Scott M

Hi AJ We've been in Altona a month now, and yes, we like it so far, but have still to really get into local life - partly due to me working long hours, partly due to the kids haven't started school yet. We're close to the centre of Altona itself, and again, its quiet, but Pier Street has a couple of bars / cafe's - couldn't say what they are like. Most of the properties for less than $400 in Altona itself are either older properties and are just tired rentals, or brand new, very nice but smaller units. Trains to the CBD are every 20 mins at peak time : Laverton is actually better. We got lucky, and found one that's not too tired, and has a massive back yard : just what we needed for the kids, although I had to spend more than I really wanted to on a lawnmower and edger The beach is within walking distance which is great, just being able to see the sea, and I'm going to look at learning to kitesurf after Christmas : part of the beach is a kitesurfing zone And the shopping centres at Sanctuary Lakes, Point Cook Town Centre and Hoppers Crossing are easy to get to for anything you need.

We only stayed in PC (Jamieson Way) for six weeks before moving to Altona, so this is a bit limited, but : Saltwater Coast is a long way from anything else. It is very self contained, but isolated. It'll take a few years for the building to join it up with everything else. Sanctuary Lakes is better situated, closer to the shops and schools. There are more properties in Point Cook itself for rent than anywhere else. The houses are generally very new and very nice, and while there is competition, there is more supply - check out domain.com.au for a comparison between suburbs. My wife used to drop me at Laverton every morning. Traffic to Laverton can be heavy, esp if the freeway backs up, but most mornings it's fine. There are a small number of roads through PC that feed the freeway (have a look at the street layout on Google and you'll see what I mean), and it doesn't take much to congest them. Train links to the CBD are excellent, and $32 a week, going up a bit in the New Year, but still affordable. I always thought PC was very safe, but away from the town centre, is very, very quiet in the evenings. As we have kids, we didn't get out really in the evenings. Hope this is of some help.

I started applying for Java programming jobs on Seek about a week before we left. The vast majority never replied, but two did, and we had Skype / telephone interviews while in the UK. If your resume does catch someone's eye they will get in touch. I formatted my cv to australian format using this site : http://www.advance-yourself.com.au/, which seemed to help.

After 4 weeks of looking and not finding anything, we found a place and it really suited us (location more than the house though). We asked the agent how we could increase our chances, and she mentioned offering 6 months rent in advance, or offering more. We didn't do either, but after two days the agent rang to say someone else had offered an extra $20 a week, did we want to do the same ? We still have no way of knowing if this was true or not, but we did it anyway, and we did get the house we wanted. It's worth knowing things like that.

The big tickets for us have been a car, and short term furnished accommodation is hard to find and seems expensive - over $800 per week seemed to be the going rate. And this was still cheaper than staying in a big4 holiday park. Car wise we could have gone cheaper, but I'm no mechanic, so we bought a newer car for the reliability. If you know cars, you can prob buy something cheaper and save cash up front. But have a look at something like carsguide.com.au to get an idea of prices before you get here - they gave me a shock. Getting started with housing ties up a lot of cash as well. We had to put a deposit down for this six week let, while we searched for another. To get the longer term let, we had to put up another rental bond (1 months rent), plus another month in advance, so that's tied up about another $5k of our initial cash or so in total, even though when we move out of the short term let we'll get that bond back, but it make our cash flow look bad for a couple of weeks. Australia does seem a lot more expensive at first, but once you're earning Australian wages, cost in relation to wages seem about the same (to me anyway !). Good luck with the move !

#no1spark : just curious, what makes you say that about Altona ? We've been to the schools there, they all impressed my wife (a primary school teacher), there seems to be enough to do, and the transport links to the CBD and out further west all appear good. Is there something we missed ?

From a brief look at Geelong, the prices there don't seem that different from Point Cook, but Geelong appears to be more of a community : Point Cook, just now, still feels a bit empty. But in a couple of years, it might be a nice little community as the schools start to fill up. The train commute would be cheaper too. Werribee might also work as an option : it's more established than Point Cook, and is on the train line.

I do get it that you're not sure where you're working, but if you're in the City Centre, then the trains from Laverton take about 30 minutes-I've been using them for a couple of weeks, and it's a pretty good service. Oops - just read Marie's post : far more useful, and is my experience as well. Also, there are a couple of bike cages there for $50 deposit IIRC for the key, even at 8am there still seem to be some spaces.

Hi all This is my first post, but I couldn't find a similar question after searching. I'm an IT contractor (general Java / J2EE programmer). We've got our visa's, and are debating when to actually make the move, which to me appears to be a choice between Sept or Jan. This is just based on my experience over here, where my last but one contract finished in December, and the job market was flat until February. I'm thinking we need to come over in September at the latest, to give us a few weeks to get housing / bank accounts / tax codes etc set up, then to to try and get a job or contract in October before the Christmas / summer holidays mean all the hiring managers / decision makers / hr people take their holidays. Does anyone have experience (or even better, some numbers ? ) about how much of a dip the job market takes over Christmas ? If we don't come over in September, I think we'll stick it in the UK till January, and come over then. Advice appreciated. And, if anyone has any experience with good IT recruitment consultants in Melbourne ? Please PM me if there's any you'd recommend. Thanks all Scott