ABCDiamond

Are you saying that someone may not have to actually book a test ?

eg: If I happened to be in Brisbane, and popped in on the off-chance, they may let me take a test ?

GSNR

Hi Comet555

Thank you soooo much for that info and well done on passing your test today with 100%!
My husband and I are taking the test on Wednesday in Brisbane, we will definitely get there early ... thanks for that!
Do you know where I can fine that 7 page cheats sheet. I've have read through the book and have been stressing over all the dates, so I'm really pleased to hear that you only got one date.
Also thanks for posting your questions, it's a great help!
Good luck with your citizenship application!

Cheers
Shelley

comet555

To be honest I considered that, but I'm not sure you could. Mostly because when you call and book your appointment they email or mail you the instructions and on that it gives you a client ID number. You need to bring this with you when you go for the test, along with all your ID of course.

The other thing is that when I got there they looked up my name on a piece of paper sitting on the desk. It had all the people listed that were writing that day. So I'm not sure if you'd still get to take it if you weren't on the list.

The only way to test this theory would be to call and book a test, say even 2 months in advance and show up on a random day with your client ID number. Maybe they would let you if you had the ID number and they weren't busy. I'm really not too sure. It's worth checking out, particularly if you are in the CBD anyway and in a hurry to write it.

I'm guessing the testing room is fairly empty just because of how quickly people write it, but I was only in there for about 15 minutes all together so who knows what it's like other times. My appointment was at 11:30 and I was in early at 11:15 done the test a few minutes later and out with my test results by 11:30.

comet555

I wouldn't stress too much about the dates, I would focus on the key ones. I knew I wouldn't remember them all so I focused on the following:
-Australia Day on January 26, which is when the convicts first landed.
-Captain Cook claimed the land for Britain in 1770
-First landing of convicts, January 26th, 1788 (18 years after they discovered it)

Mostly I just tried to remember roughly which decade or part of the century. I figured the question would have only one answer which was in the right time frame and the others would be way off. It seemed like that was the case with most of the questions.

I've attached the cheat sheets, another member posted it a while back. It's a pretty good guide and it covers pretty much everything. I also checked it to make sure it was accurate while I was reading the book (so untrusting!). It did skip over Australia's history in it so you might want to add your own notes for that part.

Hope it helps, good luck on the test!

GSNR

Thank you, I appreciate your help!!! Hopefully I won't be too stressed about it on the day, I'll post my result when I get home!

Thanks again,
Shelley

gavinrobertson

Just thought I'd update this thread with our experiences in Sydney this week.

We (my wife Louise and I) had to wait about three months for a test date (booked 13th May for a test on 3rd August) so my first advice would be BOOK EARLY.

The Test office was very busy, however they do seem to match the number of people waiting at any time exactly with the number of chairs available to wait in so that was OK.

The paperwork was all pretty much a formality - all we needed to show was our passports and (NSW) driver's licenses - no birth certificates required. However we did have to wait about 40 minutes until firstly I got seen. It took about ten minutes to process my paperwork - they look at time spent out of the country since your visa was validated to see if you need Police Certs, etc. I knew I'd need one for the UK and the woman processing me was a bit put out after working this out only for me to tell her I'd already applied for it!

After she'd finished with me my wife was called over, and I went in to a separate room with the computers in it to take The Test.

It was all pretty straightforward and I passed with 100% in less than five minutes. No real surprises, no obscure dates and some pretty funny options along the way (I don't think it's giving away too much to say that knowing Banjo Patterson wasn't the Father of Foundation might help you pass )

When I left the test room Louise was still having her paperwork processed. For some reason, when we'd booked the test, they couldn't find any record of her ever having entered the country They'd obviously looked into this before we arrived and found her on the system, but that meant it was a bit more complex than usual to get all her details in for some reason. But again, no real issues and she too was soon on her way to pass 100%. We both seemed to have a very different set of questions, but they seemd to be of a similar style (e.g. not many references to dates).

Overall, I'd say any native English speaker witha modicum of intelligence who's read the book from cover to cover a few times will have no problem with the test. The cheat sheet linked to in the first post of this thread is a handy way to do a bit of last minute revision while you wait for your number to be called. Make sure you do know the six rights and three responsibilities of citizenship, and you should be OK.

Now we need to wait for our Police certs to arrive from the UK to apply. We were told current processing times for Citizenship applications is about three months, but reading around on the forums seems to indicate that's pretty variable.

obiwan

thanks for the helpful test samples..

i would never have guessed the who is Banjo Patterson one.

my test took 8 minutes and I got 1 mistake, lucky it was in the second part so I passed....

the questions that got me was

1. when was the government formed
2. when was the constitution formed

I guessed the answer for both because I am lousy at dates...