brock79

I can't help you unfortunately as it's been a long time since I have needed to log in to the ImmiAcount and the Health Declarations etc but yes as far as I'm aware the Child 101 visa still exists.

Yes so far so good, we've been back in Oz for 16 months, our 6 year old daughter is settled in School and we also have a nearly 3 year old son. I still have days where I want to be back in the UK and with our family, who knows what the future holds. Sadly I think once you've lived in both countries you are never truly settled.

Hi, I believe this is the email address we used, I can't say whether it's still valid or not though: familymigrationlondon@dfat.gov.au Good to hear that you're moving over soon. Our daughter is in Settlers Hills Primary which seems a good school. We didn't like the look of Makybe Rise but that was only from the outside when driving past so I can't really say how the school is. Obviously with Mother Teresa and Tranby you need to pay for those schools, Tranby is next door to Settlers Hills Primary and seems to have better reviews than Mother Teresa, but that's only what I have read online. The school sizes are certainly different over here, our daughters primary school in the UK had about 180 kids in it, the schools over here seem to have about 700-900 pupils!

Hi, We’re in Baldivis. We had to stay in 2 AirBnB holiday rentals in different suburbs before we secured a long term rental, so that wasn’t ideal with the kids. Took us a while to find a nice place which has everything we wanted. It’s still quite competitive out here as well for rentals, certainly with the good ones. Our daughter has recently started school, I started a job but finished it as it wasn’t what I was looking for. Both Doree Bonner and then Grace at this end were good and I’d use them both again. The only issue we’ve had is with our fridge freezer, it’s dentend on the door and down one side, it was done in the U.K. by Doree Bonner staff when they were lifting it on to the container, I heard them do it. Not great but it could’ve been worse. I’ve got a claim going through with the insurers (Letton Percival) for it. I still find it tough over here without our family support but hopefully things will work out. Cant complain with the weather. Winter now and the last 2 days have had no clouds and about 22 degrees, like a good U.K. summer really! Ha. Hope you get your child visa's sorted and everything moves along smoothly for you.

Our daughter turns 5 in May and our son is 18 months old. We had quotes from Doree Bonner, PSS and Britannia removals but we went with Doree Bonner in the end. They were good at this end but I'll reserve judgement until we see it all in Oz! ha

No problem at all, hope you managed to get the HAP ID's sorted. From memory our child visa's were submitted in July and they were granted in September. After ours were granted I had heard they were taking longer to process but I don't know if that's the case now or not. I had to email them and plead that ours be dealt with as we were running out of time with our 1 year RRV's, thankfully they listened and dealt with it soon after I emailed the London office. Funnily enough we're heading to Baldivis or surrounding areas as well! We've booked a 4 week furnished rental in Port Kennedy and will be looking for a long term rental around Baldivis, Secret Harbour etc when we get there. Keep in touch and we may see you there!

Hi, If you do decide to front load your Medicals you can get your HAP ID before submitting your visa application. You need to log into your online Immi account and from memory you select New Application, then find "My Health Declarations" and then you select what main visa category you're applying for (i.e. Child 101 Visa), you then just complete the details and at the end it gives you a HAP ID number. You can then book your medicals with this number and you complete the HAP ID number on your Visa application which they will match up when processing it. I had to to do this for 2 Child Visa's for my children, we needed to front load as we only had 1 year RRV's so were short of time. I rang the medical place for an appointment and they couldn't give us one without the HAP ID's, I then found out you could generate them on your online Immi account as I've mentioned above. With regards paying for the visas. One of the forms you fill in for the child visa, 40CH or 47CH etc has a section for your bank/card details. You fill that in and they take payment from your account. They were very quick at taking the payment! We have our shippers coming this Thurs and Friday and we fly out to Perth on 25th April! All very stressful, daunting, exciting at the same time. I often think we must be mad doing all this, again! Although didn’t have any kids the first time. Hope the above helps you x

Your baby will need it's own full child visa, you cannot add them on to an RRV or get them their own RRV if they haven't been a PR previously. I know this as I had to apply for 2 full child visa's for our children who hadn't been born when we were last in Oz, which is why we're now pushing it to get back before the RRV expires. I'm no expert on this bit but I believe you can apply for a 6 month tourist visa quite easily for your child and then you can apply for their child visa in Australia, if it's granted you will then have to leave Australia and go back in to activate the child visa.

I don't think anyone will be able to tell you your chances of success, but given the quick turn around and low cost of the RRV you may as well just apply and see what happens. They do grant them to people who don't seem to have the full criteria, we got ours back after being away 10 years and only having spent 6 months in Australia, so it's certainly possible. Just apply and see what the result is.

Sadly we need the funds to move!

Hi, the outcome was as listed in a few earlier posts, we were granted our 1 year RRV's, we have to be in Oz before early May, cutting it very fine now as still trying to sell our house! Good luck with yours.

Yes sadly that's correct, it's approx £1,500 for a Child Visa, we just had to get 2 for our children, one of which was under 12 months old! You'd think they could just be added to the parents visa's these days but sadly not! You need to complete all forms required for the 101 Visa by hand (Form 40, Form 47 & the Form to be completed by your partner granting permissions to take the kids, even if you're married and all going together!), they only accept paper versions at present. I'm sure it will move to online one day... We've paid over £4k for our child visa's and 2 RRV's etc and we're still not sure if we're going to go back! Expensive past time doing this and still having major struggles with the decision!

We'll both of our Child Visas were granted today! I'd heard the London processing times had been moved to be much closer to the global processing times of approx 11 months, so I rang the Australian High Commission and subsequently sent them an email to plead that they be dealt with quickly as we only have 1 year RRV's which expire on 1st June and we can only make arrangements to sell the house etc once the kids visa's are granted. Thankfully it seemed to help as they sorted it for us today! There was some slight confusion as this morning they emailed me asking for the passport pages of our children (Form 47CH Document Checklist just asks for their birth certificates and says you can supply passports if you don't have their birth certificates, so I'd just submitted the Birth Certs!). I later sent him the passport pages anyway just to be sure. He also requested that our children undertake medicals and provided me with a HAP ID, even though I had completed the question on the Visa applications giving details that they had already completed their medicals and I had supplied their relevant HAP ID's in that question! I supplied him with them again today and he apologised for the confusion.The only concern I had after the grant is that it says the children have to enter before 3rd May 2018, which is even before our RRV's expire. We'll probably be there before then anyway but we do still need to sell our house. I was under the impression the kids would have 12 months from the date of their medicals which were in July, but it seems they've given the children 12 months from the date of my Police check which was required for the sponsorship. As the kids didn't have their own police checks I assumed it would go from the date of their medicals. Ah well, just means we'll have to get over there before 3rd May. I'm half happy about it all and half sad, still a major decision for us to move away from our parents and take our young children away from their grandparents, it's a tough call. Need to look more into shipping now and putting the house on the market!

I thought that would be the case, thanks. Sounds like you've got a good deal and relationship with your landlord too. Cheers.

On the topic of Perth rentals, given that it's still a buyers/renters market, I presume its acceptable to haggle on the weekly rental price offered with properties, as you would with a sale price of a property? Obviously it's at the landlords discretion but I just wanted to know if it's the norm that people haggle on the weekly rental prices when securing a long term rental?

Thanks, hopefully ours won't be far off then! (been checking Spam folder regularly too). We've got 2 visa's in (for both of our children) so ours could be a little longer I suppose, but we'll see!

Still waiting for our Child Visa grants (or any notifications about them). It's been just over 4 weeks now since they were received and DIBP took the money. I'm being impatient I know but hopefully we'll hear something soon going off other people's experiences on here (I'm aware the waiting times listed on the DIBP site are around 12 months btw, but in reality for people in the UK with straightforward applications they seem to be granted much sooner). The sooner the better as we only have 1 year RRV's.

If you do decide to front load your Medicals you can get your HAP ID before submitting your visa application. You need to log into your online Immi account and from memory you select New Application, then find "My Health Declarations" and then you select what main visa category you're applying for (i.e. Child 101 Visa), you then just complete the details and at the end it gives you a HAP ID number. You can then book your medicals with this number and you complete the HAP ID number on your Visa application which they will match up when processing it. I've recently had to to do this for 2 Child Visa's for my children, we needed to front load as we only have 1 year RRV's so we're short of time. I rang the medical place for an appointment and they couldn't give us one without the HAP ID's, I then found out you could generate them on your online Immi account as I've mentioned above.

Congratulations, great news for you! Hopefully ours won't be far behind you! ?

Hopefully ours will be that quick too! Here's hoping! ?

Not yet, but they're very quick at taking your money! They received my applications on 3rd August and both visa fees were showing on my credit card on 4th August! No news other than them taking my money!

I should say that we've frontloaded the kids visas with medicals which were done in Manchester last week, so hopefully that will speed things up a bit.

No I'm pretty certain each child needs their own 101 visa. The extra fees of say $605 will be for if your children have any members of their own family unit (i.e. If they have any kids themselves!). Our substantial ties were the family we have in Oz. I have uncles, aunties, cousins and Grandparents there. Compelling reasons were just our life story of being back, getting married, having children and requiring the support of our family in the UK before we could think of returning. Not sure when we're going yet, will all depend on the child visa grants and then the sale of our house. Just anytime before our RRV's expire next June. We'll be going back to Perth again.

Well I've finally posted our Child visa applications to London, despite much deliberation about going to Oz again or staying in the U.K. (mainly due to taking kids away from Grandparents). Now I just have to hope that they're granted quickly as we only have 1 year RRV's and we can't make any plans until the kids are sorted.

I'm in a similar situation. We had PR visas granted in 2006, came back from Oz in 2007. Both myself and my wife have recently been granted our 1 year RRV's (10 years later). However we now have 2 children without visas! I've just posted their child visas to London today! At a cost of $2,415 each sadly. Just praying they're granted quickly to give us time to arrange the move!