vidtek

We had three cars to sell, we sold an old Hyundai sonata two months before we left, the 2007 Toyota Camry three weeks and we were left with my 2003 Fairlane dual-fuel. The guy who bought it allowed us to keep it until the day we left, even offered to take us to the airport, just depends on the person, we got lucky, he was a diamond (although he got a real bargain). All on Gumtree. Tony

Peccavi is right -it's a lottery. I can both deposit AND withdraw funds from my Barclays account in the UK from here in Perth-not much point otherwise when you're buying a house there! My comment about getting a sibling or (trusted) family member to open an account in their name with your money is pretty much a last resort. I frankly don't give a stuff what some nosey parker in Canberra or London thinks of it-it's my hard earned money and I'll do what I damn well like with it; I know I'm not a drug dealer or master criminal. Tony

Jen- I tried to open an account from here and was told the same thing. I went to the UK for my sister's wedding in June/July and the high street banks all threw up their hands in horror when I said I lived in Australia. However, I went into this little village in a place called Wimborne Minster 10 miles North of my home town Bournemouth and popped into a branch of Barclays. Now 32 years ago I swore I'd never ever set foot in a Barclays bank due to overcharges on an account and their offhand attitude, but time passes and the staff at this branch could not have been more helpful, they were just brilliant. I finalized the setup at another small village Corfe Castle, once again, really helpful staff. They opened an account for me and I use it to purchase ebay stuff and geosensitive things on the internet. The moral of this tale is not to use the high street branches! Tony.

I use OzForex and found them very helpful. They have main office in Sydney and branches all over the world including UK. I only use them because my company has used them since 2005 to import trailers from France in Euros. Use any of these services, MoneyCorp, OzForex, CD, but don't use the banks, they just rip you off. Tony.

100- You are in a very similar position to myself. I emigrated in 1982 (landed April fools day - should have told me something). I worked for various companies until 1986 when I went self-employed. My super was my company. My wife reached pension age in Australia and qualifies for the whole pension. I have another 17 months to go until I reach retirement age. Because I had a heart attack I gave up work and am trying to sell my share of the business (at a knock-down price so my super will be super-slim). I have been informed that I will get 73 GBP a week of British pension, the wife gets 1.25 GBP. Because the claim for my wife's pension was complicated by me having a half-share in various companies, Centrelink referred the matter to a head of department in Canberra. This lady rang us and was on the 'phone for over an hour, by the end of the conversation with her, my wife had the full pension paid into our account and she had also put me on Newstart allowance until I retire, something I had no intention of claiming but she virtually insisted. She also told us that when we move to the UK my wife will continue to get the full pension. Maybe she looked at the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes I have paid while self-employed and thought these guys deserve some back. The moral of the story is, if the local Centrelink don't help you, persevere and keep going up through supervisor after supervisor until you get to speak to someone who can actually make a descision for themseves, ie. head of dept. Complain to your local MP if you get knowhere, it helps if a by-election is coming up. 99% of people give up at the first hurdle, which is what they want, make a nuisance of yourself and they want you to just go away. Tony. PS. Whatever you do, open a bank account in the UK before you go back, even if you get a sibling or family member to do it in their name.

In the 90's I had a business in partnership with a Sri-Lankan. Our place was a mini United Nations we had 2 English, 1 Scottish, 1 Anglo-Burmese, a Frenchman and an American Red Indian as well as 2 Aussies. We installed electronic equipment into Hotels and Night Clubs all over WA, large-screen projectors and PA systems etc. There was never a hint of any rancour between my staff because of their race, just whose turn it was to clean the toilets. I picked the job applicants not just on technical skills but on things like how they'd fit in with the rest of us and also if two candidates were near enough equal in most things, I picked the oldest candidate as I have found older people to be much more reliable in the main; when working to a deadline a reliable workforce is essential. Tony

Grey sky and Mike --Just telling it like it is, been here 30 years and out of all the states, the West Aussies are the ones with the chips on their shoulders. Petal - humourous yeah - how about this for a generalization - NSW people are the nicest I've met in Australia, Victorians are just up themselves-think they're a cut above, Territorians, Tassies and South Australians are just peculiar, Queenslanders are ok. Tony

Grizzly- They dislike the poms (that annoys me too-they're the poms not us-the derivation is from the letters stamped on the back of the original convicts shirts POHMR which stood for "Prisoner On His Majestey's Remand" -they're the dregs and criminals; at least their ancestors were most of them truly bad people, cutthroats and theives, rapists and murderers, the loaf of bread thing is a load of rubbish) probably more than any other because we are basically better educated, better mannered and nicer people than they. Having said that people are pople no matter where they come from or what their skin colour may be, good, bad and indifferent. You may just have been unlucky with your choice of pals. The white city West Australians do seem to have a terrific chip on their shoulders, the country aboriginals I've found to be lovely people. The West Aussies who have travelled overseas to other first world countries -I don't mean a trip to Bali- are also much nicer than the rest of them as they know this place isn't "the best place on earth", the Aussies keep telling themselves that maybe in the hope others may believe them. Tony.

Moira- How long have you been here? If it's over a year, then you will need to do a tax return, otherwise you will be singled out at the departure lounge and asked to fill in a tax return. It's best to complete one a couple of weeks before you leave. Are you a pensioner? If you are, there's other stuff to do. Tony.

Why are Aussie baths made for midgets? I have never understood this. Tony

I'd agree with you about France, but you can keep the North, especially Paris which is an even bigger hole than London is, (my dad used to say anyone north of Salisbury is an insert a "not very nice adjective" he was very bigoted), Versille is absolutely georgeous and should be on everybody's bucket list. The South of France is a different place altogether, the people are lovely (especially when they discover you're from Aussie, not the UK-note-always use your Aussie passport in France-they love the Aussies), the weather is like Perth used to be 30 years ago-not humid, not too windy, and if you stay below the sun-line at Bordeaux, pleasant Winters. The Loire valley is beautiful in Spring, as is Lyons. When there, try to speak French, they let you struggle for a while then take pity and converse in English with you. It's the attempt they like, no matter how bad your French. Bordeaux is my favourite City, much nicer than Paris and very cosmopolitan. The ladies love the shopping there. Tony.

Hey guys - and Rupert especially apologies-put the wrong quote up there, I'll redo it. Now I can't find the original post-they said get a job before leaving the UK-virtually impossible. Tony

Sorry Rupert, You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. You really have no idea how impossible it is to secure a job here when you live in another country. As an employer myself, there is no way I would consider giving a job to someone from 12,000 miles away sight unseen when I can see a local within a couple of days of application. Tony.

Maybe to even things up I should list some of the things I'll miss about living in Australia. 1) Clear skies where you can see for miles. 2) Getting out of the shower and leaving it dripping wet without worrying about mould (at least in Summer). A recipe for disaster in the UK. 3)The fabulous road surfaces in Perth, beautifully maintained like almost nowhere else on earth (maybe Dubai). Such a pity about the dreadful road design, never 1 traffic light where 10 will do, and the driving....... 4) The way that local councils have finally got on board with parkland planning for sustainability, planting trees where the shade they give will actually cover paths where people walk - why has this taken so long??? A good example is Stirling City civic park. 5) Not having to worry about pipes freezing up in Winter in the house-or putting anti-freeze in the car radiator. 6) The cost of a bit of fillet steak-we are gorging ourselves on it until we leave!! 7)Tropical fruits fresh from the North, mangoes, kiwi fruit etc. 8)Leaving the few mates behind with which I have formed a real friendship over the last 30 years. 9)Leaving the graves of our loved ones behind at Pinnaroo Park. 10)Not having to concern myself with sweeping or repointing chimneys a perennial bugbear with the older housing stock in the UK. The pitch of the roofs here - so shallow as there are no concerns over snow. 11) How easy it is to weed the gardens in these poor sandy soils-it's a back-breaking job in the UK with the heavy clay soils. mmm, writing the pluses for Perth shows me we are making the correct choice... Tony

Baz- I was a TV tech and I remember well doing service calls all over East Dorset and West Hampshire where there were many backyard pools, some elaborate such as on the West Cliff Overdrive in millionares row, and some at more humble abodes such as mine where I dug my own pool by hand with a shovel and pickaxe. Not all pool owners in Bournemouth were seriously wealthy people, just people who chose to spend their money on a nice home and back garden and drive around in an old 1964 Vauxhall Victor like me. Incidentally, Parleycross, I can remember doing a service call at Gallows Drive in West Parley and admiring their backyard pool (with no fence). Tony

This is a pointless to and fro-yes we had a backyard pool in our Christchurch house and we will have another in the New Year in Poole. You have still missed the point-as mickinqld pointed out it comes to personal responsibility-if you have a small child you watch it whenever it's awake without exception. The problem is all these fat slappers want to sit with their friends chatting and letting their brats run wild without consequences. The silly Aussie govt passes legislation making more and more nanny state rules. I say again if I buy a property I don't expect to have to install and pay for fences that are totally unessasary and unsightly when I have no small children of my own. My wife and I never took our eyes off our son for a second around our pool when he was growing up. Tony.

My point was they can walk 100mtrs down the road to an open public pond with no fences. If you live in Parley Cross you'll know that all around the Hurn area there are many bodies of unfenced water and rivers. So why impose very expensive and unsightly fencing rules on homeowners who have no children of their own? Tony

Grizz- We are returning to the UK, have just bought a house in Bournemouth, our old hometown. I can remember the weather forecasts in the UK though, at the start of Winter the snow-line would start in Scotland and gradually move South. By Xmas Yorkshire, New Year London. By late January the snow-line would fluctuate up and down the country, and would sometimes get as far as Winchester, very rarely coming to Bournemouth/Poole areas, maybe once every 10 years or so. We returned from there in July, the day we left for Heathrow it was 36deg in Shaftesbury! The countryside in Dorset is spectacular, from the Jurassic coast Durdle Door and Lulworth cove to the New Forest in Hampshire, and the sea temperature allows swimming all the year round for the foolhardy and brave. (As a 19 yr old I can remember waking up under Bournemouth Pier on Christmas morning after a lively session in the pavilion Xmas Eve with a banging headache and joining the Spartan Swimming Club in the sea after stripping off my 3-peice suit and jumping in still intoxicated from the previous night, sobering up very quickly in the water! Coming out to a howling gale and sleet all over my suit with no towel was fun times for me!) Try getting a taxi Xmas morning at B'mth Pier as a dripping wet 19 yr old! Work wise- you are a health professional, there are many Nursing homes in the area, and some fine Hospitals, you should have no trouble getting employment. Culturally, being only 100 miles from London up the M3, and as a holiday resort there are countless nightclubs and theatres, the shopping is better in Poole, the Dolphin Centre is fully enclosed for inclement times. There are many others, from Chrischurch to Castlepoint a big shopping complex on the outskirts of Bournemouth near to the new Bournemouth Hospital. House prices are 25% more than the average in the UK reflecting the better environs, but places under 200,000 GBP can be had. There has been little immigration there due to lack of industrialization in the area so Dorset accents abound, but in May the grey rinse brigade descend followed by all the other grockles (local slang for holidaymakers) in the high Summer. There are also lots of English language schools for foreign students, so there is a very cosmopolitan feel to the place. Salisbury is the furthest North I would live in the UK, it's all too cold up further North for these old bones! The very best of luck to you young man, Tony.

1)Riding a bike without a silly helmet 2)Smiles and greetings from others out walking-in Perth they look the other way and pointedly ignore you. If you smile at a stranger they think you're a weirdo. It was so pleasant to take a stroll around the New Forest with perfect strangers actually smiling and saying hello last July on holiday-after 30years I'd forgotten the civil niceties of a civilized country. 3)having a cat without a licence (only one), mind you we do need a tv licence there! 4) Buying a place with a backyard pool without a stupid pool fence. If some neighbours kid wants to drown him or herself, they can do it at any of the local park ponds which are unfenced without blighting my property and costing me money. 5) Listening to the birds chirping, not sqawking. 6) Sitting out on my porch minus the aussie salute. 7) Walking along the beach and having breakfast at the beach cafe. 8) The courteous English way of driving in traffic 9) The great public transport infrastructure. 10) Getting away from all the inane local tv programmes and some of the awfully nasal aussie accents spouting politically correct cliches, teenage girls with every second word being "like" "like" "like" drives me nuts.... Silly old fart Tony.

Jane- We are in the exact same position as yourselves. We've been in Perth for over 30 years and are moving back to Bournemouth, our old home town. We have put an offer in on a house which has been accepted, the agent is now advertising it as sold subject to contract, but it's taking a while for that to filter through to all the other sites, rightmove, zoopla etc. We had a full survey done on the property which cost us 500 gbpounds and solicitors fees upfront of another 1000 gbp. We did this on our last holiday there in June/July. Since then we have been on tenterhooks waiting.... and waiting..., the owner was gazumped on the property she was buying and has had to look for another. We were hoping to be there by xmas, but we are now looking at mid-end February. Another bloody Summer in Perth, just what we hoped to avoid. The process here is much more straightforward and transparent, we haven't bought a house in the UK for over thirty years and it looks as though nothing has changed. It looks as though we've missed the boat on exchange rates too-the Aussie dollar is headed South and the gbpound headed North. By the way, it eases the path considerably if you can set up a bank account in the UK. It took us a lot of punting around different banks, we tried all the major high street ones in Poole and Bournemouth and as soon as we said we lived in Aussie, they just threw their hands in the air and said no-way. Eventually we went into a little village bank branch of Barclays (a bank I vowed and declared I would never set foot in 30 years ago) and they couldn't have been more helpful. They set up an account and couldn't do enough for us, we highly recommend the Wimborne Minster branch of Barclays!!! With that account set up, all sorts of doors which were firmly closed have now been magically opened to us. We have also opened an account with OzForex to transfer the money from our a Aussie pensions to the UK. OzForex will also send money to whatever beneficiary you state, so when we send the money over we can deposit it straight into the solicitor's trust fund saving further charges. So the way we now have it set up, our aussie bank (Bankwest) gets our pensions , we then transfer the pension income in $2000 lots (the minimum allowed per month) to our Barclays account. Another advantage is we are able to buy stuff on Amazon UK and other stuff online with our UK credit card at a much cheaper rate than we could with aussie dollars. To sum up, 1) get a UK bank account as priority. 2) set up your Ozforex account 3) Get to know your vendor, ensure you have a really good rapport and also highlight your cash buyers with no chain, a big lever. 4) Don't be too greedy with silly offers on a house you like as that gives vendors a chance for better prospects elsewhere and you could be gazumped . The very best of luck to you, Tony and Jane.

Just got back on the 16th, and as I suspected for many years, the size of the local toilet rolls here is shrinking. The rolls in the UK are at least 15% bigger. This is strange when you think of all the fat arses here with the obesity explosion. Anyone else noticed it? Tony

We are going back after over 30 years in Perth. We moved moved here in 1982, Perth and Australia was a very different place then. I have always loved both places, having also lived in Bournemouth for 30 years. My wife has always been homesick for the UK. Now my son has grown up and we have a 7-month old granddaughter, he came to us and told us he wanted to move back to Bournemouth. He has been here since he was 5 and is now a high school English teacher. His reasons are many and varied: 1) He has suffered from melanoma and is frightened to go outside in Perth. He doesn't want our granddaughter to be exposed to this risk. 2) The attitude and outlook of the general populace in Perth has had a major cultural shift. With the mining boom has come a 2-speed local economy and people have become shallower and just interested in money and social status. 3) Australia and Perth in particular has become a suffocating nanny state, from backyard pool, cat and dog to ridiculous bicycle helmet legislation. 4) Perth drivers are units. The roads are beautifully maintained surface-wise when compared with almost any other city (Sydney is a disgrace), but the actual design of the roads and the ubiquitous use of traffic lights instead of give-way intersections or roundabouts slows traffic unnecessarily. After having a couple of family holidays in the UK and France last year and this year (just got back July 16th) the contrast with european roads and driving habits is stark. Drivers give way, are courteous and the camber on the roads is designed to keep you on the road, not to make you come off it. Through France and the UK there are minimal traffic lights, and where there are lights, they are synchronized with all the rest so if you go through one at the speed limit, you don't get stopped at all by subsequent ones. The traffic density is far higher, but driving is a pleasure. (rant over.) My daughter-in-law (chinese Malaysian) is not 100% behind the move but is prepared to give it her best. Her family are here in Perth and she doesn't want to leave her job. We will keep our house here as a bolt-hole for her if it all goes belly-up. Personally, I don't really care where I live, as long as I have my family and some sort of shed/garage to potter about in I could be happy in Timbuktu. I must admit, living in Bournemouth does have some advantages, I can hop on the ferry and be in Bordeaux (a place I really love) the next day on the high-speed train. That's something you can't do in Perth. Everywhere is so far away from here, and once you've done the South-West and North-West there is nowhere to go for a change of scenery/life style, I've never been much of one for Asia, although I do like Kota-Kinabalu. My point is everyone is different and will pick out the particular things they like/don't like from each place. Cheers, Tony.

As a young fella, you want to be somewhere close to night life etc. I grew up in Bournemouth and it was just the best place to be a young'un. London is tremendously expensive, and somewhere like Bournemouth would give you all the night life you want, plus the added bonus of being near great beaches and the New Forest. The weather is also much, much warmer than the rest of the country. Bournemouth has more sunshine hours than any other place in the UK. Expect snow maybe once every 10 years or so. It's also 1 half hrs away from London via the M3, so you get the best of all possible worlds. Tony

I'm with you guys about the cost of the animal transport companies, we have 2 cats to return and have been quoted $3640 !! That's almost as much as 2 business class 1-way seats for us! I've been researching the possibility of doing it myself, and there isn't that much to it. There are 3 areas of logistics which must be attended to before it will work: 1) AQIS the Australian quanrantine service requires vaccination certificates and health checks as well as an export permit for each animal. 2) The airline's have varying rules for carriage of pets, decide your airline and flight before you start the procedure. 3) UK's receiving facility at Heathrow expects all paperwork to be 100%. The first step is deciding flights. Purchase a crate - I found an IATA approved one on ebay Puppy Power http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130806983909&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:AU:1123 for $72.00, now reduced to $65.00. Heathrow (and all ports in the UK) will only accept pets as manifest cargo, not accompanied baggage. This means you must deposit your pet at the airline's freight depot some 4hrs before the flight and present AQIS with the correct paperwork. Although this is more bothersome and more difficult to do than accompanied baggage, where you check-in at the check-in counter and the airline weighs the crate and animal and you pay the excess baggage fees (which are considerably cheaper than manifest cargo where you pay by volume not weight) the stress imposed on the animal is considerably less as the freight personnel are skilled in pet handling and put them in a monitored quiet area before the flight. The airlines have various policies dealing with pets, choose carefully your carrier keeping this in mind. All these details can be found on the airline's websites. Some will only accept pets transported by their nominated pet freight company, avoid those. On arrival in the UK at Heathrow, you collect your pet from the freight depot of the airline after collecting your baggage. Once again, all entry permits, vaccination certificates rabies certificate and pet passport (or other documentation) must be 100% for them to release your pet. I must stress, I haven't done this yet, but it is a pretty straightforward procedure and I don't forsee any problems. I don't want to pay $3640 for 2 cats, that is just a big rip-off. Australian requirements DAFF and AQIS here: http://www.daff.gov.au/biosecurity/export/live-animals/companion For further information on how to prepare your pet for export to the UK under the Pet Travel Scheme (PETS), including listed countries, documentary requirements and approved routes and carriers, please see the link below: https://www.gov.uk/pet-travel-information-for-pet-owners If someone has done this before me, please post and tell me where I've gone wrong. Cheers, Tony.