Onmywayhome

Hello, We are relocating to St Ives from Melbourne and are trying to work out which primary school is better for our two girls - St Ives North or St Ives Public. Since we'll be renting the zoning is not an issue - our plan is to choose the school then rent a house within its zone. Our plan is to buy somewhere in St Ives within a year or two (assuming we like it as a suburb!) As far as I can tell SIN is larger but probably has the better academic reputation and lots of extracurricular activities. I think it's also going to have some major renovation soon. SIP appears to be a bit smaller but perhaps has a bit more outdoor space. Aside from band, I can't see many extra activities. Does anyone know anything about either school that they'd be willing to share to help our decision?

Hi all, We are relocating from Melbourne to Sydney soon and are looking for decent movers. We have an entire family home's worth of stuff to move, and doing our own packing is not an option. Has anyone used anyone recently they'd recommend? Thanks!

Hi all, We are relocating from Melbourne to Sydney soon and are looking for decent movers. We have an entire family home's worth of stuff to move, and doing our own packing is not an option. Has anyone used anyone recently they'd recommend? Thanks!

Hi All, We are a couple in our 40s with a 3 and 6 year old considering moving to Brisbane, and would love some ideas about where we might live. I'd work in Fortitude Valley and my husband would work from home. I could manage a commute (train or driving) of up to an hour, and my husband travels a bit so proximity to the airport (under 45 mins) would be nice but not essential. Good schools (public or private if there's not a long waiting list) is a must. Ideally we'd love to be near a beach we can swim at (preferably sand not mud) and other "nice to haves" would be shops/cafes not too far away and walking/cycling/running tracks. I'd also love a village/country type feel, but I've no idea if this is realistic. Somewhere family oriented with a sense of community would be good. A surf beach within an hour or so (or less!) would be also fabulous. Do any such places exist? Thanks!

I've never suffered from hayfever but my husband, who suffered it in spring in the UK, has had it 24/7 since we arrived in Melbourne 4 years ago. Apparently rye grass is his main trigger and it's everywhere in Melbourne. He's on his 3rd round of desensitisation therapy (fortnightly injections) even though for most people, 1 is enough. The allergist says he's one in a million! It would be debilitating were it not for the cortisone spray he has to sniff 4 times a day. The allergist also told us that Melbourne is the allergy capital of the world - something to do with the jetstream or something - and the only real way to solve the problem is to leave this city. If things continue like this, we will!

We had a bunch of stuff (toys, kitchen appliances, clothes, cookware, toiletries) that was less than 12 months old and we declared it all. Result: no extra charges. My guess is that they might assess how much stuff you have and if it's over a certain threshold they charge you but in our case they didn't bother.

We arrived a few weeks ago and bought the BabyLove Ezy Combo for our (very small, 17 pound) 1 year old. We chose that one because at the time it was one of only 2 that got the highest CREP rating for safety (now there's a 3rd one which might be worth a look) and at under $200 (I got it online) it was much cheaper than the other option. It's supposed to last until she's 7 years old so I felt it was pretty good value. I'm really happy with it. She seems tiny in it, but she seems very secure and safe and comfortable. Might be an option for your 3 year old? The other 2 that get the highest CREP safety rating (the AHR Tilt and Adjust and the Style Rider) both have rearward facing options so they might be good for your younger one, although as Snifter points out, whether the child is forward or rearward facing depends more on height than weight here.

We used them too - they were the cheapest of a bunch of quotes and we found them great to deal with - always got a fast response to queries etc. The guys who came to pack were excellent, very efficient and very nice. So we're happy so far but our stuff is currently en route, due in a few weeks, so fingers crossed it all turns up OK.

I know these areas fairly well (lived in Heidelberg for about 10 years some years ago and still have family there). Ivanhoe is very nice but quite expensive, same for Eaglemont. There's a good private girls' school there (Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar) or if you didn't want to go private, Ivanhoe East primary was for many many years one of the best there was - not sure if that's still the case. The public secondary schools around there aren't fantastic I'm afraid. Macleod is ok, less posh, similar to Heidelberg, Viewbank, Rosanna or, if you didn't mind going a bit further out, Watsonia. All pretty typical middle class suburbs and generally nice places to live with well established transport, schools, libraries, medical centres, leisure centres etc. All are on the Hurstbridge line, zone 1 to Heidelberg and zone 2 (so more expensive to commute in near the city) beyond that. As someone else pointed out Balwyn is more East than north, but it's nice. I don't think the transport links are as good though. Good luck with the search!

Thanks Snifter. I was leaning toward the Tilt & Adjust anyway based on the ratings and reviews, but I thought it worth checking that I wasn't missing something re the ratings etc. I wasn't aware you could hire seats - I'm going to look into it.

Hi all We're landing in Oz later in the month with our 1 year old. Here we have her in a Maxi Cosi capsule, which we know (thanks to this thread!) won't be legal so we're going to get her a new forward facing seat. I've looked at the CREP ratings and for the 1 - 4 year age group NO seats get 5 stars, and only two get 4 stars. Am I reading those results right? It seems a bit strange to me that no Maxi Cosi seats are even on the list. Obviously I'm inclined to go for the safest ones, so I'm wondering if anyone has experience of of either the Ezy Combo or the AHR Tilt & Adjust? Or would anyone recommend anything else and if so, how do you find out how safe it is?

Hi Dave, thanks for this. Are you sure? Our application is for a spouse visa. I'm wondering, could my CO have something wrong (in which case we'll ask again)?

I think June's out of the question: our CO has told us the quota for this year has been used up, so no more visas will be approved until July :-( We applied in December so we were expecting something any day now and this news has really upset us, not to mention thrown off our plans. So much for 5 - 6 months!

Hmm, I've just looked on the FBI site and it looks like they've updated the form. We applied just before Christmas using the older version (Rev. 1-31-10), which I think was probably out of date since the latest one looks like it was updated in May last year. I could've sworn I got the form off that site so I'm not sure how we ended up with the older one. Anyway, they processed our application and used Fedex even though it seems we had the wrong form! Not sure I'd advise doing this though - it was just ignorance on our part. We Fedexed the form on about 18 December and got the results in early Feb.

My husband had to do this too. Since we wanted the results to come back as quickly as possible and because we don't have much faith in Royal Mail we opened a Fedex account. You'll see on the FBI form there's a line where you can include a Fedex account number. If you fill that in, the FBI will Fedex the results back to you and Fedex will then bill you. It cost about £30, but we felt it was worth it for the peace of mind and to get the results the day after they were produced.