mangel83

On 31/08/2018 at 09:47, Zet01 said:

Congrats on your ceremony! We (my husband and I) had our ceremony last August 9 and we applied passports the next day after the ceremony (August 10) directly to Australian Passport Office. We were allowed to schedule directly in their office since our holiday to NZ is August 16, and we only have 4 working days to apply passports.

We got our passports the same day (5 hours to be exact).

 You still have 4 weeks before your trip, just apply for passport right after you get your certificate.

It is just a breeze going to NZ immigration with AU passport on hand.

Quite a speedy turnaround! Thanks for the information, however I'm still thinking about postponing it to try to be in a ceremony with my wife.

On 31/08/2018 at 12:22, rammygirl said:

Urgent passports can be got.......for an extra $185 !  That is if they give you a certificate on the day. We didn’t get ours as new minister hasn’t sorted signature yet. Hope they come soon we need passport for a holiday in October. I resent having to pay the extra, I would have delayed the ceremony if I had known. 

I agree, I've already spent enough as it is, but I guess  it's no a whole lot more in the grand scheme of things.

Ceremony invitation received!

Date applied: 05/12/2017
City/Council area: Melbourne
Online / Paper: Paper
Date received the acknowledgement email: 29/01/2018
Date of the Citizenship Test: 25/06/2018 *Passed
Date of ceremony: 27/09/2018

However, most likely I'll postpone the ceremony for 2 reasons:

- My wife and I applied together (although she applied online) and she just got the invitation today to take the test in November, even though we both nominated each other to be together for the ceremony. Funny how it (doesn't ) works. Although this post above  explains a bit!

- I have an upcoming trip to NZ for work on the 31st of October and I'm worried I might be cutting it too fine getting a passport on time. Allowing for 2 weeks after the ceremony to apply for a passport, that leaves 2 weeks for me to get the passport, which I guess the "Urgent" service should do the trick with a week to spare, only other issue is tickets have already been booked with my current passport details.

Any thoughts on the passport issue? Any experience using the urgent service?

Good luck to everybody still on the wait!

5 hours ago, rammygirl said:

Did you link the applications?  There was a question about wanting to attend a ceremony together and you had to give info about the other applicant. We did this and were called to take test on same day.

Have you had approval yet? We got ours the same day but some people have waited for months.

Yes we did, I submitted her details and she submitted mine.

Yes, I got the approval within a week.

Hey guys, sharing my info here just for the greater knowledge.

Both my wife and me applied within a week of each other, she applied online but I applied via mail (Paper). This was due to an issue with my travel records when border control failed to register one of my entries back to Australia, ie. it showed me exiting the country on 2 different occasions without the entry in between. I called and was told to either submit proof of my entry (which could take a few weeks to process) and try applying online again once the issue was corrected, or to apply by paper as even with the discrepancy in the record I met the eligibility criteria.

So to avoid the extra wait I submitted a paper application, however at the same time I still sent proof of the missing entry just to get the record right. It actually just took them a couple of days to process, however I had already sent the paper application. See below for our timeline.

Date applied: 05/12/2017
City/Council area: Melbourne
Online / Paper: Paper
Date received the acknowledgement email: 29/01/2018
Date of the Citizenship Test: 25/06/2018 *Passed
Date of ceremony: TBC
Type of ceremony (Urgent/Normal): TBC

Date applied: 02/12/2017
City/Council area: Melbourne
Online / Paper: Online
Date received the acknowledgement email: 02/12/2017
Date of the Citizenship Test: TBC
Date of ceremony: TBC
Type of ceremony (Urgent/Normal): TBC

When attending the interview/exam I asked the officer why hadn't my wife been contacted yet and he thought it was unusual but he couldn't provide more information, he advised to call the department and ask. When we called and explained the situation they didn't even bothered to ask for our details, just said applications are processed in different batches, and that they were still within the specified time frame 

Hi people, I've been following this thread for a while now and I'm happy to say that our Visa was granted yesterday!

I was able to include some details in the spreadsheet a while back, but it seems now that is blocked for editing. I found it very helpful so please whoever is in charge see below for timeline and add the missing details.

User: mangel83

Occupation: Mechanical Engineer

HR - 2 ppl - Transition

Nom. App. 18/06/2015

Nom. Grant 10/11/2015

Visa App. 26/02/2016

Doc. Req. 05/10/2016 (English Test - secondary applicant)

Doc. Prov. 25/10/2016

Visa Grant 07/11/2016

It's just a waiting game, so don't lose hope, good luck to everyone!