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Hi there, Looking for advice on Brisbane suburbs for families. I have browsed ALLLL of the online lists and drawn to Victoria Point or Sandgate, but this could be wrong. We will relocate in Jan 23 with a 2 year old and 5 year old. Ideally would like my son to start school as close to Feb as possible but taking advice from others here to not rush that when he's so young. Will be working CBD, but will have to travel and will also work flexibly. I prefer coastal to inland and have a 900k budget for a 4-5 bed property, need space to ensure family can stay with us. We both drive but I would prefer not to drive into CBD if we can avoid it. Help and advice, particularly from those in the area would be great. I've done so much research online, I want a 'real' view. TIA, Ashley

Hi, Looking for some advice in regards to transporting our cats from UK to Australia. Just wondering if anyone with some experience of this can advise the best time to send them, not sure whether to send them a week or so before we leave or leave it closer to our move date. Also, does anyone know how long are they in quarantine or does this depend on the pet? Our move date isn't for another couple of years due to commitments in UK, so just trying to get organised and do some research but couldn't seem to find this info on the airpets website. Any advice gratefully received. Thanks in advance

Our belongings have just arrived from Sydney and I thought I would share our experience as we were looking for similar information when we were planning our move from London. We were hesitating between a number of 'traditional' removal companies (think Anglo Pacific, PSS etc) and Movecube (which seemed like a great; we went with Doree Bonner at the end as the communication was clear, easy (trust me I had LOTS of questions - and was very stressed as we had to organise the pick up 10 days after our booking) and reassuring. The quote was similar to what we had elsewhere. Summary of our experience below: While we read about unexpected costs appearing out of nowhere, the only additional costs were a very small admin fee and insurances. Most of them we didn't need (e.g bad weather - it's worth asking for details) and we ended up booking the only insurance we really needed (marine) with Letton Percival. As soon as the movers came to pick up our belongings we realised we made the right decision vs a Movecube. The Movecube wasn't that much cheaper and would have been a lot more stressful as self packed. The movers were really professional, friendly and quick - and turns out also efficient. As... Our belongings arrived 3 months after we arrived. We knew this was the sort of timeline (2.5 to 3 months) we were looking at - so no big surprise there. Everything made it in one piece (including my extensive collection of glasswear and a big mirror). We still need to test a couple of speakers but in the great realm of things we are extremely happy with the state of our goods. And we didn't have to pay any quarantine fee, which was a great surprise as the Australian borders can be tricky. It's important to keep in mind Doree Bonner (as I am guessing most companies) work with a local company to deliver the goods to the final destination. We found them slightly frustrating to work with but the movers were once again very friendly and helpful. We would definitely recommend Doree Bonner and use them again in the future.

The car tube? http://www.cartube.global

Hi everyone I was wondering if anybody had flown a diabetic pet to Australia before and did they cope ok? I have spoke to some UK pet export companies and have had mixed advice. I know that the dog will not receive insulin for up to 24 hours and will also not have any food for this amount of time also. I know with diabetes, this amount of time with neither insulin or food can be lethal and lead to coma's and death. I would hate to put my boy through all the stress only for him to die scared and alone in the plane cargo. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. He is a 8 year old Chihuahua.

Hello, I was just wondering if anyone has moved their car from India to Melbourne. I am based in Delhi. What would be the average cost I should be prepared to pay? I have a 1.5 year old Suzuki Wagon-R which works on petrol as well as CNG. Thanks. Piyu.

Hi, it been a while since I was last looking at a possible move to Australia, I was looking around 3 years ago but on a 457 visa but nothing came of it. I have recently completed a Diploma with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, have been looking to see how this compares with an Australian qualification. Are there any website of people on here that can tell me what how this compares with an Australian qualification or has anyone on here migrated to Australia with this qualification.

Hi there. I would appreciate help here! I plan to bring my dog Wally to Perth with me in April/May next year, he is 16kg and will be almost two at that time. Can anyone recommend a good pet shipper? I have got quotes of €3500 from K international and two quotes form Multi-Cargo for €3500 for a PVC box and €2500 for a wooden box a little smaller than the PVC. Would Wally be ok in a wooden box to Perth? Is quarantine open in Byford in April/May 2014? Any help, or tips or ANYTHING will be gratefully accepted. Lost and confused.

We will move to Australia in Oct. 2012 and our beloved horses will come with us. Since I found it very difficult to gather information on this slightly exotic topic, I want to share my findings with everyone who is interested at PIO and the Internet. How to transport your horse or horses to OZ/ FAQ on horse transportation Formalities / Transportation / Vaccination and Health Requirements / Quarantine guidelines and rules based on current regulation 03/2012: 1. Your horse can only be transported to Australia from one the following countries: Japan, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, UK, USA 2. If your horse originally came from a country not on this list, it must have stayed in one of the authorized countries for approx. 180 days (variations exist depending on origin and export country) before starting of pre quarantine. 3. Horses can only be imported via Sydney airport where they have to stay in post quarantine for approx. 2 weeks (based on horses gender and agent procedures), so you have to arrange transport via landroute to your final destination afterwards. There are a couple of vendors which offer scheduled weekly land transports from Sydney to all major cities. Costs are aprox. 1000 AUD per horse. These are easy to find via google. 4. It is very important to have a valid EU horse passport with complete identification for every horse. Furthermore you need a vaccination pass, if this is not integrated in your EU horse passport 5. You horse has to spent approx. 14 - 28 days (depending on if it is a stallion, mare or gelding and on agent procedures) in pre-quarantine within an authorized quarantine stable in your home country. You can´t do it yourself :-( 6. Here you can find all the horse health requirements and pre + post quarantine + transportation procedures of AQIS, the relevant OZ goverment authority: http://apps.daff.gov.au/icon32/asp/ex_QueryResults.asp?Commodity=Live+horses&Area=All+Countries&EndUse=All+End+Uses 7. It is terrible to read, but the most important ones for horses in the EU are the test for Equine Infectious Anemia (Coggins) + Equine Piroplasmosis (B. Caballi, T. Equi) (ELISA or IFAT Test). I would do them upfront as soon as possible, as a positive result will rule out any transportation... :-( It is important to understand that your horse could have this disease and NOT show symptoms. The tests are approx. 100 € per horse and your VET can help you with them. The remaining procedures deal with rather standard health requirements and deal with the exact transport and transit procedures. This will all be handled by your transportation agent during pre and post-quarantine and during transport. 8. If you own a mare or a stallion or a young foal together with its mother, additional tests for sexually transferable diseases apply. These can also be found in the above document. Since we have geldings I did not bother reading them... As far as I can see a couple of further tests are neccessary in these cases. In the special case of a pregnant mare, she has to stay in quarantine until giving birth. 9. Furthermore you need to vaccinate your horse with the ProTeq Flu vaccine against Equine Influenca. The intervals for vaccination must be 100% matched from the beginning. The base vaccination (2 shots with interval) has to be done before the pre-quarantine starts. The horse has to be given an additional booster shot of this vaccine approx. 90 - 21 days before the pre quarantine period, no matter if it would be neccessary based on the normal intervals. It is VERY IMPORTANT not to take shortcuts on this vaccination, as this disease is the main reason for the strict OZ quarantine regulation for horses. If anything is not done by the book with this one, your horse will not be allowed to board its flight! How are horses transported? / What agents are there? / How do horses cope with flying? / Can my horse be put down during flight? / Can I visit my horse during quarantine? / Can I accompany my horse during flight? 1. Normally you will not be able to visit your horse during pre and post quarantine due to strict sanitation procedures. All agents offer full care based on your specifications for your horses during pre and post-quarantine and the actual transport. 2. Horses are transported in IATA pallets during flight and ground movement, which are similar to horse floats.There is a video showing how horses are shipped around the world: http://www.cavallo.de/videos/video/first-class-wenn-pferde-fliegen.290745.233219.htm It is in German, but should still be interesting to watch for everyone. I have also found a couple of pictures: http://www.cavallo.de/know-how/animal-lounge-frankfurt.288587.233219.htm 3. Horses normally cope well with flying, and all agents very rarely encounter problems. If they encounter them, horses are given a mild sedative and will be fine then. There are a lot of stories on the net that horses have to be put down during flight due to panic, but these are just rumours and there is nothing true about them. No need to worry! Even cases of colic are very rare and are avoided by feeding special feed before the flight. You also do not need to sign an authorization that agents are allowed to put down your horse in flight. These are dumb rumours as well. When you compare a horse float to a plane, the plane is actually much less noisy and far more stable than a standard float. Only the take off and landing is more stressfull. 4. Horses are transported on cargo flights and mixed cargo / passenger flights. Normally pilots take special care during take off and landing and choose very flat landing and starting vectors. Furthermore they try to fly routes with as little turbulence as possible in order to reduce stress for their live cargo. 5. Your horse will be accompanied by professional horse grooms during the flight. I have heard that some agents offer the possibility to take owners as grooms on horse flights. I have read that often these owners are very nervous and are not much of help... :-) We will fully trust our agent with this. 6. There are not many companies who specialize in International horse shipments to OZ. I know of the following ones for UK and Germany: IRT (International Racehorse Transport) http://www.irt.com Peden Bloodstock http://www.peden-bloodstock.com/ Guido Klatte International Equine Services http://www.gklatte.de/ Crispin Bennett International http://www.crispinbennett.com/ 7. Horses will be fed hay during flight and have access to water. Due to quarantine regulations you should only send the bare neccessities together with the horse. As far as I have understood these items will be destroyed at the end of quarantine. So you have to bring new ones when picking up your horse in Sydney. 8. Taking horse items: All other stuff such as tack and saddlery has to be cleaned (do not get me wrong on this one... cleaned means it has to look brandnew :-) ) and shipped with your other household goods. If customs / quarantine agents will encounter any fur or dirt on them, it will get very expensive as they will "professionally" clean them for you. I have read of charges exceeding 100 AUD per item. 9. GST / As long as you own the horses for more than 1 year before export, you will not be charged any import GST as they are regarded as personal belongings. 10. Insurance / You can insure your horses for quarantine risks and standard health issues / death. This will help if any horse on a consignment fails quarantine, in this case you will be covered for the additional quarantine costs until the consignment gets released (200 AUD per day) and standard vet costs if they get sick during quarantine. In the past if somthing like this happended quarantine clearance for the consignment partially took more than 8 weeks (over 11000 AUD additional cost!!!). So this insurance makes a lot of sense and is very affordable. 11. Our agent supplied us with a contact number of the Sydney quarantine grooms, so that we could call them if we wanted an update on our horses. They have been very nice and I trusted them 100%. Prices 1. The cost of transporting 1 horse to Australia is approx. 16K € / 13K GBP per horse. This price includes everything (pre-quarantine, post-quarantine, transport, all grooming activities, feed etc.). Keep in mind that 3 horses can share a container, which will bring down costs to approx. 14K per horse when you have 3 horses in an own container. Furthermore I would set aside approx. 500 € for tests and other stuff. I hope that all this information proves to be useful for you, it took me months and countless phonecalls to gather it :-) Wishing all horse owners the best of luck! CU all in OZ! UPDATE: Our horses have arrived in Sydney safely in October. Everything has worked out just as described above. They have both settled in rather easily and really enjoy the good weather. We had to clip one of them since he already had a full winter coat, but that is the only thing that did not work out to plan. :-) The whole experience of transporting our horses was really excellent and I would not be worried of doing it again! I have been asked how they cope with the heat and until now I have not noticed that they have been struggling. A lot of the more expensive Oz horses are actually imported from Europe (warm bloods) and they all seem to be doing fine as well. I also did some research on this topic and most of the sources claim that horses can adjust easily to temperature and normally feel fine in a large variety of climate zones. Nevertheless if you ship horses from EUR winter to OZ summer, I would make sure that they are clipped prior to boarding their flight and rugging them for the remainder of their time in EUR... :-)

Hi, Just wanted to get a list of options from the folks on here on my upcoming situation. Wife and children (x3) are coming out to join me late March. Whilst we wait for all our stuff and car to arrive what are my options on making sure the Mrs can do the school run, shop etc...? I don't believe GoGet is going to be an option as we are planning on living in the Cheltenham / Beecroft area and it doesn't look there are 'pods' close by. Interested to hear of any options.... Thanks,

anyone took their dog or cat back to uk, if so who did you use? , all the sites i have found seem to be uk to oz. thanks

Hey all in Canberra I was wondering what the transport links are like in ACT. We are currently debating the pro's and con's of shipping our car and I wondered if it is possible to manage without one for a while. Assuming that we manage to get rental accommodation close to my place of work, Canberra hospital it is only my other half and son that will need to be entertained and move around! This would hopefully just be until we could afford a used car, I'm assuming that we wouldn't be able to get finance?! Any help would be gratefully received Thanks in advance Kate

Hi, We have learnt that we don't need to be in Oz until March / April time, instead of rushing to get out by January. So I'm thinking that perhaps we can save some money by doing some of the work ourselves, like packing and paperwork re the dogs and car. We are probably going to use PetAir and Iron Chef, but is it feasible to do some of the work ourselves to save some money? Thanks Cal

WTF A NEW York architect with his head in the clouds has come up with a bizarre plan for the future of transport. Rather than using planes or trains, travellers would float to their destinations on top of a giant inflatable cloud riding on prevailing winds. Tiago Barros submitted his “Passing Cloud” project to a US competition on the future of high-speed railways. The design was inspired by the zeppelins of yesteryear and features heavyweight high-tensile nylon balloons with a stainless steel framework inside. Passengers would climb up to the “cloud” on ladders, sit on top while it moves and then get off wherever it landed – with no guarantee of destination or arrival time.

hi all.. so I moved to sydney 3/4 months ago.. not loving it that much.. Looking at the melbourne option. the wife wants to live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We're looking to work in central Melbourne or in eastern suburbs (retail head offices are all there) can anyone who's also been on sydney public transport, let me know how good/bad the buses/trams/trains are on a day to day basis!?.. clean? dirty? reliable? all the key points.. as we won't have a car for a while. THanks all

Heya ppl.. Hope ya'll doing just great.. wonderful day here in Mel today.. Nice and sunny.. couldnt be better. Had awesome fun with my pals,, Need a piece of advice.. I bought a Royal Enfield Bullet Classic some time back in INdia and was interested in Shipping it here in VIC. Can anyone advice on how ?? and what $$ ?? THanks.

Hi Guys, Over the last few days we have been gathering quotes for taking our cat Chloe to Adelaide with us. The quotes we have been getting are based on London to Melbourne and I am starting to get information about an onward flight to Adelaide for her too. So far I have quotes from Airpets £1275 Par Air £910 (+$390 for import permit) ~£1165 and Pet Air Silver £883.32 package or Gold £1678.32 (although I think I only need something in between silver and gold - Lol!) Anyway my questions to you... In your experience are their any hidden costs I should be aware of. I know quarantine is not included and will cost approx £600+ !? Airpets and Pet Air both state 'application for import licence' on the quotations... does this mean just the application and therefore the cost of import licence ($390) is not included??? I have been given approx costs for Chloes Melbourne to Adelaide flight to be $280ish does this sound about right?? - I also read that inbound flights cats can travel as luggage allowance so maybe it would pay me to fly there and collect her to bring her back!?!? Chloes off to the vets in the morning for her flu jab and microchip. Poor girl doesn't know what she has in store but couldn't leave her behind. As always, any information/help/advice will be much appreciated. Thank you!!

Please can anyone tell me about the new / proposed transport stuff that is going on (or proposed) in Melbourne. Where can I find information on what is happening, what new rail links, tram networks are proposed and how this will affect the various suburbs i.e I keep hearing about Altona being cut from the rail timetables - why, when and a new road or tunnel into the city ?? :huh:

Hi all I was just wondering if anyone had heard of or used Pets on the Move to transport their pets? I have just received a very good quote from them to transport my 2 dogs and just wondered if they were any good? Emma

Large family home available on the 16th April in a great location in Mindarie - 63 Bellport Parade. ** FIRST HOME OPEN ** WED 30TH APRIL 2.40PM ** Call to arrange another viewing if this time doesn't suit. It has four bedrooms. The master bedroom has a large en-suite, reverse cycle air con and walk in wardrobe. The three other bedrooms all offer built in wardrobes. There is a great sized living area at the front of the property and two other very good sized family areas to the rear, with reverse cycle air con and a wood-burning stove. The games room opens out to the alfresco area and overlooks the large lawn. The property has a double garage and a shopper's entry to the kitchen. There is a dishwasher, oven and pantry. It takes 4 minutes to walk to Quinns Baptist College, Peter Moyes and Mindarie College saving a huge wait in the school traffic. Or jump on the bus which is a short journey to Clarkson train station. The house is in the preferred Mindarie Primary catchment area. There is a lovely walk through the park at the end of the road, along the coastal paths to Quinns beach and Portofino's cafe. The local pub is The Boat at Mindarie Marina. Great spot! We are breaking the lease to buy. You can contact me direct to view and the agency - Century 21 in Clarkson. Secure your rental quickly and be the first to view! The rent is $470 p/week. It is available from the 16th April. My mobile is: 0426 811 558 (or +61 426 811 558). If you are coming from overseas, you can ask someone else to view on your behalf, including your relocation agent. Every estate agency has more or less the same application form from REIWA. Ask a rental agency to email or fax this to you. If you wish to rent a property you submit an application and the owner chooses the tenant they prefer. There is a lot of competition for rentals at the moment so I would advise you to get the ball rolling from the UK end so that you are not stuck, like we were! The agency details and photos are available through the link. Thanks. www.realestate.com.au/property-house-wa-mindarie-405122858

Just wondering if thepublic transport around Perth and particularly up in the norhern suburbs is good, have had a look on the transperth website and it looks pretty comprehensive and reasonably priced. We would be aiming to get one car but just thinking of if whoever doesn't have the car needs to gt somewhere how easy it is?

Hi i am a qualified Transport Manager with over 10 years experience and would like to know if there are any haulage companies in N/S/W would be willing to sponsor me or can any one offer any advice please? Thanks in advance:chatterbox:

We're off to the Aus vs England game this weekend but the SCG doesn't seem to be near any train stations, is walking to Central the best bet and can anyone suggest how long it takes? Many Thanks!

Hi. I am a new member coming on holiday on a budget from Melbourne airport to Safety Beach / Dromana on a Saturday afternoon in Late January. Any advice please on quickest/economical transport. Best regards j:smile:arthur

Hi All, My partner and I are heading out to Sydney in Feb 2011. He is a carpenter and will be taking out all his hand and battery powered tools but we are at a loss on how we actually get them out! Can you just take them as luggage (i.e fill up a suitcase with them?) or do we have to transport them as cargo? If it is cargo can any recommend any firms and if poss give me an idea of prices that they have paid / been quoted. Thanks in advance. Danielle and MJ