excitedbutterrified

I sat the PTE-A last week in Manchester, so here is my advice. Most of this is obvious, and already out there, but here it is anyway!. The test is taken entirely on computer, and marked by computer. This is good because it is scrupulously fair. Its a bit impersonal because you wont speak to a real person. - this was a plus point for me, as I am a shy antisocial type! It also carries with it, quirks of how it is marked. Some question types are totally straightforward and there isn't much you can do to prepare, but some questions are tricky and require knowledge of what the computer is looking for to do well. Even if you are a native English speaker, you should at the very least familiarise yourself with the question format, and have some strategies of how to deal with those questions. You have to remember you are looking to satisfy a computer algorithm rather than a person. You should take an official PTE-practice test very early on, so you can focus on areas to improve on. The practice test was exactly the same format and "feel" of the real test, and the scores done in the same way, by the same marking algorithms. My scores were almost identical between the practice and real test. The question types I would spend most time preparing for and practicing are : Essay - use a structure ( intro, argument for, argument against, my opinion / conclusion) Re-tell lecture Summarise lecture Describe image I found the speaking parts of the real test very challenging, as you take the test at the same time as many others in the same room, and you can hear them speaking. Everyone is trying to do their best, loud, clear BBC newsreader voice so it can be very distracting. You need to just focus on your own test which is hard to do. The test can take up to 3 hours, but I was out of the room after less than 2 hours, I don't think I rushed anything, but I didn't use the 10 minute break, and after I answered each question moved immediately on to the next. I guess pacing is a personal preference but once I was in the zone I felt better banging through the questions rather than dwelling on them. For preparation, I used "E2 PTE Academic" free videos on youtube, where strategies for all the question types are presented, and which worked really well for me. Highly recommend their youtube channel, I have no idea what their paid courses are like.

Well, we have put our EOI in yesterday, but we are slightly (majorly) deflated that our chances don't look fantastic at the moment based on the online reaction to the August invitations. We have 75 points, (25 Age, 20 English, 15 education, 15 experience) which looks to be very sketchy for getting an invitation at the present time. Let the waiting commence!

Hi Didizza, I am wondering if you can tell me if you had to supply police checks / medicals at the application stage, or would the system let you wait until the CO requests them? I'm about to submit my EOI, but I would like to string the process out somewhat to delay first entry to oz!

Thanks Nemesis, I suspected as much! I guess that's the nature of bureaucracy! Is there anyone who has recently been through the process for 189 who could tell me the exact stage that police and medical checks have to be submitted. I have heard slightly conflicting info, some info states the CO will request both towards the end of the process as the last steps, other say the police checks need to go in with the initial application, with the medicals later. Probably over-thinking this stuff, but I'm a worrier. Thanks again!

Thanks for comments Does anyone know if the COs are ever flexible on the timing of the process to fit in with plans such as ours? As I understand it, the first entry restriction is based on the expiry of police checks and medicals. I imagine, that even if we were invited to apply tomorrow, we could easily expect the application process to extend beyond December (by using up all of the 60 days to put in the application and not front loading all the documents) However I'm not sure at what stage the CO would request police checks and medicals, and if we did have to provide them earlier than the end of this year that would present a problem, but we could obtain new police clearances etc.. Just a thought. As I say, at the moment, our points tally isn't enough at 75, so this may all be academic anyway!

Yesterday I sat the PTE english academic exam and got good enough scores for "superior english" - which my wife laughed heartily at! And with a positive skills assessment, I'm ready to put in an EOI for a 189 visa. We are looking to go on holiday to Melbourne over the Christmas period next year so flying out mid / late december, and we would want this to be the first entry visit to validate the visa (we would actually emigrate permanently in 3/4 years from now) . I understand the last date of entry is usually set at 1 year from the date of medicals and police checks. My question is : how long after receiving an invitation - or submitting the application proper - would medicals and police checks usually need to be completed? I am itching to put in the EOI as its something ive been wanting to do for ages, but we worry that if we received an immediate invitation, in order not to waste it, things could move more quickly than fits in with our current holiday plans. That being said, I want the EOI in ASAP to give the greatest chance of success - after all we can change our holiday plans. This may all be academic as I wouldn't have had enough points based on the last invitation round (we have 75 and looks like the minimum was 80) but I see that this threshold changes month by month!

Thanks for replies. I'm going for 189 or 190 visa, as an electronics engineer. This is an occupation with a pretty harsh ceiling imposed on visa numbers. So im aiming for 75 points. (which it seems is no guarantee of an invitation, but a reasonable chance) Experience wise, I'm going to be claiming 5-8 years UK experience (10 pts) and 1-3 years of Australian experience. (5 pts) At 38 years old, I also need to get cracking as in a year and a bits time, my points tally will decrease to 65, which pretty much would count me out. After that, its not all over! We could then switch to my wife as the main applicant , as she is a consultant doctor, From what we have read, its slightly more involved to get a skills assessment as a doc - which is why we are starting with me. We aren't in any huge rush to emigrate, so if we can get back to OZ before we turn 45 it would all work out pretty well! Ive submitted the skills assessment without the experience review. Next on my list is to sit an English test

I am getting together the documents to apply to Engineers Australia for a migration skills assessment under the Washington accord, In fact I have everything together to make the initial application, (certificates, transcripts etc.. ) and was about to submit and pay. However I note that there is a "Relevant Skilled Employment Assessment" section, which is optional. I do have 15 years + of work experience in my particular specialty, and I do need that experience to achieve the points for skilled migration. I was wondering If I need to prove experience years to Engineers Australia at the EOI stage, or is that normally done at the application stage directly to the immi people? I haven't told my employer Ill be applying for a visa yet, and not to keen to ask for a reference letter at this stage! Thanks!

We are looking at moving to Melbourne from the UK in about 3/4 years, and also right now looking to replace one of our cars here. It would be interesting to know if we could buy something here that would be worthwhile importing when we move. Considering a Nissan Patrol or similar (we still have a camper trailer in Oz from last time we are there and use for holidays, we used to pull that with a -much beloved - patrol). Cost for a 2005 3l diesel in UK is £6-£7k for a great condition one with 100 - 150k miles.

Hello, We have booked return flights from Manchester to Melbourne for april 2019. Just a 3 week holiday to visit our old friends. When booking prices seemed highly volatile, huge variation between airlines / days (I guess because of the easter holidays) and we managed to find a particular combination of Etihad flights for ~730 each, where the next cheapest over 1000. As we need 4 tickets, that made a big difference. We have flown Uk to OZ and back about 5 times over the past few years, but what has surprised us this time is that we cant pre-book our seats on the plane without paying a fee. Pre booking the cheapest seats would be £344 for the family, and being a mingebag I cant bring myself to pay it. Travelling alone, this wouldn't bother me, and we don't care where we sit on the plane, but it is important that the kids sit next to us. We have 2 girls, age 7 and 4. It would be ok for us to be separated into 2 -2s, (and obviously a row of 4 best) but would be difficult for us to manage them if we had a single one split off. My question is, has anyone else recently left it until 24 hours before departure to check in on etihad? And if so, what was seat availability like? I don't doubt that if we do end up split up, my wife will hound the etihad staff until they move us into seats near each other, but I'd rather avoid the stress. Cheers!

Apologies in advance, I'm certain this will have been covered in some other thread, but I seem to have zero skill with the search function. Our background We are a family with 2 primary school age kids, both parents working (wife doctor, myself engineer) we both fell in love with oz years before we met on our separate travels, and have been backwards and forwards between the UK and Australia too many times to mention. We most recently spent almost 3 years from 2015 to march this year living and working in Melbourne, and left Australia to return to the UK for a few different reasons, primarily because my wife was offered her first consultant job back in the UK - also coinciding with me being asked to return to my old job, but also family pressures etc... (the usual) The Plan Our outline plan is to move back to Australia permanently in about 4 / 5 years time, essentially enough time for my wife to become established in the new role, and have enough experience to apply for jobs in oz. The previous time, we were under a 457 visa, and honestly we wouldn't do this again, even as a stepping stone to PR. So we want to independently apply for a PR visa - 189 or 190 - whilst we are in the UK. My question is : is there an ideal timeline to start the ball rolling with applying for PR? What we desperately want to avoid is leaving it so late that we are too old to apply, but at the same time, we don't want to have the visa issued too soon that it rushes our move, as I know they run out 5 years after being granted. It may be that we decide not to move in the end, but we are painfully aware that we aren't getting any younger and the opportunity will disappear at some point. We wouldn't be able to move without my wife having a guaranteed job, so that would be the decisive factor, but we want to line up all the various requirements in advance. So when would be the sweet spot to start putting in EOIs targeting a move in 2022 / 2023? Thanks in advance!

We have a 4 year old and a 1 year old and moved out to melbourne 1 year ago. In terms of childcare, we found it quite easy to find an appropriate mix of long daycare, and nanny care. We have the girls go to a daycare centre 3 days per week, and the nanny comes to our house for 2 days. Both the daycare and nanny are great. When we were in the UK we used daycare for 3 days, and family for the other 2. The main problem we have in Oz is that it is so expensive. We pay over $1k per week on childcare, and because we are on a 457 visa, we are not eligible for childcare rebate etc.. so that is definitely something to factor in. It is a lot more expensive for us, but we had a lot of help in the UK. We are definitely feeling a lot of guilt about moving our kids away from their grandparents etc.. my parents are ok in general (very supportive, and grateful for the time we have together when they visit us or we visit uk plus skype) but my wifes parents are very vocal about being unhappy with us living in Australia. In particular my Wifes mum is utterly depressed with the situation of us living here, and this is a major strain on us, and may mean at some point we abandon our plans to live here. For going out, we have found a reliable babysitter, who the kids get on with, but adds on $100 to any night out. It certainly is tough giving up a support network

Hi Trabonita, I moved out to Melbourne last May - although I went ahead of my family and spent the first 10 weeks alone. My advice is to buy new beds in Australia. They are super bulky so will take up a lot of your movecube, and there are cheap furniture shops here. Mattresses are a slightly different size here too, so fitted sheets etc.. might not fit quite right if you bring british stuff over. I bought a queen size bed and mattress and a single from Ikea pretty soon after arriving. less than $1,000 for the lot. I also bought a cheap couch for a couple of hundred. You will find there are lots of other things you cant do without beyond furniture so will have to buy. (will be different depending on your requirements) - For me, I bought the cheapest cooking set in the world from Kmart (pans, knives, chopping board, etc..), a vacuum cleaner, TV, plates & cutlery set. Second hand fridge freezer and washing machine from gumtree / ebay. I tried, but couldn't avoid buying these things. There are also furniture rental options, but I found that there were almost as expensive as buying. Kmart has masses of household stuff, and its dirt cheap. It may fall to bits, but it only has to last a few weeks! All in I spent about $2,000 on stuff for getting through those weeks. Most of that stuff we still use, although the cooking stuff was seriously crap. On a side note, The weeks spent waiting for the container were a bit of an adventure, I quite enjoyed having a minimalist existence, and it lets you know how little you REALLY need to survive! On the day the container arrived, it was like Christmas having so much stuff around the house, best thing was arrival of our music system, I hadn't listened to any music for 8 weeks, so had a little disco on my own! Pete

The childcare thing was a disaster. We had planned to have an Au-Pair start with us as soon as we arrived / started work, but we weren't very good at recruiting one! My MIL was going to show her/him the ropes, and try to get her settled in gently, as looking after 2 kids can be a real struggle! In the end, we couldn't get an Au=pair in time, so we hired a nanny, who was very experienced, and didn't need any help.

Fair one, Maybe we are being over sensitive! Its a very highly strung situation all living together under one roof!

Warning, Mother in law post! My wife is fuming with her mum. I'm not angry but a little annoyed. All this annoyance is in secret, MIL is oblivious and thinks everything is fine. Here is the situation. When we were planning to move to oz, MIL offered to come out with us to help with the kids on the plane and do childcare at this end for the first month. She badgered me for weeks to book the flights early so she could get the best price (she was then planning to pay for her own ticket.) In booking the flights, my new employer was paying for me, wife, kids to fly one way, they also offered to book mother in laws return ticket, and allow me to pay for the extra ticket out of my salary over a couple of months. I agreed to this and paid. After it was all booked, MIL then said she had changed her mind and didn't want to pay for it as she was going to be doing so much childcare. We said fine (to avoid a fight). However childcare wise, we haven't needed her, we secured day care places in advance of arrival, and have hired a nanny for the non-day care days. She will have done the sum total of about 2 days childcare, and a few hours on evenings. She has done some clothes washing etc.. but not huge amounts. At the same time, we have fed her, taken out for day trips, weekends away etc... She has essentially had a 1 month holiday for free! Now its a few days until she leaves, and she told us that she is planning to pay to have her economy ticket upgraded to business class. Wife is adamant she should be making some kind of contribution towards the flight we paid for her before paying for an upgrade. Are we right to be pissed off about this? Not sure if we should bring it up with her, or just shut up to avoid ruining the last few days of her stay.

Hi All, Our family of me, the wife, and 2 pre school kids recently arrived in Melbourne on a 457 visa. When we decided to come here, we couldn't afford a PR visa due to maternity leave. My new employer paid for everything involved in moving but would only provide a 457, so that we are tied to them. Now we have arrived and settled, our finances are a lot healthier so we are considering paying for a PR visa. My company have said they will sponsor the application. My question is, given it will take several months to get the visa, and our kids will be in daycare for a significant amount of time before it is issued, will we be able to retrospectively claim child care rebate for the period before PR issue? It will all be in the same tax year. Pete

Well, now 3 months in. The 11 weeks without the wife and kids were almost unbearable, it was painful to be apart from them for so long, and skype doesn't really make up for the absence. I do now have some kind of appreciation for how the grandparents etc.. are feeling when we take our kids across the world. The missus found the workload of sorting out the rest of the house move, and looking after the kids too much, she had to rely on my folks quite heavily and ended up moving in with them. With hindsight, we made a huge mistake in having me come over so early. We did it so I could sort the house / childcare / cars out in advance of them arriving, but really those things didn't take long at all and we could have done it all together. The one advantage is that I know the area we live in well now, and could help them slip into life here a little easier with things like supermarkets, travel, activities. Plus we didn't have to buy lots of furniture etc.. as I lived in the house without any furniture whilst waiting for our container to arrive. We couldn't have done that if the kids were here. The wife and kids arrived a week and a half ago, along with the mother in law. It was an emotional re-unification at the airport, after they had a nightmare flight. My big worry was that my youngest daughter (11 month old) wouldn't recognise me, however I think the daily skype sessions helped and she was excited to see me. Its amazing how quickly we have all settled back into family life and everything feels very normal! The kids took a good week to get over the jetlag, but both are now in a good routine. We are trying to find them new friends to make their lives more exciting! The one bad point we have is that the mother in law is amazingly negative about everything. She was/is dead set against us moving to oz, and isn't shy about saying it. I'm trying to keep my mouth shut with her, but she seems determined that she wont enjoy her time here. The worst thing from my perspective is that I paid for her flights to come here for a month, and due to that and all the other costs of moving, I had to go without proper food for several weeks (this isnt all bad, Ive lost masses of fat!), living off pot noodles and she hasn't actually thanked us for bringing her over and feeding her (not on pot noodles) for a month. We are doing lots of touristy things in our free time, and strangely she gets visibly upset if we all have a good time, I guess its because when she sees how nice certain aspects of Australia can be, she starts to see the attraction and why we might choose to settle here. I dont think we are ever going to change her opinions of Australia, and its sad to hear my wife talking about how her attitude is making it easier to cut the apron strings, and how she cant wait for her to leave back to the uk. Last question for the parents and visa experts on here... We are on a 457 visa, but are considering applying for PR, mainly because we want the childcare rebate (our childcare costs are going to be ~$800 per week), we don't think we will stay here permanently. We had assumed that we would only be able to claim the rebate from the point where a PR visa was granted (in several months time) but some friends recon that you can claim everything from that tax year, even the portion of the year under the 457. Does anyone know if this is correct? Pete

I may have made a boo-boo in buying a car seat. Saw a bargain on ebay, a maxi cosy isofix car seat. (isofix doesnt seem so widespread here - but we love it) Bought it, and only when I got it home realised it doesnt have any aussie safety stickers on it. Its a model that was sold in australia, but this one I think was imported. So do I just use it and hope no-one ever notices it. Or ditch and get a proper aussie one?

Finally after all the months of planning, I landed on the 30th April in Melbourne. Its been a relatively soft landing. My new employer pretty much provided for everything I need during the first few weeks, airport transfers, free accommodation in the on site hotel, hire car, all that stuff. Started working after a couple of days and have been settling in since. Work is great, interesting with nice people, but I'm feeling mega isolated. There isn't anyone else staying in the on site hotel, and the site is in an industrial area. Skyping the wife and kids twice a day is helping, but its very clear that in my family, my wife is the really sociable one and I'm struggling to make new social connections outside work (that's what I get for being antisocial!) Cant wait for the wife and kids to arrive, but that isnt for another 9 weeks! Having a big gap between me and them arriving seemed like such a good idea so I could get a rental, but that was much easier than expected, picking up the keys for our house (in wheelers hill, anyone know it??) on tuesday. container isnt due to arrive until mid June, so its going to be a big empty house for a while! Anyway, Im ranting. Its going well in general, just missing the wife and kids!

And what have I done? Mowed the lawn painted the kids swing / slide set. hmmm, i'm sure I was supposed to use these days of leave to organise the house ready for the move. Maybe tomorrow. 21 days till I leave.

Im going to be working at the Australian synchrotron, and they have a hotel and apartments for visiting scientists.

Thanks Jacaranda, this made me slightly emotional!

Hi Starlight, My new employer has a guest house / hotel on site which is in Clayton on the Monash university site. So they are putting me up in there for 4 weeks. After that I will be looking for a 4 beds house within 10k of Clayton. On our visit last year, we looked at some suburbs and liked Mount / Glen Waverley, liked some of the places nearer to the coast, but we dont want too much of a commute and rents seemed to ramp up. Ill be arriving on thursday 30th and starting work the monday 4th so there are a few days, but i want to keep the time I am apart from the family to a minimum! Pete

Is this a common thing? I have 5 days left at work, followed by 3 weeks of leave, and then Im off to Melbourne and immediately starting work. I'm getting an increasing feeling of dread about leaving my job which I have been in for 11 years and jumping in to the unknown. Also the wife and kids are staying in the uk for a while so I can set up home and Im not looking forward to being without them. Hopefully it will all settle down once I have arrived and gotten into the swing of our new Aussie life, but am really nervous now!