DrDougster

This was amusing to find after the intervening almost five years. Don't worry Dougster, it'll be ok. I guess spell check didn't pick up wagons back then - how life has changed!

Everything delivered today - no customs charges. Excellent service from Solaris - they used Key here in Perth. Now to see if I fit in that suit...

Thanks Milly - hopefully they'll treat us similarly with this shipment. The one with inherited items, piano etc, from Penang may be another matter. Anyone any thoughts on how to get that kind of thing looked at favourably? It's the piano my wife played on when she was young and family furniture.

@Millytod I wondered how you got on with your letter to try and avoid the tax? I have just received an email from the handlers for importing our stuff and given our four year delay I'm going to have to see if I can either get customs to waive the tax or try and work out the sale value of our stuff. The latter is difficult as a) I can't actually remember what is in there and b) how would you value a something like a $2000 tailored suit that is maybe ten years old? $20? We are shipping nothing new except maybe a bottle of Swedish gin and everything else is really difficult to value as a sale price. Many thanks for your help.

I think if you're going through KL you can actually get a free flight up to Penang Island with your long haul flight. Given the choice, I'd go there for a few days rather than KL - it's a beautiful place.

I think they've gone downhill over the last 5-10 years in contrast to the review above. Currently they seem to almost always run late, they move flights very last minute and our luggage from KL arrived three days after us a few weeks ago with no compensation. Planes were crappy both ways. I don't really eat airline food unless it's in a better class but that looked crappy too. Having said that, aren't all airlines seemingly a bit crappy at the moment? Cutting corners, overbooked, bumping people. I think more than ever that your experience is dictated by the crew you happen to get. Our flight across Bris to Perth with Qantas was great. I had to move it with 24hrs notice - no issue and our hostesses gave us a big paper bag full of the remaining Lindor and a couple of cheeky bottles of wine to have in our AirBnB when they found out we were relocating here.

Has she been referred to a chest physician? This would, as a chest physician, be my immediate concern rather than which migration agent to speak to!

I had no idea that a holiday job while I was at university would have been a full annual contribution vs when I was an NHS consultant. I feel completely ignorant of the system!

Has anyone given up on AusPost and tried using DHL to send small items/documents instead? From Brisbane it seems to take at least a week for them to get anything out of the country!

There's nothing on a 190 grant letter about living in a certain state. It's mainly hearsay on here aside from agents, who have some experience, and little real world experience of moving state on a 190 in recent times exists. Reading between the lines, it doesn't sound like you were moving to an area of need or bringing in millions in taxes for a particular state so I'd guess, and it is a guess, that your state won't actually notice, never mind give two hoots that you're going to move. However, if you were coming in to fill a shortage like a healthcare or technical need then you'd really just be exploiting the system and this is never going to look good. Does it actually matter? Almost certainly no. I'd go support your family if they need you and you have the resource - mentally, financially, socially to do so.

Has anyone got any experience of importing bits of antique ivory? I wondered if I need to apply for a CITES pre-convention certificate and how difficult this is to acquire. We're in the process of clearing my wife's ancestral home in Penang and there's all manner of stuff! My wife is keen on keeping some ivory carvings from her grandmother that were, I guess, Malaysian elephant in origin and definitely pre 1975 but I'm not sure how we'd prove this and if a statutory declaration would do?

Which banking details would someone in Malaysia use to send money to your Wise account? Would it appear in your MYR denominated jar (probably not the correct term) in Wise? I can't see any details for the MYR jar. Disclaimer - I'm a doctor and as such know nothing about finance!

GBP, USD and Euros are all pretty straightforward and we've discussed at length. Has anyone got advice on how to receive Malaysian Ringgit? There are quite a lot of limitations on transfers in/from Malaysia to deal with, but does anyone know of a multi currency account similar to Wise or Revolut that accepts MYR transfers? Or, as I suspect, is this going to need a more traditional multi currency account from somewhere like HSBC?

Would one partner having an Aus Revolut primary account and the other a UK Revolut primary account for fee free transfers be moving into evasion rather than avoidance?

I think you've just pointed out the catch with Revolut that I missed. I really couldn't work out how they manage to make money and why I wouldn't just sit at home whimsically moving money between AUD and GBP. I missed that you actually have to transfer money from your primary account with them direct to an overseas account if you want to spend it from an overseas account that is not theirs. If you want to be fee-free then you need to go all in with them. My Wise account with card is old enough to be without fee. We have a Santander UK account and a Westpac Aus account. BOQ Specialist credit card paid off every month for the points but should probably change this annually. I use the Wise account to move money internationally but I'm tempted by the allure of the metal card! Perhaps we should just move all out banking to Revolut... Any other drawbacks to this? I'm not sure I can work out a way to move a reasonably large amount of money internationally that's better than Wise.