutes. Also, make sure it has a delay timer function. Many homes here now have solar panels where your excess electricity is sold back to the electricity supplier and are on a lower night tarriff. If you use your electricity between the hours of 10pm-7am it is much cheaper, so if you have the dalay start function it means you can load your machine and have the load done by 7am, ready to hang out. For anyone considering bringing out a freezer, check that it can still freeze well in the Australian temperatures. Since British freezers aren't expected to deal with working in high ambient temps, often they don't have enough insulation for Australia. The manufacturer should be able to tell you the optimum working parameters if you send them an email.

Hi Sophie, we moved back here to the Gold Coast last year when my daughter was 12. She has made lots of friends and she keeps in touch with her old friends in the UK on Facetime and Skype, and instant messaging. She does still miss her old friends (of course) but she has lots of fun with her new friends too. The Gold Coast is a popular place for people to move to so you will most likely find that you are not the only new person in your class, and you probably won't be the only British person either! It is always sad leaving friends and family behind but you do get over that sad feeling and quickly adapt to your new life. Facetime and Skype and instant messaging really do help. There is heaps to do here on the Gold Coast, especially if you like sport. There is a good choice of sports clubs on the coast. My daughter isn't sport mad, but some of her friends do 'Nippers' which is beach surf lifesaving, and that is very social for the kids and their parents. Since she came here she has learned to surf. There are some big shopping malls here which have cinemas attached, and she often meets her friends there to watch movies. Someone mentioned the theme parks-my daughter and her friends saved their piggy bank money and bought a years pass to Dreamworld and often go there for the day. Some of her friends live near the beach so they pack up lunch and go and spend a couple of hours there sometimes on the weekends or holidays. There are plenty of public swimming pools here to go to, although usually you will know someone who has a swimming pool at home, if you enjoy swimming. If you like spending time with your family, and have the time, there are lots of picnic areas around the Gold Coast, and plenty places to go for the day. There is the Broadwater in Southport which is fun and has a swimming area, and Currumbin where people do all sorts of water sports from surfing to kayaking. The train to Brisbane takes about an hour and if you get off at Southbank there is an artificial beach beside the river, and tropical swimming pools to cool off in, and cafes, pubs and restaurants to eat at, as well as picnic areas. The pools there are free to use. It is near to the museum and other tourist attractions. That's a fun day out for everyone. The Gold Coast is very pretty and has rainforests in the mountains behind the Gold Coast where you can go bushwalking and you will see lots of wildlife. Where we live we see lots of wildlife in our garden-possums, wallabies, lizards and even some marsupials we don't recognise. We see lots of pretty parrots too. So that's the fun part. She said the best thing about Australia is the weather because you can plan to do things like picnics or going to the beach and mostly the weather stays good. (We lived in Scotland where it was often very cold and wet, even in summer) The worst thing for her, she says, is that she can't just go round to her friends house wherever she wants. People here live a bit more spread out and the bus network is not great, so she needs to get driven to friends houses. We lived in a city before and the Gold Coast, although they call it a city, it isn't really, and people need to have a car to get about easily, unless they live near Surfers Paradise. I hope this message helps you feel positive about your move to the Gold Coast because it is a great place to live.

I have never tipped for services in Australia. Maybe loose change into a communal bowl if it is sitting by the till. I remember when we came to Oz for the first time in 1990, reading a book about Australian culture (yeah, yeah, I know!) but anyway, the book said that Australians don't tip because it would be considered rude to do so-the implication being something along the lines that tipping is an act of superiority-Australia being an essentially egalitarian society where they have no 'masters' and all that. I always find tipping a bit cringy and even more so after I heard a story from a friend about when they were on holiday in Anaheim in the USA and they rounded up their bill to the nearest few dollars (somewhere around about 5% of their bill) their server came back over and confronted them angrily about 'what their problem with the service was' and even when they explained that there wasn't a problem, the server abused them roundly for insulting him by offering less than 10%! Now that's cringy all round! I'd rather be in Australia and eat a meal out knowing that the server will get paid a living wage for doing their job regardless of my largesse.

Skani described humidity well! You have to put it into perspective. It is humid a lot of the time in summer, but not unbearable very often, and for most of the year the climate around Brisbane and the Gold Coast is lovely. But you do have to like the sun because you are going to have to live with it, winter or summer in Queensland. You make adjustments, same as you would in the UK to accomodate whatever kind of weather you are suffering from :-)

We did the coach trip a few years ago. Well enjoyed and remembered by the kids as a great day out for just the reasons that Dorset said!

We made the move Edinburgh-Gold Coast, Qld. a year past November with Crown. We settled on them after getting quotes from about 5 companies. We had about 17 cubic metres in a shared container and the cost was around the £4300 mark. Having had the experience of transporting our belongings to and from Oz 4 times in the past (long story!) we knew that we had to make sure that the costs were locked down before signing on the dotted line. We found that Crown were the most competitive, and also their assessor turned out to be very accurate with the volumes involved in our shipment. One or two of the companies assessors were way out with volumes, which was a concern for me as on one of our first shipments we were underquoted and then the shipping company charged us more when the shipment was already at their depot. You live and learn. Get enough quotes to know for sure what your volumes are. To be fair, even the companies who were out on their volumes did agree that they wouldn't charge more if they were wrong. We also checked the fine print in all the quotations. It's no good to you if your shipping company offers free delivery in the metropolitan area if you are going to live 100kms from the metro area. Negotiate that into your quotation so there are no nasty surprises (yep, we had that cost to bear on our first shipment many years ago as they offered 75km radius-we thought we would be pretty close to that but hadn't factored in that Port of Brisbane is not actually in the Brisbane CBD and the extra KM's counted, apparently) Anyway, bottom line. Crown packed up and shipped all our belongings intact (no breakages at all, despite us not requesting the 40'' plasma TV have a wooden crate built for it, which the other companies wanted to do) and the whole process was really smooth. Our belongings arrived when they said they would arrive and we were kept in the loop at all times. The company who delivered our belongings at this end (Kent) delivered up steep access without complaint, set up furniture in the house, (including our flat packed dining table) didn't try to rush the job and were extremely polite. We have used Kent as shippers for a previous Brisbane-UK shipment and they did a great job then too. I think as Snowball said in the above message, you pay your money and take your chances but if you have done your homework by checking out the advice offered on this forum, negotiate your needs with the companies, and trust your gut, you won't go far wrong.