excitedbutterrified

There's only one way to find out. I've fantasized about doing a similar scenario because I find UK winter awful! Personally I think you are going to find the logistics of doing this really tricky to manage. I think the circumstances where it could work would be if you are very wealthy, young, with no spouse and definitely no kids! You are going to need a very understanding boss who doesn't mind you going missing for half the year (on both sides of the world.) Or a completely remote job. If you do have a job in both countries, then you may find there are tax implications? Shipping your stuff back twice a year will be an utter pain, so I'd not do this. Keep possessions to an absolute minimum in both locations. With regards to your UK property, what would you do with it? Its likely not a good idea to leave it empty, but finding a tenant who wants to stay for just 5 months every year is likely to be tricky. For the 4 months in Oz, you are probably looking at a short term holiday style rental as most rentals will want a 12 month commitment. Might be easier to rent a room in a shared house, or In fact I'd even say you could live in a holiday park, - Our favorite holiday park, Pambula Beach has basic cabins at $4.5k for 4 months. Live right on the beach with a swimming pool etc... My advice- If you really think Australia is the place for you, then move over, lock stock and barrel. Perhaps delay selling your UK property until you settle, so you have an easy way back if it doesn't work out.

If you are a bit of a risk taker, Id say just buy second hand when you arrive. We bought a fridge freezer and a washer/dryer after we arrived and both situations were bizarre! A couple of days after moving into our rental, arranged on gumtree to buy a fridge freezer, and turned up this guys house. He was an obvious drug addict, and when I looked at the fridge it it was still plugged in and contained his food and medication. I did at this point say, obviously you still need it, Ill find one elsewhere. But he was insistent I could take it, quite a nice guy and I ended up buying it. It was quite old, but bought it for about $50 and worked just fine. (after extensive cleaning!) Second time, bought a virtually brand new washing machine/dryer for $150. The guy was selling it as he had bought it as a gift for his wife (note : terrible gift) and she didn't like it as it was a front loader and she preferred top loader. He was in a massive rush, because his wife had just given birth THAT MORNING, and he was just rushing home to pick up some clothes for her at the point we called. We ended up in a comedy reverse haggling situation where he offered it to us for 40 less than the advertised price, and I then countered upwards to 20 less than advertised. I think he would have accepted anything to get rid of us and the unwanted gift washer. That one was a super bargain, as we bought it in 2015 and brought it back to the UK - it is still in use now.

Hypothetical question as we have no plans to emigrate at the moment. But we have 2 dogs, a spaniel and a labradoodle who are used to spending every waking moment together. if we were ever to make the move, they would be coming with us. Could they travel together in the same crate / cage, and stay together through quarantine?

I'm glad its working out for you - even if it resulted in the end of your marriage. I'm kind of in the opposite situation, I'd love to move down under (its a major -probably unhealthy- obsession of mine) but my wife isn't over keen - so in order to remain married (and its a good marriage!) we are staying put in the UK (we did move to Melbourne for a few years which we both loved but she wanted to move back to be closer to family).

I second this. When we decided to move to Melbourne in 2015, we had already booked a month long holiday in Perth some months before(to stay with friends) and got job offers in the time between booking the Perth trip and our holiday. (at this point we had never visited Melbourne) We tried to still do all the tourist stuff in WA we already had planned and shoehorn in a recce to Melbourne. cut our holiday by a few days and flew over for just 3 days in Melbourne to check out suburbs/schools/housing/childcare ......... the list is endless. There was zero relaxation on the recce. Spent all the time rushing about meeting our new work bosses, viewed a couple of rentals, looked around primary schools & nurseries. Spent a couple of hours relaxing on the beach at st kilda but that was it! With hindsight we should of adjusted our trip to spend a good couple of weeks at least in Melbourne so we could get a better feel for the place. The good thing is, that coming from UK, any location in Oz will feel like a holiday destination - particularly if your chosen town is close to a beach, and certainly in summer time. Like Bluequay says - once you are resident, you can do the tourist things at your leisure. Generally - we have also been stung trying to squash too much itinerary into a short holiday, but your itinerary doesn't look bad in that respect. That drive from Newcastle to Byron looks chunky, Will likely eat a whole day of your trip, maybe a stop in Coffs harbor might suit to break he newcastle/brisbane drive into more equal chunks?

Older thread I see, but I know somebody who did this for a few years. She held a joint appointment as a lecturer between a UK and Oz university, was a dual citizen and ran a course that was split between the two locations, so students would do a couple of years UK and one in Oz, plus the other way around. She didn't drive, so did not have the hassle of keeping a car in either country, but the arrangement didn't last because its just too much of a pain to move countries every 6 months. Like others have said the logistics are nightmarish. For her, it meant that she didn't really put down roots in either country, she could only live in furnished rentals, needed to keep a lid on how many possessions she could own, and keep a storage unit in either country. Not sure how the tax situation worked out for her, but she made it work for a while. It all stopped during Covid and she had to choose, (and chose to stay in Australia) I've looked at if it would be possible for my family to do (as I find UK winters seriously depressing.) and came to the conclusion its impossible for my family, I struggle to see how anyone with school age kids could make it work at all.

Hi, apologies for snooping! but I see from your post history that you already have an invitation for 189 visa. I was under the impression that you had to have a language test result before putting in the EOI?

Yes, things seem to be quite dynamic when you consider how things have changed through covid times. I had a EOI in for a 189 visa from late 2018 with 75 points as an engineer. Didn't hear a sniff for a long time, people were only getting invites with 95 or 100 points plus. only contact being an email when I turned 40, reducing my points to 70. Then out of the blue about a year ago I received an invitation to apply for 189 at age 42. For us, it was sad that this came at absolutely the wrong time as we have moved house a couple of months before and honestly we had given up hope that any invite was coming. Therefore we didn't take advantage of the invitation. However, it shows that invitations are possible.

Looking to Move. However actually making that happen is proving difficult, as the points needed to get an invite for skilled migration have gone up, and i've not had an invitation after 6 invitation rounds. We were naive in thinking that as we are both experienced professional people (me an engineer, and her a hospital doctor), we wouldn't have too many troubles, but that isn't the case! We have lived in Australia before, but always on temporary work visas and we didn't make the commitment as we knew we were not staying forever on those occasions. We may have to look at doing the same again, moving on a temporary work visa (after finding jobs of course!) and using the Temporary Residence Transition stream of the 186 visa.

I have no idea if PTE is actually any easier, but after reading about the options I felt like it suited my learning style better. I will say I think it's possible do some very specific targeted preparation for PTE as the questions (and hence answers) are so formulaic and predictable. You still have to use your english skills to answer them, but there aren't any curveballs or trick questions! Some people say you can manipulate the scoring algorithm, but honestly after doing the practice tests, I didn't see the point in trying. When it comes to the visa, they are all worth the same, although they have different grading systems and different requirements to get "superior" or whatever level you need. At the end of the day, it gets translated into 10, 5 or whatever points - there is no prestige in choosing one test over another. The only real downside with PTE (according to me!) is that it's done in a room full of people sat at computers, all doing the same test, talking loudly into their headsets. This could easily be really distracting. I guess most people can zone that out, but it was quite off-putting at the start. I did mine in Manchester and had 4 / others doing it at the same time. Good luck!

Ill put my 2p in - for what its worth! I'm quite scouse and I worried about the speaking part of ILETS with another real human listening, and after doing some research, decided to do PTE academic, I'm from the computer generation and a technology geek, so I like the idea of the whole test being marked by software, I had read that the test algorithm is very tolerant of different accents. A huge advantage for me, is that you can pay the PTE people for 2 practice tests which are cheap, are conducted in the same manner, and marked using the same algorithms as the real test from home. These gave me huge pointers on what my current level was and where to improve (for myself, I scored maximum points in all the core categories, only dropping some points on spelling) As its an algorithm driven marking system, and the questions follow a strict structure, it's possible to practice and plan for each type of question. I had a little outline structure planned for each speaking part, for each type of question. I did it relatively recently late last year, so if you want to ask any specific questions, please let me know.

Cheers, Totally agree with the sentiment mate, and if it was just me on my own I would be doing just that. But having a family with young kids complicates matters! Not sure that a multi stage move will make it past the wife approval stage!

Honestly, it doesn't look great for us with 189! We are paying the price for not doing this earlier when the points needed for an invite were much lower, looking back at previous invitation rounds we would have been invited pretty quickly had we put in our EOI in at any time in the last 5 years, I'm kicking myself. We would be looking to live in either victoria (we lived there for a few years previously, and have a good work / social network) or in Western Australia, and Unfortunately, looking at all the state lists for 190 neither of our occupations are on their lists for eligibility. I guess we could apply for another state - ACT still sponsor for my profession, but there is no way we would live there, so we haven't considered that - I don't think it would be a good idea to be dishonest. We are going to leave our 189 EOI in and see what happens. In the meantime, we will look for job opportunities where an employer could sponsor us. I think this is marginally more likely as we both have masses of experience in our respective careers which are very specialist (particularly in my case). It all feels like the opportunity is drifting away, which is gutting as emigrating to OZ has been a long term goal of mine for some 20 years.

Me and the wife have been waiting for an invitation for 189 visa for the past 6 months via skillselect. So far, only I have a positive skills assessment as an engineer, but our points tally is a little light at 85, and it doesn't look positive for us just now. My wife is a consultant paediatrician, and we have avoided getting her skills assessed as it seems to be a very expensive process, and difficult to do without a job offer from an aussie hospital. We want to get a visa in the bag with a view to migrating in a few years, and as we are both just entering our 40's so time is ticking away. We are looking to move in 3/4 years and if we leave the visa process until then, we won't have the points to make it happen. As I understand it, a positive skills assessment for a Doctor is to hold evidence of full general medical registration with without conditions at the time of invitation. She did have this some 3 years ago, as we were living in Melbourne and she was working as a doctor then. However her registration lapsed shortly after we left Australia. This week, as a response to the COVID-19 situation, my wife received an email saying she had been automatically re-registered so she can return to work to help in the virus response. We have just checked on her AHPRA account and they have issued the registration certificate attached. There is an annexe on the next sheet saying she is registered on the "pandemic response sub-register" - this is the part that worries me. This may be a long shot, but does anyone know if this certificate would be sufficient for positive evidence of a skills assessment? Or is there some other documentation which would be required? Particularly interested in hearing from doctors who have previously made the move on what evidence they had to provide. Thanks, Pete

Myself and my wife lived in Melbourne for 2 1/2 years on a 457 visa, and left in 2018 When we left, we didn't reclaim our Superannuation, and it has sat in its respective funds- and growing much faster than any UK savings we might get. I'm not sure how much my wife's account has accumulated, but I think together we have in the region of 80/90k$ in there so it isn't insignificant - but not massive either. Although there is a possibility we will move back to Oz, as we have a visa expression of interest in, and keep looking at jobs, its looking increasingly likely that we wont return to live in Australia (which makes me quite sad!). What I would like to know is, if we leave our super in place until we are 60/65, can we then draw it down without paying the 45% tax we would pay if we claimed it back now - as non Australian residents? We have an objective to become silver nomads and do a significant amount of outback travel (which we enjoyed when we lived there) and having $90k in the bank as holiday spends would allow us to spend a load of time exploring.

Agreed, particularly for native English speakers. For free preparation materials, have a look at " E2 PTE academic " on youtube (or indeed loads of other PTE youtube sites). it has all the tips you need for free. You can pay for some kind of premium service, but to be honest I found the free stuff so good I think the majority of people would be fine with that. If you aren't a particularly confident person (like me), I would recommend having a crack at the official (paid for) practice test, a couple of weeks in advance, which is scored in the same way as the official test and can let you know where to improve. Otherwise, know the test format, and have a plan for each type of question - nothing too detailed but a general framework for answering the different question types. I'm someone who is educated to degree level in engineering, but got B / C grades for English language and literature in GCSE. Scored 90s in all categories on both practice and real test. Oh, and I'm quite scouse, and didn't put on a false BBC newsreader accent - so the test didn't penalise for that!

Indeed, Verystormy has it right, I put in my EOI with 80 points as an elecronics engineer back in August. Still waiting, and looks like it might never happen, as 90 / 95 seems to be the mark to hit at the moment. Its really sad, as we thought as a pair of professionals (doctor and engineer) we would have a straightforward path to skilled migration, but its not the case.

I know it sounds stressful, but if you do have a furnished temporary place, it will be much better if you take your time a little. Most rentals have open days on weekends and evenings so you don't have to take any time off Don't worry about your removal crate, the shipping companies all know how moving doesn't always go to a strict schedule and will be only too happy to charge you for an extra couple of weeks storage. Its worth it to find both the suburb that suits you and the best house you can. Really try not to stress. As long as you have somewhere to go in the short term you will be fine, just stay flexible and ready to pounce when you see the house you want. Where about in Victoria are you working / looking to live?

Yeah, agreed with the other posts. In fact I don't think you are legally allowed to put in an application at all without either viewing a house in person, or having someone view it for you. So it is vital you have somewhere you can stay for a couple of weeks at least. Air BnB is fine, but prepare to pay a lot for a few weeks. What you can do is get all your documents ready for the application. There is some kind of electronic application service (I cant remember the name), where you can upload things like : ID, bank statements, references, work contract, visa. Uploading all these in advance means that you can make an application in an instant, you can do a lot of this from UK. When I initially moved out to Melbourne, my new employer provided 4 weeks of temporary accommodation which was a godsend, but I found a nice house in the area we wanted within a few days of looking - we had done our research in advance, and had arranged our first viewing before leaving UK. I wasn't prepared that the rental market can be quite competitive, and we found it a little intimidating. The process goes : Find an ad on www.realestate.com.au or www.domain.com.au. Attend an open house viewing - there will be a (usually just one) 15 minute window where the house is available to view, and all interested people come at the same time and have a look at the house. 15 minutes is enough to literally get in, wander around each room once and get out, its all very fast. The agent will look at your ID when you view and put your name on a register. If you like the house, Apply electronically immediately. For the ones we liked, we generally were applying against 5 to 10 other couples so your application has to be good, all ready to go. The landlord then has a pick of potential tenants and will choose one (hopefully you) You then sign contracts and can move in on an agreed day. You may have to be flexible on this as they may want you to move in super fast or in a couple of weeks. So you really need to be prepared to make a snap decision and go for it. If you find somewhere you really like, you can also offer to pay above the advertised rent to sweeten the deal, but don't go overboard. For us, we applied for a few houses each time we moved to give ourselves the best chance of success, we also made a point to talk to the agent and landlord if they were there to come across as nice reasonable people - not sure if this helped!.

We moved to Melbourne and back to UK 3 years later, and moved significant quantities of Ikea stuff in both directions. We had a sole use 20ft container each direction and we filled it to the max! Both times, the stuff we sent "assembled" arrived a little worse for wear, a little more wobbly and needed the fasteners tightening - no big deal. But also on both occasions, we had a single item fall to bits completely, and had to bin it. One was a coffee table, the other a small drawer set. On the move out to oz, I was able to claim on the insurance we had taken out - which paid out significantly more than we paid for the coffee table which was nice. The movers disassembled some stuff, and shipped it flat packed, and assembled at the other end. (beds and wardrobes) Whilst I don't think the ikea stuff travels well, having our stuff arrive took the pressure off setting up home at each end. Buying stuff in Oz can be eye-wateringly expensive, and if you already own a house load of stuff, shipping is probably worth it. If you have a job offer in Oz, its worth asking if they will pay relocation costs. We had our move funded in both directions, and it really took pressure off.

If you are "handy" a pool is amazing, and doesn't have to be a bank breaker. We moved into a rental which had a disused pool which had been emptied by the owner, (well 90% emptied, the remaining 1 ft of water in the bottom was black sludge) who didn't know what to do with it and I thin was going to have it removed at some point.) I asked if I could have a go at bringing it back to use, which they accepted (why wouldn't they?) It took a lot of hard graft to empty the sludge, jetwash the sides, fix up and clean the pump / filter and about $300 of water to fill it, and then find and fix all the leaks. I got a second hand solar heating system for ~$150 and installed it myself on the roof - replacing a completely knackered home made one (I did this without telling the owner - but I did a neat job and I doubt he would ever notice) Once it was all up and running, it worked a treat. This took a couple of months which I did over the winter. The main work though is keeping the water quality up to scratch, but again this isn't brain surgery, you just need to take regular samples, the machine in bunnings tells you what quantities of chemicals to add, key is to do it regularly. I had several occasions where I failed to keep on top of water quality (either didn't remove fallen leaved during winter, or allowed the solar heater to get the water over 30 degrees - it went green) Its no big deal if it does go green / cloudy, but preventing is better than curing. I'm sure it can be very expensive if you have a company in to manage, or if you have a major problem like an underground leak, but as I said, normal maintenance isn't complicated, just a little work.

We have flown UK/ Oz and back with the following combinations of our kids ages : 4 month old 2 year old & 4 month old 3 & 1 year old 4 & 2 year old 6 & 4 year old Its never easy when they are young. My advice is : Get the bassinet seat anyway, and try to use it. having just a little time not attached to your kid is bliss, and they will likely sleep better too. Even if you cant use it, you get a little extra space and your little one can play on the floor (if the flight attendants allow) Those are premium seats for a reason, so if you are eligible to have them for free, go for it. We took a perverse pleasure in watching the faces of people who had paid extra for the legroom realising they were sitting next to a baby for the next 14 hours (maybe we are a**holes). If you are going to stop halfway, make it a decent one, with a few days. Our worst trip had a 1 night stop in Dubai, It didn't help jetlag (particularly for the kids) and we wish we had just got it all over with in one go. For us it just extended the pain, and we weren't in Dubai long enough to enjoy it. - we spent one night in a really nice hotel - and didnt sleep great, plus some hours in Dubai mall and went up the tower (which is worth it!) Either stop properly, and have a mini holiday - or don't stop. Since our trip with the long stopover, we try to have the shortest possible transfer time, 2 hours is plenty for us. Agree with Wonderingaloud , sort your own food out, the airline will give you baby food, but if your little one is fussy, there ain't many other options once in the air, so sort something you know they will eat in advance, lots of snacks and their favorites to shut them up when crying. Make sure you dispose of all your non allowed food on the plane when you return to oz as the customs people will make you bin it anyway and aren't as nice! On the plane, try not to be too self conscious when your child cries (and they will), most people are generally quite generous and understanding, if someone offers to help and play with your baby for a while - do accept and get what rest you can. This has happened to us a lot, and we have offered to mind someone else's kid when the parents look frazzled. If you can afford a third seat, you may find it worthwhile (maybe you are rich??) but personally, I would rather go through the 24 hours of extreme discomfort and save some cash! Although 24 hours sounds a lot - and during the trip it can be hell - its over quickly and you can and will forget about it. Main thing for me is to relax - share the burden with your wife and try to enjoy it as an adventure.

We used long daycare (7AM to 6PM) up until January 2018 as both parents were working, so a little out of date, but we were out in the suburbs, in a place called Glen Waverley / Wheelers Hill. Here we payed $109 per day, per kid - and with 2 in full time, we payed over $1000 per week, ouch. Shopping around, some childcare places were slightly cheaper, some (much) more expensive, but we found one we really liked and suck with it for 3 years. Also bear in mind if you are on a PR visa and working (plus some other conditions), you can claim child care subsidy, we didn't qualify as we were only temporary residents, but this can provide a huge discount so your budget may be better than you think. Don't worry about your child being "annoying", I'm sure they only annoy you! Melbourne is great for families with little kids, loads to do, play areas everywhere, very child friendly. We found a good community of other families with similar aged kids, and were never bored. My wife joined some mum and baby groups and once our eldest was old enough, she joined an aussie rules club (auskick) which was fantastic. On suburbs, normal rules apply, the closer to the city centre you live, the higher rent you will pay, and for less space. As you move out, housing gets more spaced out, but there is less to do. You have to find your balance. You can get away without owning a car if you are very central, but out of the centre, a car is essential. We had a big 4 bed house with a swimming pool and paid $600 per week rent. Glen Waverley is quite far from the city, being 40 /45 minutes by train, but (like most melbourne suburbs) is quite vibrant with nice restaurants / cafes - much quieter than central suburbs but still great. We lived there because we fell in love with the park (Jells Park) and the density of housing is quite a bit lower than the more central suburbs. Its a very "Asian" suburb, which suited us fine, but some people can find that jarring if they have lived all their lives in a majority white environment (We loved living in a multicultural place where our kids mixed with kids of all different colours, and you get the advantage of amazing Asian restaurants etc... but our parents found it uncomfortable to be in a minority for once - maybe its a generational thing?) We always hankered to live closer to a beach, as during the summer months we would be at the coast most weekends, but that also comes at a premium price, depends on personal preference. For groceries, everywhere will be well covered by the supermarkets, (coles, woolworths, aldi) but also look for independent Asian supermarkets for fresh fruit /veg which are much cheaper , and seem to be everywhere too. A trip to Queen Victoria markets in the city was like a day out, and you could buy pretty much any food item you can imagine! Anything else you want to know about living in Melbourne with kids, please ask.

Not extremely recently but we used OSS to both move ourselves out to Melbourne in 2015, and move back in 2018. Both times we had a full sole use 20ft container, and the cost was about $7,500 Aussie dollars each time. Luckily we had the costs covered (and flights etc..) by our new employers both times we moved. The process was really very straightforward, and the moving companies are really slick and efficient. Absolutely no complaints about either move. At the UK end, OSS subcontracted to Britania movers who were fine. Are there any specific things you want to know?

Which Uni did he attend? I recently had the same situation, and my old university (uni of liverpool) sent out a new transcript - which wasn't 100% complete - it was missing some module names during the first year, but had the module codes. Engineers Australia were happy with this. I graduated in 2003 and I think its a basic function of a university to keep such records.