Kelloggs30

Thanks for all the suggestions everybody. I had a good look last night and managed to get a few quotes from some property managers. One property in particular has caught my eye on Kawana Island. Can anyone tell me what it's like there? The only thing I seem to be able to find is that it's a retirement village type area! If that's the case, it may not be ideal for my young family? Hehe.

Thanks jt, I have been looking into the long term rentals already, but think we need to be there to decide on one we'll be living in for 6 months +. Am currently looking at holiday rentals, but they all seem sooooooooo expensive! How do you get the long term rates? Is it just a case of asking the managers? Thanks for the help :-)

Hi everyone, My husband and I along with our 16 month old son are arriving in the Sunshine Coast on 18th June and are looking for a short term rental for a few weeks while we look for a longer 6-12 month rental property. If you have, or know of someone that has a property that is up for rent from that date I would love to hear from you!! I have been looking at websites like Stayz etc but would love a recommendation from someone who knows the properties and areas that would be the best base to look around the sunny coast from. We are hoping to secure a long term rental in the Buderim/Mountain Creek/Sippy Downs type area, so would like to be based nearby for our first few weeks. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance, Kelly :-)

Hi everyone! My husband and I, along with our 14 month old son, are planning to move to the Sunshine Coast in June. We have visas sorted, have sold our house and booked the flights, just no idea where to stay when we get there! We don't have jobs yet, we are both secondary school teachers (PE and Science) but are prepared to work in any job until we find something perfect. So no tie to a location for a job. We are hoping to find somewhere to rent before we fly out, maybe in somewhere like Buderim which seems to have a lot of positive reports or Sippy Downs? Any suggestions of real estate agents or areas to target for rentals would be greatly appreciated! Obviously having a 14 month old in tow we definitely do not want to arrive without a place to stay! So any help with securing a temporary home would be brilliant :cute: Thanks in advance for any help!

Hi everyone, Sorry I haven't really posted much on here, have been more of a lurker while I haven't actually had anything to report about my application! However, I thought I may be able to offer some hope for July applicants. My husband and I applied for his and my 1 year old son's visas on 9th July (I have Australian citizenship) and they were granted on 20th December! Lovely Christmas present! I'm not sure why they were granted so soon, we had originally been told around a 6 month wait, then it increased to 8-9 months, so we were expecting February. My husband then phoned our CO in early December who told us to call him in January and he would see about granting it, but then surprised us without warning at the end of December! It was also the subclass 100 - even better! I really hope that this brings some hope to some of you, the only possible reason I can think that it was granted so soon is that the police check for my husband runs out on 14th June and that is the initial entry date we have been given with the visa. Obviously we intend to be there much earlier than that, but it means we have been given just under 6 months to validate. Maybe that's why it was granted sooner than expected? I apologise if this upsets anyone that has applied at an earlier date than we did and still have not been granted, but I suppose every case is unique and case officers will work through their own caseloads at their own pace? Good luck to you all, I hope you all get your visas very soooooooooooon!!! ;-)

Hi everyone, just found this thread and thought I'd say hi! We applied for my OH's spouse visa (including our 8 month old son) on July 9th - am gutted to realise that we missed a shorter processing time by just a matter of days if we'd got it in before 1st July!!:-( Serves us right for taking our time I suppose! Anyway, here's hoping it takes the lower end of the 7-9 month estimate!! Good luck to you all playing the waiting game :-)

Aww thanks very much munchkinella and rammygirl. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what's happening by the end of October. If we can't find jobs it won't even be an issue. I appreciate your advice anyway :-) xx

Hi there, I'm just after a bit of advice re the possibility of swapping visa types once one has been applied for. The situation we're in is that I'm an aussie citizen (by descent). We applied for a partner visa for my husband and 8 month old son at the end of June. Our case officer originally estimated 6 months for visa approval but yesterday has said it's more likely to be 8 - 9 months! (His reasoning is workload at the London embassy, nothing to do with our application). The problem we have is that we are both teachers. We were hoping to start applying now for jobs that would commence at the end of January 2013 which is the start of the academic year in Australia. I am aware that the job situation in teaching in Australia means that we would be very lucky to get jobs so quickly, but this thread is more of a "what if..." scenario. To be able to leave our current jobs at Christmas we would need to hand our notice in at the end of October. Has anyone ever applied for a partner visa and then swapped to a sponsor visa? This is assuming that IF my husband was offered a job to start in Jan 2013 and IF the school were able to sponsor him, would it be possible to arrange quickly enough? Aaaargh it's all so frustrating! Has anybody been in a similar situation? Our case officer is not the best at communicating with us, so I'm hoping someone can offer some advice :wacko: Thanks for reading :cute:

Lostdf3 - it's really hard to know when to tell them! If I tell them too soon and things don't go to plan it'll make life so hard at work! But telling them too late could have exactly the same consequences! Have you already emigrated or are you still in the process? Sussex boy, thanks for the advice. I'd love to secure a job before we go, but it seems really hard to do from here. I'll keep trying though and am in the process of registering with every job website and every teaching-related agency I can find! :-)

Hahaha, I was a bit like that. People thought I was mad! But it got to July and it really was cold and rainy. I remember walking to work every morning in torrential downpours! But it's such a lovely city I could forgive the winter (haha) weather if I didn't have the arthritis to contend with! :-)

Thanks jgt, I lived in Perth for 3 months and loved it! Unfortunately for me I have rheumatoid arthritis which is not great in cooler weather otherwise it would have been Perth all the way for me! Loved loved loved the Sunday sessions in Cottesloe!

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum and feeling like I need some words of wisdom (or comfort!) from people who know what I'm going through! My situation is that I am lucky enough to be an Australian citizen by descent, I applied for and was granted citizenship while I was backpacking around Australia in 2006. I then returned to the UK at the end of that year with my British partner who I met whilst travelling. We are now engaged to be married in July and had our first baby in December. We have decided to take the plunge and return to Australia permanently. So, we've started filling out the partner visa forms and compiling all the evidence we need to prove our relationship and I feel like my head is going to explode!!!!! I do know that I should be grateful that I have an easier route into Australia than most people and I am definitely thankful for that, it's just a looooooooot of paperwork to try and get done with a 6 month old baby in tow! :wacko: Anyway, we've decided that Queensland is the state we want to move to, mainly for the weather and hopefully the job opportunities! We are both secondary school teachers (Science and PE) and were thinking that it would be reasonably easy to find jobs while its on the skills shortage list. But now, after reading so many negative posts on here, I'm really worried that we'll be jobless for the foreseeable future! We are in the process of registering with the Queensland government as teachers, but need a reference from current employers who don't yet know we are planning to leave! I can't really discuss this with people I know, especially not my work colleagues, as we're keeping it a bit of a secret until we know whether the visa will actually be granted (although I don't anticipate any problems). I was just wondering whether anyone else was in the same boat re: teaching jobs? Or if anyone has any advice? I'm feeling a little deflated as although I know from experience that we love Australia, it was a while since we lived there and so many people are posting on here with all sorts of negative stuff :confused: re jobs, homes, schools, economy, Aussies hating POMS! etc. Sorry for the long post, just got nowhere else to vent :wink: but aside from all the negativity I've seen from some (not all) of the posts on here I'm very excited and would love to share ideas with people on here!!! Kelly