Sandsmuir

My father passed away very recently and I want to have my mother stay with us in OZ as much as is allowed. At the moment we believe she can come on a visitors visa for 90 days unless we are wrong about that! Can we get permission for longer periods? Are we able to make her a dependent on our own visa?

Looking to sort out a car for when we arrive in brisbane in a couple of weeks. Think leasing is out so its buying. Any recommendations of garages or best local papers/websites to look in etc. makes to avoid. Needs to be a good size family car, reliable as its going to take us up the coast.

We have done this route numerous times. The first thing I need to ask is

1) When will you be travelling? I wouldn't attempt this between November and March, wet season can see you stranded and it's not just up North, we currently have a low out in the Coral Sea which has the chance of turning in to a cyclone and hitting the SE area of Queensland.

 

2) Are you bringing lots of luggage as this can take up a lot,of space and you may need a larger vehicle.

 

I will now try and answer your questions.

 

Hole 1 - Just use the address of the holiday accommodation you are in the first week. It is going to be cheaper in the long run to buy your car for this trip rather than rent. One thing I would say is make sure you take out RACQ it has been a lifesaver to us twice now.

Car wise if buying and you have a lot of luggage you are going to need something with plenty of space, ie 4x4, mini van or station wagon (estate car) is this the kind of car you are going to want long term. If not you can do rentals but remember whatever price you see to rent you usually have to double it for insurance. The cars we have hired usually work out at $90 a day, you would get a discount for a long term rental but also check that you get one with unlimited km. To rent a campervan I think we paid around $250 a day but then we stayed in caravan parks so we had power and that cost an extra $60 a night.

 

All sound advice here thank you. I think we will go for the buying option!

 

Hole 2 - What visa are you on? If temp you have no rush at all to transfer your license. If you are on PR then you have 3 months from when you arrive.

 

We are on a 489 Provisional PR Visa

 

Hole 3 - I would highly recommend that you open an account with NAB there should be a link here somewhere. The reason I say NAB is that they have your cards already waiting for when you arrive, the other banks wait until you have shown your ID and then usually post them out to you within 5 working days.

 

Done this!

 

Hole 4 - Hell yes it's feasible and a great trip.

 

if not it will be a hell of a holiday!

 

I will try and help with an itinary later.

Thanks Pom Queen!

1. Rent a car for the 5 weeks.

2. Yes, you can use your UK licences for that time.

3. Check the CBA. I am sure that they will have branches all the way up.

4. Yes, it is feasible. A long drive, but keep your option flexible re stays in various places. Some places a couple of days may be enough to decide that that area is not for you. Others, you may want to stay longer. Not sure if you are pre booking accommodation, or seeing what is available when you arrive in places.

can you rent with no fixed address?

I guess it would need to be a 1 way rent too as taking it back to brisbane if we ended up in townsville might be a trek and a half!

Absolutely ecstatic that we got our visa. A new beginning for our family which we intend to make the most of! We have a plan but there are some gaps which some of you guys may be able to fill in!

The Plan - Land in Brisbane, stay there for a week to chill a bit. Then over the next 5 weeks, move up the coast spending 4-5 days in all the places we been looking at for the past 14 months to look at small business' for sale, job prospects, schools & home rentals . We will Carry on all the way up to Port Douglas. Once there we are hoping that there has been a stand out place for us and that is where we will go to and settle.

Hole No.1 - Transport! We need a vehicle big enough for 2 adults & 2 kids & Insurance but we wont have an address! Ideas anyone?

Hole No.2 - We got UK driving licenses, can we go the whole 6-8 weeks on these?

Hole No.3 - Money! Which bank has branches all the way up the coast that allows us access to our money. We wont have any OZ bank cards as we only just arrived and no fixed address to send them to anyway!

Hole No.4 - Is it even feasible to do such a thing? From here it is easy to say but it may be different on the ground due to circumstances that we wouldn't know about!

Any advice on the above will be gratefully accepted!:smile:

Sounds exciting! Can I enquire about something? When you had your medicals, did you get to know the results of them and how long did it take to get the results? Many thanks if you can let me know! Xx

Hi jaclyn, our medicals timeline was CO appointed 20th Jan, meds done in Manchester on 26th Jan, uploaded on 27th & 28th Jan. We discovered immi account on 10th Feb, logged in to see statement "health requirements finalised" but no other details, dates or descriptions. 13th Feb Visa Granted! You dont get to see the results of your medical!

we know the hospital told us that 3 of us were "A" but one of us was a "B" due to a long term medical issue. We fully expected that it would be referred to the MOC. We still dont know if it had been or not. If so then going by our experience it can take anything up to 2 weeks from being uploaded!

15 mins after posting this our agent phoned.....Visa GRANTED!!!!

Stephen & Sam, with girls 11 & 8, Visa granted this morning! Heading to queensland (dont know where yet)! Want to get away in the next 2-3 months. Hoping to buy a small business for the both of us to run.

so now we get another wicked turn in this long drawn out process where the system wont let you check that nothing has moved on your application for another day, and, of course, its close of play for the weekend down under! Its just 1 horror event after another...............least that how it feels! lol!

Got this compelling urge to call our CO in an attempt to chivvy her along and to clear up a burning question that we cant get a straight answer for!

Problem is, we have an agent but we are losing confidence in as we feel "on the ropes" all the time as we dont get much reassurance from them. They say to just wait.....just keep waiting!..... Thats not long, we have other clients that have waited longer.....these are the type of responses we get. It worries me they would take the hump if we went directly to the CO!

the other reason is that, basically, im scared I would ruin our chances of getting a visa for having the ordasity to call the higher power that is our CO! Again, our agent has instilled this belief that a CO can be anything and everything and needs to be treated in a special way that only an agent knows how to.

whats your opinion/experience guys?

The CO plays no role in deciding if your medicals need referring - this is all done by the MOC, if the medicals are showing finalised then they will have been passed by the MOC and uploaded on to your file.

 

Until your CO looks at your application again nothing else will happen. CO give people 28 days to arrange medicals and police checks since that was just 3 wks ago they prob won't look at your file until the 28 days are up.

If you are right then I am going to be very very happy. Its seems that the multitude of people on here believe that Finalised means finalised, yet my agent insists that we are all wrong in that assumption. I have since spoken to the hospital where we did our medicals to see if they knew where the files were uploaded to, they dont, but would love to know! The Aus Emmbassy web site says they are uploaded directly to the CO, just to add confusion! The 28 days we were given runs out on the 17th feb unless its 28 working days which takes it to the 27th feb, again we can find out which 1 it is! All adds to the pain! Lol!

i so want to believe what the general opinion is but our agent has us so on edge that we can fail at any point we dare not let ourselves believe it might happen!

this is the statement at the bottom of each persons info block in our immi account

Meeting the health requirement

Health has been finalised for this person for this visa subclass based on the information provided to the department. If this person needs to do anything further to meet the health requirement, they will be contacted by the department. There is no need to contact the department at this time concerning this matter.

seems a bit confusing, I guess it depends on how you read it!

Yeh, done that and was told the bad news above!

hi, So are you saying youve all ready been waiting 14 months since applying? When were you asked to take meds, what visa is it and what country are you applying from?

Started the process 14 months ago. 2 resits on the dreaded ielts. Vettasses held up the process further by taking 14 weeks to give a positive result but qld dropped the skill we were aplying under from their list 3 days before vetasses finally issued their results. So we had to wait for a state to put our skill on their list. A few months later qld put the skill back on their lists and we went straight in on a skills based state sponsored 489 visa. We are applying from the UK. CO appointed 20th Jan, We were asked to get meds by agent folowing email to them from CO on 20th Jan, done on 26th and uploaded on 28th. Police checks done and in too.

Thanks beddy for the sentiment, appreciate it a lot!

We dont know if my wife has been referred or not yet, probably not as the last update was 20th Jan but the medicals went on after that so the CO has not seen them yet to decide if they need referring or not! Just makes the "finalised" wording on the immi account confusing!

Were you requested by your CO for your medicals or did you Upload them before requested ? When we were requested our medicals by our case officer it was our final hurdle and has soon as they were finalised so was our visa .

We were requested by the CO to go ahead and get our medicals and police checks. We completed them on the 26th and they were uploaded within a day or 2 of that.

we ecpected my wifes to be referred so when we saw she had been finalised we thought, Yes (que fist pump) but it seems that is just a default message on the immi account which will be changed when the CO gets round to looking at the application. They have not looked since 20th Jan so they have not even seen that the medicals and police checks are uploaded already!

Yesterday we were running around like excited kids as we believed we were days away from our visa being granted.

today we are wrecked because we have been told by our agent that there has been no movement at all since we got our CO on the 20/01/15

all stemmed from our first look at our immi account where it said all our health requirements have been finalised. We ran round the forums to see what this means and it seemed that this way the last hurdle and a green light after 14 months waiting was imminent.

but no, That statement is misleading, according to our agent, that statement just means that WE have finalised our part by completing the medicals and they have been uploaded on to our account.

basically our application has not been looked at since the 20th Jan and we have no idea when it will get looked or how long the case officer may take. Its a cruel cruel process this!

My agent tells me that despite the phrase "finalised" has been used they can still refer to the MOC!

utterly confused as I cant find an instance of this on the forums I view. They all show the same where a referral occurs first then the finalisation statement! I just have not come across it being the other way around......of course, that could be the case and I just have not seen it! HELP!

On our visa application it says that the Health details are finalised. Does that mean its done and dusted? My wife was a B for her medical so we expected that she would be referred so our wee hearts skipped a beat when we saw that all of us had the "finalised" phrase including her!

So, does finalised mean finalised or is a referral still likely given my wife was a B?

Everyone else in the same situation has to do it so there is no point moaning about it being ridiculous, it is incase something happened to his mother and he has to join you at a later date. Surely there is a local Policeman, I dont know if they are on the list but at least you could add a covering note

explaining the situation that you live on an Island, or why dont you just wait a few months until he is 18 if it going to cause such problems.

I asked to be directed to a list if possible, not your uninformed opinion. Targetting people on here that are asking questions whilst going through mountains of paperwork and hoop jumping as well as having pockets emptied because they are utterly committed to the process is just crass! If you have no decent advice, then don't respond.

following on from the ridiculous situation where we needed to try and have an estranged son, aged just under 18 to have to go for a medical regardless of him not coming with us has resulted in the inevitable reaction we expect! His mother has completely ignored all attempts to get her agreement or recorded dis-agreement. so we now have to put together evidence of what we have tried to do communication wise with her, that's fine, we are pretty well stocked in that department but the statutory declaration that I need to make needs to be witnessed. Can anyone direct me to a list of acceptable witnesses for this? reason I need to ask is that the population of the island we live on is 1100. we are not really awash with solicitors, Jp's or magistrates! in fact there are none!

may not mean much to you guys but by god does it men a lot to us! :biglaugh:

our 489 Visa was submitted a few days ago so now in that purgatory phase of waiting for a CO to be assigned. Trying to gauge if its an exercise in patience and paperwork from here or does the "fun" only really begin when the CO starts to go through the submitted paperwork! Our agent has been correctly stayed as they just cant give a definitive answer as they wont want to assume anything. I'm interested to see if it is anything like the IELTs where a proportion of about 30% people get it first time and the rest get scored down to re-sit.

Looking for info on the possibilities of getting commercial finance on arrival in Queensland. We will have a bit of money to buy/lease a small business. As we are going in on a 489 Visa we want to be assured we qualify for PR so essentially trying to "buy a job" for my wife who is the principle on the application. If we can access commercial finance then we might even be able to buy/lease a business that will give the both of us jobs! I did email an OZ bank but no response!

If you have an agent you should be liaising with him or her, and should be taking comfort from the advice you receive.

 

In short, have a phone conversation with your advisor. You are paying for his/her support and advice.

 

While I am not across the specifics of your visa application I don't see this issue as a material problem. Presentation of evidence relating to unsuccessful efforts made to secure a medical examination for a non migrating child should satisfy the case officer.

 

Best regards.

Your words are much appreciated. we have found ourselves getting exasperated with our agent. Conflicting info, asking for info previously supplied and missing a dead line for SS last time round by 3 days has led to 10 months and still no definite future to focus on has us wired to the moon and even small problems seem to be insurmountable when they present themselves!