RMac

Hi all, I have a few questions about pet transportation, we are heading from Sydney to Glasgow in September hopefully and I have gotten quotes from several pet transport companies, they seem to vary quite a bit, are there any to avoid? Our dog may also require boarding in Glasgow for a few weeks so I am keen to go with a company that has a good reputation. thanks

Thank you LR, everyone we know in Scotland is so optimistic abut the future, we have decided that we will aim to be out by September so that the kids can start school, it may be cutting it a bit fine though as we are away for three weeks in June, I actually feel really relaxed now that we have finally made a decision. My husband is emailing some contacts he has in Glasgow to start the job hunting process, I think I will try to organise my registration as much as I can from here and then sit the exams required once we are in the UK.

Thank you, it is hard to know what is really going on from overseas, I have barely grasped the last Australian budget let alone the UK one. Definitely food for thought.

We live off a little less in Sydney, we pay $800 per week on our mortgage, one child in pre school, two after school activities per child and we are certainly not saving (this could be us being useless with cash though)

That sounds OK, by my previous estimations you would be left with around 130k after tax or so, use this Australian Tax Office calculator to give you an idea. Sydney is very expensive, if you need childcare or pre school expect to be out of pocket at least $50 per day per child if not more, groceries are several hundred dollars per week for a family etc. http://calculators.ato.gov.au/scripts/asp/simpletaxcalc/main.asp

Thanks Quoll, I hear the job market is good but again they are all in oil and gas, I am concerned that David Cameron's proposed cuts will affect the hiring of nurses but I don't know much about the UK/Scotland political responsibility. He is going to try to look for a job from here and go from there, hopefully Australian experience is accepted

I just answered my own question you can work once they a approved which takes 2-12 weeks. Registering as a nurse over there looks a bit trickier unfortunately, I am a perioperative nurse with a post graduate qualification but it looks as though I would have to pass some uni style nursing exams, not sure I would still remember all of it:)

It looks like I would qualify for a spouse visa, does anyone know if you can work on a spouse visa? The website wasn't very clear

Thank you for all of the responses, I wouldn't mind moving personally, we spent several weeks in Scotland 18 months ago, we end up hibernating for 6 months every year over the summer because my husband and children burn to a crisp and can't stand any temp over 22 degrees. I thought about renting the house out but it is an old house and at the moment the market in Sydney in crazy and our equity has doubled, I am concerned that the market will crash at some point and our nest egg will be diminished. I don't have a UK visa, I have just started looking into the process, we are just doing the kids UK passports now. Is anyone familiar with the job market in Scotland at all? Most of my husbands family are in oil and gas so their experience is a bit different to ours I think. It is such a difficult decision, the kids have close friends and I certainly don't want them to become lost the way my husband has.

Hi everyone, I am not from the UK but have been reading some threads for advise and I am hoping someone may have been in a similar situation and can help. My husband grew up in the Scottish highlands, his parents migrated to Australia when he was 12 and he never quite got over it, they didn't move to a very nice place in Adelaide and Scotland has always been home to him. Just before we met he had a one way ticket and was going to move back at the age of 31, now we are living in Sydney, married with two children (5 and 7) and he is 40 years old and desperate to return to Scotland. We have enough equity in our house that we could almost buy outright in Glasgow but we have a big mortgage in Australia. How family in Scotland are very close whereas my family here are not and he misses that closeness. He has an excellent well paid job as a software engineer here and I am a nurse, are we crazy for considering selling our house and moving? Will our children forever wish that we hadn't? I am so confused.