MissionMelbourne

The best place we ate at in Brisbane was a sushi place called Saké right next to the eagle street pier, the restaurant is very plush and the food was incredible. We sat at the sushi bar which runs around the kitchen and as good as the food was, it was an equally brilliant experience watching the chefs at work as every dish and platter that was sent out was a work of art. I strongly recommend this place.

Take an IELTS English test, a score of 8 or above in each of the areas will get you 20 additional points. After speaking with a migration agent, she told me about how New Zealand residents are now subject to the same points based migration system as we are which means we are now in a larger pool of people all trying to get their hands on limited numbers of visa invitations which means more points are ultimately needed to set yourself above the rest as they invite the highest points holders first.

Perfect, thanks for the advice, I've not had much experiencs working directly with motors so im going to need to do some research by the sounds of things.

Thanks! Seems pretty straight forward then!

Hi there, I've been told my my agent at the down under centre to get some I information of the practical tests that I will fave at the Future Skills International assessment in London, if anyone has any info that would be fantastic!! Thanks!

I was just browsing potential one way flights for myself and my partner again but when I had searched before, it seemed that it was cheaper to buy a return then a one way for some reason but this time I found a new tool on skyscanner.net. It isn't available on their app yet but it is on their mobile website. In the departure date section it has the option to chose the cheapest month. So type in your departure and destination locations, chose the cheapest month feature then boom, this then brings up the cheapest prices for the individual days in the selected month so as long as your mildly flexible, you can pick up a right bargain. For instance I'm looking at making the move over next May and I found a one way flight with Malaysia Airlines for £383pp, when the cheapest that I had previously seen was over £650!! Unreal! Just thought I'd share this as this looks like a real money saving way of booking a one way flight!

Exactly what you said PQ!!!! Brilliant to read such positivity so people like us who have just booked the Ielts and the skills assessment stuff starts tomorrow. We are extremely early in our migration quest so this just fills me with confidence!!! Love this!!! Good luck to the original poster, sounds like you're smashing it!

Yes thats excatly whats happened, I've looked into the 189 quite a lot but barely touched on the 190. I just saw the 190 was sponsored so I presumed it was employer sponsored rather than state so I had a little panic! Ive calculated that ill get 70 points so it makes sense to stick with the 189! Always learning! Thanks!

Just from a jobs perspective really, but I suppose there's no harm in applying for jobs whilst in the 189 process

Hi all, we as a couple have decided to start the migration process and we have earmarked the 189 visa as the one we would choose. Have any of you experienced or heard of someone looking at the 189 then changing to the 190 upon getting sponsorship? At the moment I do not have a sponsor but I will be hunting for one as soon as we start the process so in my mind I'm thinking of dropping the 189 for a 190 of possible. Thanks

We would be looking to go on a 189 or possibly a 190 if the opportunity arises. We decided on eastern Melbourne based on a few things, we spent our time looking in the Berwick, Beaconsfield and Officer area.

Let me know how you get on

...... to the move!!!! Nearly 2 years of chatting and dreaming and a 3.5 week reccie in March, my girlfriend has agreed to start the process of getting everything in place for a move to Melbourne. It's been a fairly long road with a few emotional hurdles but the positives of a life in Aus have outweighed the negatives of leaving home. Long road ahead but I'm so bloody excited to start the process. Thanks to everyone we have spoken to and the people that have given us great advice. If you have made the move to Aus recently please tell me the positives and negatives that you experienced on your journey, and if you'd have done anything differently. Thanks again and I can't wait to start this journey!

There's a really good website called Numbeo.com they update their figures regularly and you can get the data from your nearest town and compare those costs and things with various places in Aus, it's really worth a look, beat comparison site I've found.

We didn't move just yet, it was just a Reccie, but a very successful one!

Haha yeah I've jumped on the Richmond band wagon, purely circumstantial! That's great to know that after 2 years you're doing well, it's one thing having a look at the place and a other trying to make it work. When there's so many positives on the table I really find it hard to think it would fail.

Haha It's funny you should where our allegiances should lie as we said we'd follow the home team which was Richmond, and they won so at least we've got a team for when we move!! We looked in and around the Beaconsfield, Officer, Berwick area, that area is nicely out of the city but close enough for work, it's also close enough to the Dandenong Ranges for mpuntain biking and what not.

Yeah, it's crazy money! It's £300 cheaper for a round trip with Qatar, Thai and Singapore.

Yes, we did is it goes and we loved it! We caught the Richmond - Collingwood game, it was brilliant!!! It was one of the highlights of the trip.

Thanks mate, seems a long way off, the Reccie is the first big milestone I guess, I'll hopefully be going on a permanent residents visa and I know they can take a while. Where abouts in Melbourne did you look at houses and suburbs?

Hi everyone! This is just a little insight into what we found in our 9 days in Melbourne. Firstly some background info, I'm a 28yo Electrician and my OH is a 24yo supervisor in a government organisation, we are from, and currently living in a village 25mins from Maidstone in Kent. We have both become a little disillusioned with life here in the UK hence the idea to move to Aus. We were attracted to Australia by the better relative earnings in our professions, housing, the outdoors lifestyle, the extra time time at home with family etc etc, basically the standard reasons for Brits who want to move to Australia. Before we set foot in Australia we had done our research and it certainly sounded like Melbourne would suit us best as we are both into the great outdoors, both love watching live sports and we don't really like the big city environment such as Paris or London amongst other reasons. We wouldn't be looking to live near the CBD, we were looking at suburbs around an hours train ride from the CBD on the southeastern side of the city so we would be a little more in the country. So our findings were - 1. We absolutely loved the city, it had a feel and a buzz to it that made the city feel alive 2. We loved the amount of parks and green areas which are disposable to the public 3. We loved the housing options and the costs. We found land, and a dream house to build that would be $240k inside our borrowing limit 4. The roads weren't busy compared to home, even during rush hour the traffic was always moving, sometimes not very fast but as a man who's spent many hours stationary on the m25, this was a vast improvement. 5. The place is just so tidy! Parks, streets, even the grass verges on the freeways were so clean and well presented 6. The people are so welcoming and polite 7. The sports! Wow, if you haven't been to Melbourne before, there is some kind of top level sport on every night here. 8. The outdoors areas to explore are insane, and very well kept 9. Compared to back home, the town's and villages have many more schooling options and facilities for families Hope this helps someone down the line, I got some great help from people on here so it's good to give a little back!

As a previous post explains, it varies from atate to state, I was on a Reccie in Victoria last month and we were told by a mortgage advisor that people on permanent resi visas outing for the first time in Aus qualify for 10k grant on a new home with a value up to 750k

Using Heathrow to Melbourne as an example, do you think that this would be cheaper than current routes stopping in Dubai for example because Qantas will not have to pay airport fees in a foreign country when doing the stop over

We've been looking at places over Xmas and we've found that AirBnb has some nice places that won't break the bank

I would certainly use this service and here's why...... this month I flew to Melbourne using Qatar Airlines with a stop off in Doha. Due to a sandstorm our flight from Heathrow to Doha was delayed by nearly 3 hours which meant when we got to Doha, Qatar Airlines sent the Doha to Melbourne plane without us. Me being naive, I thought we will just jump on the next plane to Melbourne and everything will be ok. The only problem being that they only operate 1 service a day to Melbourne which meant that we got stuck in Doha for 24hrs, and if anyone has been there, you will know that it's bloody awful. So imagine this happened on the Perth route with Qantas..... Qantas would operate multiple flights from Perth to Melbourne (for instance) so if wr were to miss a connecting flight, the chances are that there would be another flight within 5 hours so the chance of getting to your destination on the day you want is higher.