Incata

It's strange but I really don't know. Until last month I could not envisage being 40, and then suddenly I was. I can't envisage being old or where I want to live and suspect I won't be able to until it happens.

I think I will want to be in the same country as my children, so I can see them easily, but being children of wandering souls, I cannot even guess where my kids will end up.

I quite like the idea of buying a campervan and travelling here and there, wherever the wind takes me. I might try for going round the world in a campervan, that would be fun! Then I would be everywhere and nowhere!

Does anyone seriously recruit based on distance from the workplace?

My previous employer did. I nearly ended up in A&E when my jaw hit the floor! It should be up to the candidate, not the employer, to decide how far is "too far" to commute. It was not the most enlightened company I have ever worked for...

I can't find one in Perth. Does anyone know if there is one? I love Burritos!

Try Padbury or Craigie. Both quite nice and reasonably close to railway stations. Both also have very good primary schools and Padbury is in the catchment area for Duncraig High School which has a very good reputation.

I'm a First Time Buyer, so Stamp Duty won't be applicable. Also, I won't have to pay the lenders mortgage insurance as I'm going with Keystart who are government-backed.

Still don't see where the Broker is ccoming up with $7-8k.

Stamp duty depends on the price of the house you buy, not whether or not you are a first time buyer. We were first time buyers in Australia but still had to pay stamp duty.

I was having an interesting conversation with my husband about this a couple of nights ago. We were talking about the information that was published recently about the sharks and their migration routes - particularly the ones involving South Africa. My husband then asked why anyone was surprised that the Great Whites are attacking people here, when in South Africa (on their migratory route), one of the big scuba diving activities, is to get in a cage and feed the great whites to get them as close to the cages (and people) as possible. Ergo, the sharks associate people with food and getting fed. Then they swim over to WA and see more people in the water. Why would anybody be surprised when they go for the people? On the other side of the water people mean food, why would it not do here?

It was interesting as I had never thought of that before, and yet clearly remember seeing lots of adverts for diving with sharks, going for a dip in a shark cage in South Africa. To attract the sharks, they throw lots of bait in the water for them to eat.

Has this occurred to anyone else?

Can you eat them?........just asking as I haven't had my tea yet and I'm hungry.

Yes, you can get Shark Soup in most Chinese restaurants.

Seared shark is also a beautiful fish (served with either a garlic or lemon sauce).

We paid approx $1700 in legal fees, plus stamp duty. There were also all the fees associated with the mortgage (which your bank will be able to advise you). The stamp duty is the killer but the amount depends on how much you are paying for the house and whether or not you are entitled to the First Homebuyers Grant or not. Conveyancers do tend to be negotiable as to their fees.

I can't tell you who is good but we were unimpressed with Beaumaris Primary School and Ocean Reef High School has a poor reputation, so I would avoid them if you can. I don't know about Belridge as we weren't in their catchment area when we lived in Ocean Reef.

You can phone schools that are outside your area and if they have vacancies (not filled by people within the catchment area) they can offer your child a place, so you might want to consider that. Duncraig (not far away), has an excellent high school with a very good reputation, so they might be worth considering. I also understand that Mullalloo High School is well thought of and has regularly taken children from outside their catchment area.

Is your wife able to apply for PR as the principal applicant?

I did think when I first heard about this, that he was taken by a shark, but that was not the case. Very sad for his family.

Buy Liquid Phenergan for the allergy. It is available over the counter and is the equivalent of liquid piriton. My son is an anaphylactic and it is the first thing we give him when he has a reaction. We have asked UK friends and relatives who are coming over to bring a bottle of liquid piriton with them as we find it does not make him sleepy after we give it to him, which makes it easier to assess the development (or otherwise) of the reaction. We give him anywhere between 50 - 100% of the maximum recommended daily dose for his age and weight, depending on how bad the reaction is. We only use the epipen if his airway starts to be compromised. This is what we were told to do by our UK specialist.

However, Australia is very backward when it comes to dealing with allergies. They do not (in WA at least), have specialist paediatric allergists. They just have normal allergists who have little, if any, understanding of the difference between adult and child allergy. In terms of treatment, they go straight for the epi-pen, which due to its effect on the heart, is much more high risk than starting with an anti-histamine and waiting to see if that reverses the reaction. The Australian medical profession even think it is strange to use an anti-histamine (even though it is histamine that is causing the problem). I have had to explain this to both an Australian trained doctor and an Australian allergist, who both conceded that actually it made a lot of sense, but is not the way they are trained.

The way the referral will happen is this: You will be referred to a specialist who will tell you that he does not believe your child has an allergy unless he has seen the reaction himself, even if you have all the paperwork evidencing it from the UK. He would therefore like to retest your child, at huge expense to you, and huge profit to himself. The money is only partially refunded by medicare, leaving you severely out of pocket.

When this happened to us, I looked the specialist in the eye and told him very quietly that I had paperwork from the top paediatric allergist in the UK, confirming that my son had the allergy I stated he had, and that the UK specialist himself had conducted a food challenge test and witnessed the reaction my son had. I then told the specialist that if he wanted to retest my son, then I expected it to happen in a fully equipped hospital department, with resus equipment on hand (and not just in his office, which he seemed to think was appropriate). I then told him that he had better have a damn good lawyer as I would be suing him for negligence the minute my son reacted. I pointed out that as my UK specialist was more highly qualified than he is, that he would not have a leg to stand on and it would cost him an awful lot of money. The doctor looked stunned as apparently over here it is not the done thing to stand up to doctors and give them what for.

I then asked him if he had any questions. He did not and then meekly stated that he did not think that after all, it was necessary to re-test my son, that he would do the prescription for an epipen and sign the appropriate anaphylaxsis action plan.

We still got dinged $175 for the consultation, but at least it was not the $400 - $500 they originally wanted to do the skin prick tests (which my son does not react to - he only reacts if he actually eats the product).

In addition, you need to be aware, that to get epi-pens on medicare (where you get to pay approx $33 (can't remember the exact amount), rather than the $100 they normally cost (over the counter), you have to have the original prescription written by an allergy/immunology specialist (and they don't consider UK specialists count).

We now have UK trained doctors treating me and my family as we have found their standards and knowledge to be higher than their Australian equivalents. We have also found that UK doctors treat us and equals and will discuss options with us and don't expect to be treated as Gods. We have an absolutely excellent GP now who I cannot speak highly enough of. I have nothing but the highest respect for the UK doctors and specialists we have used, but little other than contempt for the Australian ones we have experienced. I would point out that we have only seen UK and Australian doctors, so I have no experience of doctors of other nationalities.

Well, it is a drain on health services, is far from an essential service, and as such it is probably detrimental to a collapsing health service trying to meet other urgent needs. I think we should try the "Oregon Experiment" in Australia to see just what we, as a nation, think is essential and funded.

What was/is the "Oregon Experiment"?

The problem isn't 'dubai water bottles' or people in shops in Dubai. The problem is Australian government paranoia and it is their regulations that prevents you from taking a bottle of water onboard a flight to Australia even though you bought it after security. Board a flight to London in Dubai and there will be no problem with a bottle of water.

 

Australia is one of very few countries that demands 'secondary screening' at the gate.

I disagree. We got into difficulty with this boarding a flight to London from Dubai. However, the universal get out (which they let you through with), is that the bottle contains sterile water for the children (only works if the kids are under 5). We have done this several times in the Middle East and been allowed on with full water bottles. This was both to and from Australia.

I know it's a bit off topic - but in the same theme as being a bit behind the times - I was very shocked the other day to read that abortion in many of the states (apart from WA and ACT I think) is illegal unless your doctor is convinced it is medically necessary for the health and well being of the mother. I'd just assumed that in modern western society this wasn't even an issue any more!

You've not been following the recent sagas in Ireland then?

Maybe you are all doing it too early and it gets boring? My mum used to put all the decorations up at the beginning of December and the excitement just faded. We now put ours up the week before Christmas and it is very exciting and fun to look forward to.

HR can also stand for Human Resources. I ended up on the wrong thread for a while when I first came here!

Some do that and it works for some. We would have considered it, but didn't have to in the end and I am glad about that. Going separately can be more stressful for both of you in different ways. In an ideal world, this is a move that would be done together, but that isn't possible for everyone. Get him to come back and help you with 3 children on a flight!

That is a good idea. Wish we had thought of that.

Much appreciated.

 

I had a recon trip in June and managed to arrange about 6 viewings, one was an open day however some of the agents were happy enough to show me round the houses and talk about areas etc.

 

The weeks bond thing is a new one on me, I assumed you would only part money once accepted, I suppose it is a highly effective way of preventing mass spamming of applications.

 

I have read somewhere on here that it can sometimes work in your advantage if you were to compile a "Tenant pack", with an overview of who you as a tenant are, family etc and if you own a property in the UK, pictures of it etc to show you are not a complete non entity. Did anyone else do this or hear anyone else doing so?

 

I now want to be able to walk into a open day/viewing and be in the best possible position when they review the applications.

 

The difference is almost night and day compared to the UK rental market, we have just gone through marketing our property.

Yes we had a pack prepared which also included bank statements, a copy of my husbands job offer and information/photos of our house in the UK. We also offered $20 per week more than the owner was asking for and offered to pay 3 months rent up front. We were led to believe that loads of people had applied for the house but when we moved out (we bought our own place very quickly), we found out that only 3 people had applied and we were selected because we offered $20 per week more than the rent requested. Nobody else did.

Incidentally, we were not required to pay the 3 months in advance. I am not sure whether or not this was a cock up on the part of the agent or not. However, we did have the money available if required.

I have been dealing with this recently in a company I worked for. The company has to fill in the 457 nomination form and then, once that is approved, you have to log on and fill in your side of the application form, giving the DIABP all the information they need to process your application.

As others have said, you need to clarify with the company whether or not they will pay your visa costs. If they don't (and only pay the nomination fee), you need to ask yourself whether or not it is really worth it and whether or not you would be better off going down the skilled migration route.

My husband came out 3 weeks before the kids and I came out. He had a great time and got a job very quickly but I had 3 hellish weeks with two toddlers (aged 2 and 3.5). The flight was awful with just me and them and I was so glad to walk out of the airport and hand them over to my husband, get to the hotel and drop asleep while he dealt with them.

However, on the positive side, he did get the first job he went for (he is in a genuinely shortage occupation), he sorted out phones, a car and a rental for us to move into a week after we arrived. He had checked out which areas to live in which meant the kids and I did not have to go round numerous home opens. We just turned up, had a week in a furnished apartment (after the night in the hotel) and then a rental to move in to - and that made a huge difference.

When we arrived, it was all sorted out, so we were able to have 2 - 3 weeks enjoying ourselves before hubbie had to start work. He'd checked out lots of places to take kids so we were able to have a little holiday.

I think it was the right thing for us, even though I would never willingly fly anywhere again with two toddlers on my own. I'd pay for a friend to fly with me to help me out. It would be worth every penny!

ps We put our house on the market just days before we came out here and it sold after we had been here for about 4 months. We dealt with the agent and solicitor via skype and email and it was just as easy as when we sold our previous house when we were living in the UK, so don't worry too much about that.

Thanks again for the replies, after a few calls last night and this morning, actually managed to get through to a few letting managers or some such. When I asked about the legal requirement to view a property before renting it, they had to put me on hold for a min while she went to ask... However yes, you are quite correct it is a requirement to view before renting.

 

As a result I am just going to extend our short term rental a few more weeks and take it from there once we land. A week or two before hand I will scour the market and narrow down options/arrange viewings for the day after we land so I can hit the ground running.

 

Just such a difference from the UK in terms of procedures, quite eye opening.

Another thing you need to know is that it is very rare for them to do house viewings. They have home opens on specific days, at specific times and everyone who is interested turns up and has a look round. The home opens are advertised on the real estate agents website and sites such as http://www.realestate.com.au and http://www.reiwa.com.au. If you have not already got an application pack, you can get one from the real estate agent who will be there. If it is a lunchtime viewing, you generally have until 5pm the following afternoon to get your application in. If it is at a weekend you generally have until 5pm the following Monday to get your application in.

In the majority of cases you also have to put down a bond at this point. The owner then has 3 days to make a decision as to who to rent the property to. If you are successful you are informed and the money you have put down (generally equivalent to 1 weeks rent) is held by the agent and used as your first weeks' rent. If you are unsuccessful you get the bond back. If you are successful and decide that you do not want the property, the property owner gets to keep the bond. This is done to try and dissuade people from putting in offers on multiple houses - thus saving the agent the annoyance of having to do multiple home opens.

We were amazed at how different renting was here compared to the UK. However I thought I would give you the heads up to save you a lot of wasted phonecalls in the days before you come out here.

It is a legal requirement for agents that you view the property beforehand

Quite correct. We were told this too so had to wait until we got here to secure one. As we were concerned, my husband flew out 3 weeks before the children and I came and as a result managed to secure a rental for us to move into a week after we arrived.

I have previously posted here about http://www.starthere.com.au. I've just found out (through ordering Christmas presents), that you get 6.6% cashback if you go via the starthere.com website. They have a new app which you can download which tells you if a site you are visiting offers cashback, which is how I found out. Thought others might find it useful.

Hello all

Both hubbie and I are quite frustrated and when he comes back from sea we are going to discuss our options. I am now (to my great surprise) seriously thinking about leaving Perth and moving somewhere else (either back to Canada which I adored and never really got out of my system), or back to the UK (to be close to hubbies family and our friends).

I wanted to see if there are any Human Resources people out there who have had a similar experience to me and moved back to the UK successfully?

I got fired last week and I am still upset about the things they came out with. I have never been treated this way before. I last got fired when I was 13 (from a Saturday job, for saying that the hats they wanted us to wear looked silly) and I am 40 tomorrow. I have spent the last 10 years contracting and earning good money because I was good at what I did.

It took me 9 months to get a job. I was told I was too senior, too experienced or had no WA experience in every case. At last I got a job in a not for profit, which was paying about $15k less than I would get in the public sector for doing the same job. They told me they could not get someone with WA experience who would work for that sort of money, which is why I got the job.

The organisation professed to be a Christian organisation with strong values which it pushes in all its literature, its inductions etc etc. I got there and found a culture of hypocrisy. The senior management team expected everyone else to live and work according to the values, but they ignored them in the way they behaved and in the way they treated their staff. It started to rackle after a while. I was told all recruitment had to go through me and I was responsible for making sure it was done to a high standard and that all the rules and regulations were followed, by everybody, without exception. I took this to be the case - and then asked why the CEO was hiring staff without reference checking them first, when he insisted that a verbal offer could not even be made before references were checked. This happened twice and twice I questioned it. The first time my boss said I was quite right to challenge it and that his boss was pleased that I had done so, as it was the only way that standards were going to be maintained. My boss was then fired/made redundant (they said he was made redundant but then replaced him with my colleague, so it was not redundancy). The issue over references came up again and I challenged again. Apparently this was not a good thing.

Then one of my team was moved out of our ground floor office to the first floor, necessitating her going up two flights of stairs. She has severe arthritis and lower back problems and can barely walk. The building has no lift. I asked whether any thought had been given to how she was going to get upstairs in the mornings, being that she can hardly walk and I requested that she stay downstairs and someone else go upstairs.

I was told I had an attitude problem, that I did not know my place and I was fired. I was, and still am, shocked. In the 9 weeks I was there they had 4 restructures and I had 3 different job descriptions, which did not really help the whole situation. I have worked for both not-for-profit/charity and blue chip companies in the UK, Canada and India and I have not at any point known a company where the rules did not apply to the senior management team. They said that my boss was trying to tell me not to bring these things up, but she never actually said anything. She just kept winking at me. She winked so often that I thought she had a facial tick and ignored it.

I clearly got it very wrong and am quite upset. They also won't give me a reference and told me that Australia could do without people like me in it. That hurt a lot.

My husband is being told in his company that he should fake his timesheets so that it appears that when he is at sea he is only working 12 hour days, instead of the 18 hour days he has been forced to put in at sea, because they have not supplied the correct manning levels.

We have a lovely house and we like the sunshine very much. However, we have both been shocked by the poor quality of HR Departments, the hypocrisy and the willingness to happily break the law when it comes to safety and the protection of the vulnerable (which is what the organisation I worked for did).

We know we should consider ourselves lucky to have our own home and that my husband is in employment, but actually we both feel like we have gone back 20 years (in terms of the way people are treated in the workplace) and we are in a state of shock. At the end of December, my husband will have been here and year and it will be a year in mid-January for the kids and I.

We were going to come for 4 years, but are now sitting down and thinking, "Is this worth it? Is it going to get better?". My 4 year old is desperate to go back to the UK, my 3 year old has started to say he misses his Gran and wants to go home and I feel lost.

I have emigrated before and loved it. Don't get me wrong, I had some tough times, but never like this. I've never had my confidence shattered like this.

I just don't know whether we should give it more time or whether we should cut our losses and go. I don't know if my experience in Human Resources reflects what others have been through or whether I just got unlucky? I keep being told that Perth is such a small place that if I got fired once, the chances are I will not work here again as it will get round that I am somebody to not touch with a barge pole. That's upsetting too.

Either way I am very sad. Making it worse is that it is my 40th birthday tomorrow and my husband is at sea, so I will have nobody to celebrate with (other than two little ones under 5 who want to go to MacDonalds, but I'm not sure I can stomach a big mac!)

I'd appreciate any experiences or comments. I have not discussed yet with my husband about going elsewhere and I just need some help trying to get my thoughts in order.

Thanks for any input!