Jon the Hat

I think being flexible and accepting some delay / chance of being bumped is less of an issue than chucking £15k at business class, but some would disagree! I would do the direct flight, but my wife had a DVT in the past and is nervous of nearly 17 hours straight.

We are moving in September - our house sale is close to completion in the next couple of weeks and we will move into a rental round the corner. By all reports WA is pretty close to business as usual once you are in. My family in Perth are very much living normally now. If you are ready to go, I think you go for it. The main risk that I can see is if your flight gets cancelled and you have to wait a few weeks to get there. Quarantine is a know cost and time and not a big deal in the long term. The only other thing I would add is that Singapore air is out as people arriving from the UK cannot transit at the moment, and Emirate seems to have cancelled a lot of flights over the weekend. Qantas direct should be ok I guess, and lower risk as no stopover with rules changing.

At this rate we will need to buy a boat!

Congratulations! You guys are the poster family for a succesful move! May your good fortune continue!

Hello! If time is short and you are not sure of your chances then yes an agent might well move things more quickly. That said getting into Australia is almost impossible unless you are an experienced, qualified person with in demand skills. Have you checked whether this is the case?

My company relocation policy includes some air freight, so it is something people do, but it is not cheap. Seven seas do air shipping of boxes, so many take a look on their to get an idea of costs. For us 5 standard boxes to Perth would be £475 for example, vs £140 by sea. It still takes a few weeks by the looks of it, presumably shared air freight containers.

Yes I can imagine - hopefully by the time we come in September things will be a little more stable. If not we might be bunking with family for a few weeks!

Thanks all - we definitely wont be renting anything until we have viewed, I was just trying to get ahead with the admin. I will think about references this end then.

Hi All Looking at Realestate.com.au at properties in Perth, and they seem to use a couple of online reference / application companies, one of which I am looking at Tenant Options. The application asks for a personal / professional reference who is not family or employer of work colleague. These are the only contacts I have in Australia who know me well. What have others done for this question? Mind has gone blank on this!

Skilled visas require post qualification professional experience as well as assessment of the qualification, so you should look into that. Are you intending to move permanently to Australia? If so you might be better off commencing work in the UK asap to get your experience sorted for the longer term.

That's good to know! We will be about a year behind you. Whereabouts are you living?

Not looking forward to it I must say, but with time to plan we will have lots to amuse us, and family who can drop things off if needed.

The approach to Speeding tickets in Australia seems to be unashamedly bent on revenue raising. In the UK you cannot hid a camera at all, they are bright orange - and you need signs to say they are active.

Hi Paul I am a finance director in London office of an ASX listed multinational. Generally our business is doing well in Covid, however we are very limited on recruitment with executive (CEO / CFF COO) level approval required for any external recruitment. I think this is the case in many places, so we are seeing critical roles filled, but project investment roles much harder to fill. We have a big IT team so there are roles. People generally are not that keen to fill roles remotely but I think after 9 months are coming round the idea, so this probably improves your chances of getting a role before you move - you might even be able to start remotely if you need to. On a general note I have to be honest and say I wouldn't be moving from Sydney to the UK right now. Yes things will be better come the summer, but you will be moving to a country coming out of lockdown (again) with a lot of ongoing restrictions. It isn't much fun at the moment, and you may not be able to meet up with family and friends as you would normally. Also you have an economy which is 10% down prior years, with a massive hole in public finances. If I were in your shoes I would be waiting another year.

A few days immediate lockdown makes sense I think; business can get through it. The UK is seeing the impact of making decisions too late every time.