BeauVinyl

Hi @Lavers we get a minimum amount of subsidence from OSHC but it's not that, it's the availability that's tricky. We hope that there'll be more spaces available after Xmas as at my kids primary both year 6 and 7 move up so that the schools around here fall into line with the rest of Australia and that the starting year for Secondary is now Year 7 and not year 7 being the last year in primary. This will help. How are you these days?

@Drumbeat yes, we had a discount of over £800 as we had booked the AirBnB for 10 weeks but luckily the owner is really good and I've helped her organise having solar panels on the roof so she's been good with us leaving.

Hi @Pompey gt Glad to hear you are out of quarantine and have a rental, congratulations on that as I know how hard it is to get one and glad to hear the boys are enjoying school. We picked up the keys to our rental property today and move in tomorrow. We've been lucky that the owner of the AirBnB has let us finish the contract here early as we still had 6 weeks left in the AirBnB but we had to get what we could round here as the rental is in an ideal spot for all of us. We are moving from Blackwood into Hawthorndene and are situated close to the Blackwood station so that my wife can get a 20 min train into the CBD for work. This will also help as my son is in Blackwood secondary in January and he and his friends will all get the train there (only one stop along the line). Not all has gone too smoothly though, what is crippling us is OSHC and that the after school is full 2-3 days of the week meaning only on of us can work at the moment. We hope this will change in January when years 6 and 7 move up to secondary and there will be spaces for my daughter. I'm hoping that I've found a way round this as I do have a job starting on the 11th October and hope that if we can get the kids after school sorted then I'll be able to bring in a second income and we'll be good up until the MASSIVE Christmas holidays (7 weeks, I think) then we'll have to 'wing it' through those. Last week my wife and I drove up to the hills and loved it up there, went up Mt. Lofty and walked the botanic gardens, but where we really loved was Hahndorf, it's lovely street and great shops, expensive as it's a tourist place but really nice. I also think we liked it because we do miss a bot of Europe here ad Hahndorf gave us that so if you are near there then good on you because it's a lovely region of Adelaide. Glad to hear all's well as well, keep us updated. Beau

yeah, true about meeting up with people. Thanks.

Thanks for this @rammygirl, we are aware of the insurance and the bush fire protocol around here. Regarding your Koala, I'm watching a Cookaborough chirping/screaming at a cat. Beautiful.

Hi Curly, I hope all is well. I'm in Adelaide and would like to play 5-a-side, if there's a space then I'd be interested. Beau

Regarding our Singapore flights, we downloaded the Singapore Airlines app and signed into it. I checked the flight statue 6/7 times a day and found the app pretty good.

Hi @Captain Ron regarding Quantas, their CEO has come out today and put pressure on the government regarding national and international flights, saying that they are looking to run 75% of flights from the beginning of December as this was mentioned in the Aus parliament a few months ago before I got here so that's positive for everyone.

@Craig Colas @Ben P Regarding our flight, we had a small issue with the flight around 6 weeks before we left, Singapore Airways changed our Singapore to Adelaide flight meaning we couldn't make the connection from London. We flew with the Flight Center agency and they were fantastic so after 5 days of waiting we were moved a day forward which didn't mess us up much and then hoped the flight and our seats wouldn't move, and they didn't. I did speak to a family at Heathrow and they had said their flights had been cancelled 4 times but that was in May/June time, after then it was pretty secure. The news from over here is that people are incredibly upset about the flight situation and are putting pressure on the government and state premiers (SP) to lift the ban so the Govt. and SP's have said that when Australia are around 70 - 80% vaccinated they'll open up the country meaning flight caps and internal / external flight restrictions will ease / drop. Looking at that timeline, last night on South Australian news it was reported that this could be achieved November / December time so hopefully this should make flying into the country a little easier and I hope this gives you both some reassurance albeit minimal.

Good luck to you @Ben P. We are over the moon but still apprehensive, we leave quarantine where we have been fed, felt safe and been entertained to the outside world, the 'real' world and it's a bit scary. I'll keep updates coming in when I have things to say. All the best.

Everything crossed for you. On our flights (both of them) as there were only 30ish people on the flight and 95% of them were going on to Adelaide we were allowed to lie all over the seats which made it more bearable and I'm 6ft 5. Food was good but we took snacks for the kids (pringles, cheese biscuits) which was a godsend as on the first flight we had breakfast and main meal and this was the same for the second flight, exactly the same food, so a pringle and cracker interlude went down well with the kids.

@Jon the Hat is it Singapore you are flying with?

Hi Ben, yes, we got on our scheduled flights. They were quiet, as was the airport, but it went pretty smoothly.

Hi Jon, I do understand. It's been hard but have been in touch a lot with the parents and they have both have given their blessing for me to do what I am doing, which helps. As traumatic as it was once here it feels good. Quarantine have been a bit of a pain due to that 'groundhog day' feeling but we have two nights lift and then onto our AirBnB. What are your plan when you get out here?

Evening all, yes we made it. I'm sat in hotel quarantine in Adelaide. Any questions please ask.

Apologies to all but I believe the above to be incorrect, SA have closed their borders to Victoria, not to the world. In my haste I had read this incorrectly and do not want to worry people, my apologies. Beau Vinyl

Good evening, good morning and good afternoon one and all, I write to inform you all of my current situation as I said I would a month-or-so-ago, so here goes. To cut a long story short we are in……………………………..Adelaide, we actually made it and after hearing the news just now from the South Australian government it sounds like we made it by the skin of our teeth. So, in the past 2 months I’ve sold my house which was more upsetting that my wife and I thought it would be. The thing that broke us was on the last day of owning the house, as it was empty and quiet the postman delivered 3 letters, one to us (final gas bill) and two addressed to the house address but to the new owners and that was what made us cry, like really cry. It was that knowledge that the house we had of 11 years, where my two children grew up in and spent Christmases and birthdays in the safety of those four walls had gone and we were homeless (we still are), it was a very sad day. We then moved in with my parents for 7 weeks which, at the start, was great. Mum and dad have a routine that elderly parents have and for us it was ok at first but got tricky the longer we were there but that is to be understood, they have bee on their own for 21 years so then having a family of four for 7 weeks would be disruptive, and I think it was, but we managed to cope. The farewell to mum and dad was always going to be hard and it was, incredibly hard. The knowledge of us not seeing them again, ever was difficult and still is as my dad, the day before we left, was diagnosed with mild dementia, honestly I thought to myself what an incredibly selfish idea this was of me taking my family to Australia and them not seeing my parents again, and also if something did happen to dad or mum no one would be there to help, that’s the only time I’ve nearly quit the whole trip, that Tuesday evening of the 10th of August will live with me forever. The taxi to Heathrow was a blur of tears and worry, the night at Heathrow was also fraught with anxiety, tension and sadness as I knew that once on that plane to Singapore that we it, there was no going back. It even got to the point when I almost hoped, in an strange way that we would get stopped at customs and told we couldn’t go as our visa was wrong, or the flight had been cancelled or Singapore Airlines had ceased business but we left Heathrow on a flight that had 25 people on a Airbus A380 (capacity of 471) and then onto Adelaide where the capacity reduce to 21 on another A380. TI’s an incredibly odd feeling to be on an almost empty flight but the spacing for us all to sleep on empty rows is something a 6ft 5 gentleman like me will never forget. From Adelaide Airport we were all placed on a big bus and escorted by police to a CBD quarantine hotel from where I write to you all from presently. We are 10 days into a 14 days quarantine period and have not killed one another, which is a miracle. The hotel and staff here have been incredible, honestly, they have been so, so, good. The food is fantastic, the issue is being served way too much and it’s all really good but rich food, I’m dying for beans on toast or a ham sandwich. We leave here on the 27th and head straight t our AirBnB where we stay for 10 weeks and hope that COVID doesn’t enter the state. As a secure measure we intend to get to the AirBnB and isolate for a further 3-4 days. My wife is a nurse and is incredibly cautious about this and I can only agree with her, there would be nothing worse that bringing a new Hereford strain into Australia and knowing it was you that started it. As a sign off I have just read that South Australia have now closed it borders to returning South Australian residents (basically me) and that an exemption now needs to be made to enter here. This news has shocked me as we, as a family, made it by 9 days. If we had had this news and we were still in the UK we would have knocked the ‘dream’ on the head and can only feel for people that this will affect. Not only do I feel incredibly lucky to be here with my family, but I also feel a great sense of guilt that we have made it and others probably cannot. I only hope that the Australian public heed this action by the Australian government and get vaccinated. The news from here is that once 70 – 80% of the adult population of Australia are vaccinated then things will go back to normal and in the time I’ve been here the percentage of vaccinated has risen from 19% to 29% and now a lot is being made of getting vaccinated. So after the above I’ll sign off with a cheerful farewell and a hope that the above ‘wall of text’ will interest some people. If anyone has questions to ask then please do, I’m in quarantine, I’ve played Uno and scrabble SO much that I am not thinking of taking up origami, so I need a positive distraction from it all here. I do hope you are all well and I look forward to hearing from you all soon, Regards, Beau Vinyl

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everyone. In these troubling times of Covid 19 I hope all are well. I thought I would update anyone who was interested on how it is going with me and the family and our move to Australia. We moved out of our house of 11 years 3 weeks ago. This was an emotional occasion and one that upset me more than I ever thought it would. It was not the bricks and mortar they upset me, but the memories made with my two children (12 and 9) growing up in that house. The small things that I missed, the wonky door handle, the noisy boiler, and the roast dinners every Sunday without fail, those little memories of the house (and the great memories of the kids growing up) is what I will miss about that house. So, with the house sold, my wife and I and the two children have now moved in with my parents, roughly 25 mins from where we used to live. Although it has only been 3 weeks since we left the house, time has healed the sadness and we are now all over the emotion of leaving (the hardest thing was seeing the kids cry when we left, that was difficult) but we now live with Grandma and Grandpa which, as I write this, is going well. The kids get to spend time with my parents, and my parents love having vibrant youth about the place, I think it makes them feel younger but also tires them out, there is a fine line in what we let my daughter do with grandma as with usual 9-year-olds, she is nonstop. My wife gave up her job as a theatre nurse 6 weeks ago and has just started working bank shifts for the next two weeks as our flight date to Australia on the 11th of August looms on the horizon. The date changed 3 weeks ago when Singapore Airlines moved our second leg of the flight (Singapore to Adelaide) to the same time our first leg of the flight (London to Singapore) took off, overlapping the flights. After 4 days of phone calls, we were placed on the 11th of August flight (it was the 10th August) and felt pretty safe, that was until one week ago when the Australian intake was then halved again. We’ve been waiting to hear of horror stories about peoples seats being moved, flights cancelled or people having their seats ‘gazumped’, increasing our anxiety on the fact that our seats will have been moved / cancelled etc… but again, as I sit here and type this, and after receiving an email from the Flight Centre just an hour ago, our seats are still there, they are ours, they (Singapore Airlines) haven’t cancelled or moved anyone as yet and we are still on for the flight. As apprehensive I am about asking this question, has anyone heard of any horror stories of people losing seats etc…? Like I said, with Singapore Airlines they have not cancelled/moved any seats so I can only assume that the flights to Australia from Singapore were never to full capacity which I find incredibly odd. So, once we fly to Australia (Adelaide) and we quarantine for two weeks we move into our AirBnB in Blackwood, our two children will then be going to Hawthorndene primary, and my wife will start her employment as a nurse in Adelaide around the end of September. We are looking to stay around the Blackwood area of Adelaide and thanks to people on this site, I have been told of other affordable areas around Blackwood that would suit us as a family. I will update again in a few weeks’ time with an update but if anyone has any questions about what I’ve written or anything that they think I can help with regarding the move to Australia then please do not hesitate to ask, the community on here seems wonderful and the people who I have spoken with have helped a lot. Regards, Beau Vinyl

Hi Craig, what what I've read I think you could be correct in thinking that if someone were to come along and pay £16,000 for those seats you'll get bumped, it's the same fear I have with us. We fly on the 10th August on the same route as you but our seats, for four of us, cost £3,600. Currently we are 4 of 28 people on that plane from Sinigapore to Adelaide but money talks and if someone wanted to get out desperately and they had the £££ we'd be bumped / cancelled. It's all up in the air still. Good luck to you and yours though, hope you get over.

Yeah, totally agree, I have a 12- and 9-year-old and they are both 'explorers'. I finish my job on the 6th August, we are living with my parents at present and the kids finish school next week. If we don’t get out there this year we’ll knock the idea on the head due to my age, time taken and jobs etc…

My feeling is that the closer you are to your flight date the better chance you have of flying but I have been told of people being cancelled the day before their flight, so it really is cutting it fine. The DFAT flights look good to go for but reading about the quarantine centre in Darwin (Howard Springs) I am not too sure I would want to put my two kids through that, the stories I have seen are worrying. I do hope that our flights to Adelaide and Perth both go ahead. Another thing I was told by the Flight Centre was how amazed they were that Scott Morrison only gave the airlines a week to sort out the halving of the already minimalised cap. The told me that if they only gave a weeks’ notice on that then they may only give a weeks’ notice on relaxing it or tightening it further, it is bananas.

Thanks Curly.

Thanks for this Jon, I have the app and refresh it 10/15 times a day.

If you are still looking in September after I land and quarantine, then I would be interested. I figure that getting to Australia knowing no one is an adventure in itself so to get to know people in a 5-a-side team would be great.