Desperateajan

Bungo, I am grateful for your response. You are exactly right - I feel as if I can't even get off the ground with an application, hitting red tape at every turn. I will keep trying to find the visa information.

Hi everyone. I'm new to this so please bear with me, but I'm hoping someone may have words of advice. My husband was a £10 Pom back in 1967, stayed in Perth for 2 years but had to return to the U.K. due to bereavement. We met and married in 1974 and started the procedure to emigrate and we finally got our visa in 1979. We moved out to Perth in 1980 but had to return to the U.K. again due to bereavement. I don't want to bore anyone with the full story. We have been back to Perth on several occasions (my husband's family has lived there since 1965) for holidays but now that we are both retired, we would like to go back and live in Perth. However we cannot emigrate as retirees as we have to have at least $1 million. I have looked into the possibility of emigrating as "returning residents" but cannot understand the criteria for this. I have tried sending emails to the Government Migration Service in London and they keep referring me to their website. Has anybody had any experience, first of all returning as "returning residents" (we are both English) and if anyone knows how long you can be away from Australia before applying to return? The application forms ask for the reference numbers of our original visas, but these are in old passports and we don't know if we still have them. Sorry this is long-winded but if someone from the Australian Government tells me we can't apply as returning residents then I will accept this, but I hold out hope!!! Thank you.