Tess

Hello, I'm new here and wanted to ask some advice (hope nobody minds).

My partner and I, along with our 3 month old son, are contemplating emigrating next year to Australia. My partner is a Class 1 HGV Driver over here, and would want to do the same thing abroad.

Thing is, I have been looking online for information on emigrating and there is so much information I don't even know where to begin. Obviously the main issues are visas, employment and accommodation.

So where do we start? On the employment side of things we need to know if the salaries are comparable to the UK, whether he needs to retake his licence over there, whether an employer would help us find somewhere to live. Also, whether I would be entitled to emigrate with him, as I would be home looking after our son (and we are not married) but would want to go back to work eventually.

Sorry to go on, there are a million other things I suppose I need to know but I shall leave it there for now. I just need a starting point I think, as I am unsure where to even begin.

Thanks in advance for your help, Tess.

wmoore

Of course we don't mind!! Welcome Tess.

The first thing you should do is have a look at Booklet 6 from the DIMIA website. This will give you the info you ened to get started.

teach

Welcome Tess
Like wmoore said this will get you started, you can apply with your partner as main applicant and you as his defacto spouse. Andrew and I did this, me as main applicant and him as my spouse. The fact that you have a child together should make proving your relationship a little easier. If you need any help on what is needed as evidence of your relationship give me a shout. If I can help, I will.
Regards
Sarah

Aus4us

Hi!!!

Welcome to the site!!!

You can search for any topic (top right of the screen) Also there are links and good advice treads (frist 3) in the main thread screen. I have used these a fair bit. If you have a question though just post it!!

You will soon be addicted too!!!

Roni

Flying Banana

Hi Tess

Welcome to the forum. As mentioned above just search the forums and you will turn up information on pretty much anything and everything you could think of asking. Different people will have different views so the only people that can make that big decision are you guys.

I know what you mean about 'Where to start' I was the same several years ago when I first thought emigrating might be for me.

A good starting point is to get one of the many books on the subject, if you go to www.howtobooks.co.uk and do a search for 'Australia' they do four books, 'Getting in to Australia' 'Living and Working in Australia' 'Going to Live in Australia' and 'Getting a Job in Australia' I see from their website they are all recently updated too, beware of older editions in bookshops which may not have current information in them.

Another good place I found for infa was 'Australian News' it is published by Outbound Publishing who run the big Sandown Emigration Fair twice a year. http://www.outboundpublishing.com/cg...n=000009000001 It's a monthly newspaper (£19 a year) and full of info, it's also good even when you are applying and getting close to actually moving as it will mention any changes in important stuff like finances, regulations etc which you may otherwise not be aware of.

In the meantime regarding your questions, yes your other half would probably have to do some sort of licence test but it depends on which state as each differs. For a normal car licence they will just change it over not sure what the situation is with HGV ones. Have a look on Google for Driver Licensing Victoria, or Queensland etc and there is loads of info there. No idea how wages for that line of work would compare to the UK but bear in mind an HGV driver here could end up driving much longer distances than in the UK, ie it takes 5 hours to fly from Sydney to Perth, so you can imagine how long that would take driving a truck.

I doubt that many employers would help find accomodation but it's not hard to find somewhere to rent anyway.

As someone else has posted first thing is to get the DIMIA booklet and work through the points total for the visa and check whether you think it is going to be possible to get a visa.

Hope this helps and you find all the info you need to start making some sense of the emigration maze.

gedge

Ditto on the older editions. We had one, "living and working", that was a couple of years old. I did read it, but ended up verifying most of it from other up-to-date sources (like expats!).