Brentacc

Hello all,

We have just booked flights (singapore airlines £750 each) to come out to Brisbane from March 16 to April 2nd. We are looking to relocate to the gold coast and would gratefully receive any and all your tips and reccomendations on the following:

Cheap rental accomodation for our stay.
Cheap car rental companies to pick up at Brisbane airport
Employment agencies or similar ( I am a plumber)
Anything else you feel we should know/visit/avoid.

Thanks in advance for your help, with a bit of luck we will shout you some beers in person in the very near future!!

Best regards, Russell.

belleandscone

Hi Russell, the only thing I can recommend that will help you is the care rental, we used Holiday Autos (sister company of Thrifty within Brisbane Airport), all inclusive and no added extras, we had a brand new Mitsubishi 380 which was excellent.
Hope you enjoy your reccie and there are plenty of people on here who are in the Gold Coast that will give you some good advice.
Clairex

shiels

Visit as many beaches as you can....beautiful all of them but Rainbow Bay was my favourite....... Enjoy!!!!! C x

Brentacc

So we drive the thrifty car down to Rainbow bay sounds perfect, thanks for your tips so far, cant wait even though it is four months away am already excited!!

moneypenny20

Can't think of anything to avoid especially at the time you're coming over. Hire cars - one thing worth noting is that you get charged a supplement by picking up at the airport. If you are staying in Brissie to begin with you may be better off getting a taxi to accommodation and picking up the rental from there.

No idea about employment agencies for plumbers sorry but assume you know you will have to redo licence and stuff before finding proper work?

Cheap accommodation - depends on where you want to place yourself. Some areas are cheaper than others, but you can find cheap accom all over from basic camp sites upwards.

Sorry just noticed your timeframe - will you be on the gold coast for all that time, in which case you'd be better off with an apartment maybe around the Burleigh way - fairly central for everything, unless you KNOW you will be wanting to live at the top end. It only takes about 40 minutes to go from top to bottom but with young children on board, those 40 minutes become several hours

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary is lovely for small children, and loads of other places but obviously money becomes an issue if you want to do too many places like that although there are stacks of stuff to do that's free.

there is masses more info I and others can give but I have to go and start cooking now

Edit: Just realised I thought you were someone else so apologies, you might not have kids or need to do stuff so you can probably ignore a lot of the above

Brentacc

Thanks for the tip about airport supplements! We do have kids but they are staying back in UK with granny this time as we want to try and acheive a lot during our trip and as you rightly say several hours on the road a day looking at houses and hopefully talking to prospective employers ould not be their idea of fun!!!!

We were hoping to rent a small (2bed) house around the helensvale(ish) area but all the holiday rentals eem to be centred (predictably) around surfers or right on the beach. We may be kidding ourselves a little, but, wanted to try and get a feel for what "real life" is like and so just a normal house rather than a flash beach front place would be ideal just havent found anything yet.

moneypenny20

Be hard pressed for a "real" home just for a couple of weeks, for obvious reasons people prefer to rent their houses out for six month minimum normally so it will be very hard to find. Best I can suggest would be an apartment, but there are bound to be stacks that aren't flash beach front

doub

Hi,

I know you were thinking Helensvale but just as an alternative We have a two bedroom apartment in Broadbeach. It's fully furnished and available for short-mid term letting. (we were going to set up a "meet at airport, tranfer to apartment, all you need" type package for new arivals, but haven't had the chance as yet as it has been fully booked since we bought it!) We have had a few March enquiries, but nothing confirmed as yet.

Cheers

Mark

Brentacc

Thanks Mark, looks absolutely stunning, really nicely furnished!! could you let me know prices, wife has fallen in love with pic of the beach!!

thanks in advance, Russell.

doub

no problem Russell, I will check the price for March and send you a pm/email with some details

Cheers Mark

ormrod7

Hi there, we might be on the same flight were looking at going for good and flying on the 16th March with Singapore Airlines to Brisbane!!!

h1tvd

Hi Russell,

OH and I are flying to Brisbane for 21/2 weeks on 8th March for a reccie. I can totally understand why you are not taking the kids. We are the same - much as we love our 3 they would not enjoy driving round looking at suburbs and schools for hours at a time - so we are leaving them with Gran.
Feel free to give us a shout if you want to arrange a meet up in OZ.

Tracy x