mungbean

Same here.

Ahoy Captain I've not been through the full tax cycle yet, but I'm told you can claim serious amounts of tax exemption for anything and everything related to working (or studying) from home. Including heating, eqpt costs, etc. Would be good to get some pointers on this.

You don't have to have an NAB account... I'm with Commonwealth and don't get charged anything to transfer to Moneycorp's RBS account in Sydney each month.

OK, I may have been looking at an out of date webpage about age exemptions. As you were.

Until you reach the age of 50.

You should be able to get a copy of your UK credit history from Experian or Equifax for a nominal fee: see (e.g.) http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html

When I left the UK for India in 2010 I actually got rid of almost everything physical I owned. Sold masses of stuff on eBay, gave away furniture to friends, and loads of books and CDs went to charity shops. Just a few boxes of irreplaceable bits and bobs in a friend's lock-up and some in the parents' attic. Quite painful to do at the time (especially in a hurry), but you definitely travel lighter. I left the country with 2 suitcases and a laptop bag.

Right, that sounds like a sensible compromise. I'll do that. Cheers

Hmmm... $150 for a sticker that will (hopefully) only be valid for another 12 months maximum, as I'm in the process of applying for a 186. I managed to find a form to contact the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Let's see if I get any useful response from there.

Thanks @jumpingjillybean -- that third link still points to earthgarden despite the edit... FTFY https://www.organicgardener.com.au/ I'm just getting into succulents here and just bought a pile of cuttings on ebay! Wow they're beautiful... looking forward to a chilly but sunny weekend pottering about potting up some of this stuff. Loads of other easy to propagate stuff as well, to help me build up some stock for what was an empty yard 6 months ago. eBay is so much cheaper than the garden centres here. (and my favourite one within walking distance of home just closed down!)

If you don't manage to gate-crash a lounge there are free showers near gates 32 and 37. http://www.abudhabiairport.ae/english/airport-information/airport-facilities/toilets-and-showers.aspx

Well done @Charlottehill76 - you must be chuffed to bits!

Did you check that the $100k is actually salary, and that super is separate and on top? $3000 a month rent is about $700 a week. I'm paying that for a small 2-bed bungalow in the Inner West. (Rents are quoted weekly, and it's not just multiplied by 4 -- times by 52 and divide by 12 for what you would pay per calendar month.) There are some threads on here talking about budgets, presumably searching for 'budget' would dig those up. Several people have prepared spreadsheets they've shared. Yes, most rentals are unfurnished. Air con and a dishwasher (for some reason) are often included, but washing machine, fridge, furniture and everything else you would need to buy. Unless you can find something furnished. You can get an idea of prices of appliances etc. on the JB Hifi and Harvey Norman websites.

hi all I'm going to be in Europe soon and then flying back to Sydney with a few days in Bali... I don't have a visa sticker in my passport. Is this going to be OK from Denpasar airport or will I need to go and get a label put in before I depart from Aus? And where do we generally look to find this kind of info? I had a look on http://www.border.gov.au/ but kept going round in circles... thanks!

An interesting read. For those fond of paragraph breaks: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/adelaide-earthquake-where-the-faults-lie/story-fn3o6wog-1226027404800

OK I thought you were asking about commuting between Brisbane CBD and GC? If we're looking at Central to Coomara or Central to Helensvale (for GC) it's more or less the same? The information is out there - good luck!

Just ended up looking at my previous addresses to apply for UK police check... 13 addresses in 12 years! :-|

+1 for mid-week... I usually search for flights on Tuesday or Wednesday. Apart from being cheaper they will likely be emptier, and therefore more comfortable and less noisy/smelly! Skyscanner gives you an overview of dates for the whole month so you can see when the cheaper days are.

OTOH if you don't have the capital for a deposit, then you don't have any choice. How "typical" are 80% home-loans? (i.e. 20% deposit). Is it possible to get better?

I didn't have too much hassle getting set up with Telstra. The cable connection was already in the house, so I went into a Telstra shop, signed up, paid, and a new (faster) cable modem/wifi router was delivered a couple of days later. Activating the account involved a bit of faffing I vaguely recall, especially since their "automated" voice recognition system didn't recognise my accent until I used Aussie pronunciation: "Internit" etc. :-/ But I was up and running within a week of getting the keys to the house. 30Mbps down / 1Mbps up. $73 a month. The download limit *was* 50GB a month, but yesterday they sent me an email saying they are raising it to 100GB a month at no cost. (Which is handy cos I was going over 50GB with iPlayer downloads.) Overall I'm fairly happy with it.

Teaching (aka lecturing) in colleges and universities (HE or VET) doesn't require a specific teaching qualification, apart from the Cert IV I mentioned above. You need to know what you're talking about of course, and have experience and qualifications to prove it. For VET courses you have to demonstrate your "currency" through industry activity etc. But you must have the Cert IV TAE40110. For Higher Ed teaching you are supposed to be qualified at least 1 level higher in the Australian Qualifications Framework than the course you are teaching. So, to teach on a bachelors course (AQF level 7), you need to have a bachelors with honours (level 8). To teach masters students (level 9) you need to have a PhD (level 10). Alternatively you can demonstrate industry experience which is equivalent to understanding at the relevant level. http://www.aqf.edu.au/aqf/in-detail/aqf-levels/ Teaching in schools is a different story, and is outside my area of expertise. I wouldn't expect you could qualify as a schoolteacher entirely online, since you would presumably have to do a placement/practicum in a school.

What does she want to study, and for what purpose? In Australia there are two parts to the tertiary education sector: Higher Education (bachelors courses, masters, PhDs) and Vocational Education and Training, known as VET. VET is diplomas, at a slightly lower level than bachelors. Some institutions focus on one or the other, and some do both. Univ of Hobart would appear to be entirely Higher Ed, but if she would want to teach in any VET colleges (including TAFEs) she would be required to hold the TAE40110 - Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. Since April 2015 this is now mandatory for every teacher working in VET sector. (And this means that recruiting teaching staff has just got a lot harder, because up to now not all of the lecturers had the qualification.) This can be studied online or face-to-face. But be aware that there are some disreputable colleges operating in the VET sector, even those who are Registered Training Organisations.

In Aus there is the Australian Qualifications Framework. In the UK (except Scotland) there is the Qualifications and Credit Framework. In Scotland, there's The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework. Each of these defines a number of "levels", and a qual in one framework can be mapped to a qual in another. A Maths GCSE isn't going to get you into uni, but if she takes HSC and gets a decent ATAR score (or equivalent) then overseas unis would interpret this according to the frameworks -- it's all standardised and mapped out.

So long as you can tell them your full name, course, year of graduation, and pay them 40 quid or so, then they will probably be able to work it all out.... ;-) I'm amazed they keep this stuff on record for so long though. Have to say - I wasn't too impressed at being reminded how close I came to not getting past first year!

So, somebody clearly mastered the art of the 2000-word essay... ;-) Great work Steven and @Mims -- an inspiring read, too!