Incata

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

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.

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.

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.

It sounds like it was a very hard decision for you. I think that you did the right thing. I am sure it will get easier over time. Best wishes Incata

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!

What is a booze bus? Never encountered one before.

With the 457 (as of the 23rd November) companies are required to evidence (rather than just say they do) that they spend either 1% of their total payroll on training staff, or pay 2% of their budget to a Regional Training Organisation. Up until now companies could just say they were and they were not checked. Now they have to show the invoices. So while the training budget is not specifically for the people on 457s, it does mean that the company can't just pay lip service to training existing employees.

He is the chap you don't agree to go for a swim with.

You can go to the DIABP website http://www.immi.gov.au and go to the VEVO section. Here you can register, input your passport details and it will show the visa you are on, it's expiry date and any restrictions on the visa.

The requirements to do labour market testing comes in on Monday 23rd November.

I have found in Perth that Recruiters will often put candidates forward for roles, without the candidates permission. They will also tell candidates that they are recruiting for the role, thus stopping the candidate from applying direct, when the company has not actually placed the job with that agency. My advice would be that if you can work out who the company is who is recruiting (from the agency ad, if it is genuine), then apply to the HR Department direct. You can always give them a call and ask them if they are advertising xxx job via xxx agency. If they are, you know the job is genuine but you will find the HR team would prefer you to email your CV to them directly.

We bought very quickly when we got here and it has helped us feel more settled. I didn't get so stressed when one of the kids decorated the walls (he came and told me he had drawn me a picture and would I like to see it). I like the fact that despite the fact that it needs doing up, we can do it in our own time. I like that it does not matter if I put the kids pictures up all over the walls and I don't have to get permission to put a hook in the wall. However, I have been a military wife and have been in military married quarters for the last 6 years, so having our own place at last is wonderful! Our mortgage is also a lot less than we were paying in rent, and we live in a much nicer area, so it has worked well for us. It's also good for the kids as they are now starting to understand that it is really home and not just somewhere else we will be moving on from.

I would suggest that you get advice from a migration agent.

Currambine Butchers are fab! We buy all our meat from there.

They are as good as they look and the red Christmas boxes make them look really special. I wish they shipped to Australia!

There is a wonderful company called "The Cheese Shed". They sell over 100 cheeses from Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. They do the most amazing Christmas Boxes (had some for the last couple of years and have ordered them for the rellies this year). They are really worth a try: http://www.thecheeseshed.com/ We used to order from them regularly for special occasions. If we were going back, I would be ordering from them to have something ready for me on arrival. After lunch we would be going straight for a decent Indian.

It was down to my husband's work. I have been doing contracting for much of the last 10 years, to make it easier to move round the UK with him (he was moved regularly in the armed forces), so for me the location was not a big issue - although I would have had many more opportunities in Sydney or Melbourne. We took the view that if I could not get work it would be fine for me to stay at home and bring up the kids but we needed one reliable income. My husband's trade (Hydrographic Survey) is predominantly on the west coast which is why we came to this side of the country. If there had been as many jobs on the East Coast, we would probably have looked over on that side of the country. The isolation does not bother us much at this point in time. It may do as the kids grow older, but right now they want beaches and play parks, so Perth is fine for that.

Didn't know that. It was back in early Feb that the school told us they got extra funding and since my son is happy in his current school and they have never mentioned it, I have not really thought about it unless conversations like this one come up. When was it cut?

My kids have afternoon naps and are generally down by 2pm, so it would not work for us as they would be complete ratbags!

KM75 has a good idea there. Is there any way your husband could get someone to manage the business while you are in Australia, giving you the time to make a decision as to whether it is for you or not?

I can dream! With two under 5 we are lucky if we are still in bed at 6.30am!