FirstWorldProblems

I’ll take the easy question first. Yes 100 visas can be issued at the same time as 309. Mine was earlier this year. I don’t know what the criteria is for this, but in my case we’ve been married over 20 years which I’d imagined played a part. Yes, 1 year to activate and yes you can travel freely for 5 years from date of grant (not activation). After 5 years your wife would not have an automatic right to enter Australia again if she were to travel overseas. A Resident Return Visa is apparently straightforward to obtain and would allow that re-entry. One point to note though is when applying for citizenship you have to have lived in australia for 4 years and not have been absent more than a year. So with the plan you’ve outlined you could find yourselves dependant on being granted the RRV for several years General residence requirement To be eligible to apply for Australian citizenship by conferral, you must meet the general residence requirement: have been living in Australia on a valid visa for 4 years immediately before the day you apply hold a permanent visa or a Special Category (subclass 444) visa for the last 12 months immediately before the day you apply and not have been absent from Australia for more than 12 months in the past 4 years, including no more than 90 days in the 12 months immediately before applying. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/help-support/tools/residence-calculator#:~:text=To be eligible to apply,before the day you apply I’m not a migration agent - just a guy on the internet who thinks he understands this topic a little bit, so you might want to engage an expert to avoid any pitfalls. There are several on this site who are highly thought of.

Are you in the UK or Australia? I have an annual medical for work (in the UK) where they do all those things and more. If you haven't already, give Nuffield health a call and see if they can do it for you

Thanks for sharing your experience. That’s very helpful.

Those were the days. I was being paid a U.K. wage and felt like I was living like a king.

Covid years excluded, the kids have annually spent 3 weeks in Castle Hill since they were born. To them "Australia" is probably Castle Hill Towers (shopping mall), Raging Waters waterpark, Balmoral beach and the CBD. But I'm sure that will change quickly now they are old enough to explore without mum & dad!

Thank you. They will be 18, 21 and 27. Ryde and Castle hill are where the family are that we are closet to. The wife is keen to be within 20 mins of both, but I can imagine after 6 months renting we'll learn the reality is that people have their own lives to lead and we won't be in one another's pockets so being further away won't matter. So it might well be that suburbs of interest change several times between now and then, but right now I'm keen on suburbs that are either side of the A1 (the stretch that runs north west from Chatswood to Wahroonga Park. On the north side the suburbs all back onto trails at Garigal, Ku-ring Gai etc and on the south side of the A1 they back onto what starts as Lane Cove national park and meanders up to Pennant Hills. I'd not heard of that rail line, so I just looked it up. It looks like it runs parallel to the A1 so that's perfect.

Thank you for sharing. You are describing how I imagine (and hope) it to be. I would get a lot of joy from that.

Awesome - I hope you have a fantastic time. Only 122 days away

Not at all. It's quite the opposite actually. I've been very upfront that I have two concerns about emigrating again back to Australia: that there are aspects of my lifestyle that are a better fit to the UK I'm concerned about the cost of living on my children. The decision we make to move doesn't just impact me and my wife Now that we are just 2.5 years away from the move I'm really getting into planning mode. It's who I am - it's about feeling in control. Far from looking for reasons not to make the move, I'm focussing on the positive reasons to make the move. Getting excited about where to live, researching house prices, imagining living the Aussie lifestyle again, spending more time with the family etc. Part of my planning process is identifying potential downsides and then coming to terms with them so you don't focus on them later finding ways to mitigate My recent posts are an attempt to contribute more to the forum than in Chewing the Fat. I'm hopeful that as I am considering and researching these topics, that others who come afterwards (and people who like to read, but not post) will find them useful. If you look at my posts again through a more positive lens, you'll see that I'm trying to gather information so that I can plan. Coming back to my two concerns above narrowing down where we live is so I can still get to spend time trail running and cycling on quiet roads, despite living in a big metropolis my post about the cost of living is all about how it seems to have gone up in the UK and thus there might not be much of a delta any more, so perhaps not such a big thing after all and nothing to be fretting about So.....nope, it's the opposite. I welcome all the helpful responses, both those highlighting things to avoid and things to embrace. They really help

Well that's it. No, no and thrice no. I'm going to need a plan B. I can't stand cockroaches and don't want to be dealing with them all the time

That’s good advice.

Oh. I didn’t even think about the mozzies. They love me too. Damn. That’s a problem. You’re right about Lane Cove national park. On a map it shows at west lindfield. I just don’t know where it ends and what the name is for what appears to be a continuous, unbroken set of bush and trails that run from there to north Epping and onwards to Thornleigh. Suburbs either side of that stretch will work for us.

@Tulip1 Qantas still wouldn't let us book online (kept crashing at passenger details), so we called to try and book with a human......price was £1,800 higher than the online price. That's not cricket. We have finally booked out flights tonight so will be back down under for Christmas again. I cannot believe I've just paid £15k on 5 economy flights. Unbelievable. If we could go at easter it's £10k, but youngest will be revising for GCSE's so it wouldn't be right. I ended up really keen on both Beijing and Seoul......but no one else wanted to be having a holiday in -10 degrees so I was outvoted. Stopping in Dubai instead. Downtown for 36 hours outbound and some resort type place for 3 days on the return. We've never been there before so it should be good to see somewhere new

What to us Poms need to be aware of when it comes to the differences between living in a house/apartment in Australia? For family and work reasons, when we move in 2026 we will be out in the Sydney Western Suburbs. Australian flora really appeals to me and I really want a place that has views of Australian trees from the back deck, so I imagine myself living in a house that backs onto the Lane Cove national park. I think that would be wonderful but my Aussie wife tells me we would constantly be dealing with spiders, snakes and being woken by kookaburra at 5am. Is that correct?

Oh yes. They definitely do! I’m only familiar with Sydney but you could literally pick any street in the metropolis on Google Street View and you’ll see a vast array of different styles. That’s something I particularly prefer there over here in the U.K. where most houses on every street tend to look the same.

Thank you for doing that. It does look like some insurers are still offering it doesn't it. Our two companies are not and nor were the two we had last year. Might be we need to stop buying based on cheapest premium and look a bit deeper......

Afraid so. Access to care issues in the NHS are a real challenge. My companies health insurance have written to us advising that our use has increased by 30% in the last year.......

There's a fair bit of discretionary spend in that £1500 or so of "general shopping". I'm sure we could all cope just fine spending much less than that. I'm not remotely suggesting that our spend is typical of average - I'm aware that we are financially fortunate. But who is "average"? I think it's helpful to have a range of budgets to compare against

That's exactly the hypothesis I had in mind when starting this thread. Is it still cheaper in the UK? And this is really important for many people considering emigration and weighing up the pro's and con's. From the things we've compared so far it would seem that it is not, but there are some other costs we haven't compared yet that (historically) I've noted are much higher in Australia. Insurance was always one that seemed to be at least twice the price Healthcare Toll roads can be a daily cost for some (if for example you live in the western suburbs of Sydney. The quick route into the CBD is 3 tolls and about $25 each way .....and of course the price of a home. Unless you are coming from London, that's surely the biggest hit to the wallet. Moving from Leamington to Sydney suburbs its going to be 2-2.5X for a comparable house.

What do you have to do to fix them? I was puzzling over this just yesterday after listening to not less than 3 phone calls with brother-in-laws complaining about how cold they were in the mornings. Is it not possible to build houses that retain heat in the winter and don't absorb in the summer?

Thanks @Marisawright That's what we did for about 18 years. From memory I want to say it was about £100 for a couple of months but rules seem to have changed in the last few years. It was super helpful - it meant the MIL could entertain the little kids all summer long whilst we were both working. Like many young families we had neither the money nor space for an additional car so paying to add an overseas driver was great. Shame that it's changed. I'm sure there must be a good reason.

I had not come across this - that's very helpful, thank you. I did not think a car could be covered by 2 policies at once, so perhaps I assumed wrong. It doesn't mention foreign licence holders, but worth a call.

Water has doubled since my 2018 analysis. Almost exactly £1000 a year now.

Numbeo.com pops up a lot. It seems comprehensive in the depth of it's content and the data is crowdsourced from consumers. Of course we all have different lifestyles so it can't possibly be accurate for everyone. Cost of Living Comparison Between Sydney, Australia And Edinburgh, United Kingdom (numbeo.com)

Some people have no choice unfortunately. But I also know people who have the choice and elect to be uncomfortable in their own homes. To each their own. My SIL is visiting from the western suburbs of Sydney where 4 of them live in a 3 bed semi. Of bills she can remember off the top of her head: Gas $64 a qtr Electric $370 qtr Water $300 qtr Council rates $422 qtr