Pengu

Hi, I've just been told I have the perfect opportunity to go out and work in Geraldton, WA for a large engineering company on a 457 visa.

Having researched Perth as my first option I'd like to know if Geraldton runs a close second or have I just been dumped in the dark side of beyond.
The place looks great and is certainly cheaper than Perth.

Idea is that I go out there till my place is sold/rented and then the rest of the family will be joining me.

Am I right in assuming that the best bet would be to sell up all possessions (seeing as stuff like TV's DVD's etc don't work) before to raise proceeds to buy new...?

Any advice on location, where to live, where not to live and anything else would be very much appreciated.

Cheers Ian

moneypenny20

TVs/DVDs etc do work. Who told you they don't? 'Gems' and a couple of other posters live in Geraldton. They'll probably be along in a bit with advice but there is a fair amount on the place if you try an advanced search. Put Gems in the username, Geraldton in the key words and see what comes up.

Deutschmaster

I was under the impression that Geraldton is several hundred km from Perth - a long way from anywhere!

I saw a job advertised out there last year. The remoteness made me think twice.

Stuff seems expensive here compared to the UK so you might want to check prices over the internet to get an idea how much things will cost to replace - it may be cheaper to just ship.

I don't know about the telly not working but your DVDs might depending on regional coding. If you have a multiregional DVD player then think about bringing it. If you want to know whether your player is multiregional look it up on the net. Some can have their region unlocked by typing a number into the remote.

I suppose the decision to ship or sell and buy new depends on how expensive the thing was in the first place, it's condition, age etc.

moneypenny20

Hardly a long way in Australian terms. It's only about a four hour drive from Perth.

mohogony

l've heard its got a bit of a crime problem, some poor guy bashed to death with cricket bats on the beach recently. He stood up to a group that was stealing from and harrassing beachgoers so they killed him, l think they got off with very light senatances of course.
l've never been to WA but l've heard the nicer rural parts are south of Perth .

moneypenny20

Only place in Aus with some crime then? Bugger, where IS Utopia??????????

mohogony

Yes theres crime everywhere in OZ but some places are alot worse then others , l think there was a poster here a few years ago who owned a backbacker hostel which l think was in Geralton and they complained about problems with crime there.

renth

Let's not beat about the bush, there's a lot of aboriginals in Geraldon ergo it has a lot of crime made worse by the fact that, like in most outback towns, the police are pretty powerless to do anything about it.

mulben

Your right there, my son DJs in Geraldton and he lives south of Perth.

Its a great place for fresh seafood (I,m drooling just thinking about it )

moneypenny20

Kala had other issues that sometimes made the problems with living there worse than they would be for other people.

Gems

Geraldton is experiencing a big boom, and will be plenty of work due to new port, rail and nearby mines. Basically Geraldon is growing through huge growth and they have been busy tarting the place up for the last 2 years.

Geraldton is nearly 5 hours to Perth. But we have nearly everything you need.

I live in Geraldton with 4 kids.
I have never had bother neither has any of my kids including a teenage son of 17.

Geraldton is fine and you will find that several families on expats now live in Geraldton happily.
Ive lived here for over 2 years and yet to see anything.

If its so bad, why the hell does the town now have a cruise liner contract and get a regular huge cruise liner docking nearly every month full of tourists?
Also why do all the UK teachers who come via work are happy to stay long term.

Sorry Im sick to death of hearing about one guy who got bashed that xmas.

How many people have been bashed in Perth? The Perth news has had several bashings and deaths in the last couple of weeks.
My opinion you more likely to get trouble in Perth city.

Wandina, Tarcoola are best areas to live.

No town is perfect. But jeez give it a rest, Geraldton is fine.
Stop spouting about the same incident over and over again. I could list dozens of worse incidents in Perth or back in the UK.

Gems

Gems

Ps, it is not over run with Aborigines. Jeez its a big town not a remote bloomin settlement.
Basically if you walk around Geraldton you will see its over run with 'white' fellas.
Geraldton has aborigines but the way you lot go on you reckon it was one white fella to every 500 aborigine.
If anything its over run with expats now from Europe and South Africa

Howard Jenings

Gems were on your side, we have lived here 14 months now and love it, it is very family friendly and all of the people we have met have been lovely - we can't fault it. It has it's crime but where in the world doesn't. So someone was murdered some time ago, I think you would be hard pushed to find a city of 36,000 where there had not been some sort of serious crime. There are Aboriginals here, myself and my wife teach some if them and they are great, obviously there are others who aren't so great but that also applies to some of the white Australians aswell. The schoolls here are great, weather is amazing - all year round, it is on the coast with amazing beaches and the kids playgrounds are great. GERALDTON IS A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE and at the minute we can't see ourselves living anywhere else. As Gems said it is going to boom with the new port

Amazulu

We're involved in the design of the new port and it's going to open up the whole mid-west region to further development. In today's paper there is an article about a new 1b tonne iron-ore discovery in the mid-west - which is huge. Barnett's idea of building a smelter in the region is a good one - although it will need a new base load power station to supply it and that won't be easy.

Genevieve

I agree with Gems. I'm a West Aussie born and bred, and while Gero (as the locals affectionately refer to it) was a bit wild in the early days, I was up there recently for work and was very impressed with how it's grown. There appear to be good facilities, it's an attractive town on the beachfront, and it generally scrubs up well. I'd be happy to live there, maybe not forever, but certainly for a few years, if the other half was up to it.

That incident with the guy and the cricket bat happened a few Christmases ago now, it certainly was a once-in-a-million thing from what I remember, and you're far more likely to have something like that happen on a Perth beach. Perth beaches tend to be far more full of aggressive drinkers, unfortunately, in particular Scarborough Beach. So while it did happen, it was unusual, to say the least. I wouldn't see it as an accurate representation of Geraldton daily life.