Davenjean

My family of four (children age 3 and 6) live in Surrey, UK and will be visiting Canberra from 7-17 May for a short reccie trip, as part of our Asia trip - visiting relatives in Singapore. Would like to stay with a family instead of hotels and am just wondering if anyone might have a spare guest room we could rent? If you only have a double bed we could use our portable air mattress for the children. Pls PM me with your rates and location. Many thanks!

Hi there, my ACT Settlement Officer has been very responsive and helpful, PM me if you would like to write to her for clarification. In my opinion I believe it is fine, as long as your permanent address is in the ACT and if you have children, that they attend a school within the state. Congrats on finding a job even before you arrive! May I ask which industry you are in? I'm in financial services and am finding it a challenge locating possible vacancies. Have you short listed some suburbs where you'd like to live?

Thanks for sharing this helpful post! Can I ask, post arrival in WA did you find that you should have shipped over certain things, say furniture or electrical goods? We are trying to decide what we should /should not bring over from the UK.

We are planning to leave the UK in mid March and transit in Singapore for a month before arriving in Canberra in mid April, we are thinking of a) my husband and I will leave the children with family in Singapore and do a reccie trip for one week to decide on rental and school from April, start looking for jobs etc.. or b) don't do the reccie and just arrive with the whole family in April. My greatest concern at the moment is ensuring that my 6yr old son gets to a school of our first choice, and starts Term 2 on 29 April. Seems this will be difficult as we won't have a permanent address in time if we do not do the reccie in March? Thanks for all your advice!

Hi all, I am a newbie on this forum but appreciate the good and practical advice from many helpful contributors. After many months of researching and reading about your experiences it is finally my turn to take the plunge as well. Have finally received an ACT-sponsored 190 visa for my family and tendered my resignation at work, so we are all planning to move from the UK to Canberra in April 2013 to start a new chapter in life. Our two children are 6yrs and 3yrs old so one of our key decisions is choosing a family-friendly suburb with good schools and childcare. Since the 2nd term of school starts in end of April, would it be advisable for us to make a reccie trip in March to confirm rental accommodation and register for school (as I understand that one is unable to get a place in a govt school until a rental agreement/ permanent address is provided). Would one week be a realistic timeframe to find a longstay apartment/house that starts in a month? Also do most rentals have a minimum period of 6 or 12 months? What else would you do / have you done on a reccie trip (other than validating the visa)? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.