the troubadour

Well the Woolshed still rocks from fairly recent reports. If Sodom exists on earth Cairns, at least at one time, could well have been a likely candidate.

englishbird

Why are you coming back to the UK?? Are you mad 😲

blackcab

Talk me out of it.

englishbird

I'm trying to get over there to get away from all the crap going on here... England is not English any more we have less rights and less help than someone arriving in a dinghy!!!

Tr1boy

Butter, no salt thanks.

blackcab

Life's not a bed of roses anywhere on this planet for some. I would advise a fact seeking trip to the state of your choice before going to all the expenses of visas and flights and moving costs . All countries have there own problems. Australia different to the UK but still problems.

englishbird

I am I'm visiting Fremantle in August for 3 weeks to get a feel of it etc jobs, houses, schools

blackcab

That's very wise.

Good luck.

englishbird

Thanks x

spouse of scouse

Nah, I think I'd choke

the troubadour

Choice of rock and a hard place. You may have heard OZ is in a decline for many people. UK does appear to be on the up for the moment and being jobless in high cost Australia would be hardly fun.

the troubadour

Hope three months is long enough, to enable a true understanding ,of what exactly is going on in this part of the world.

moneypenny20

Someone's been reading the DM.

Croker

I wish you well on your fact-finding trip to Freo, and indeed I wish you well in general, but you will struggle to find out what living here is like in just 3 weeks. I married an Australian, and my first visit to Melbourne in 2014 was absolutely fantastic. Actually, we spent 2 weeks in Melbourne and a week in Port Douglas, Queensland, visiting the Great Barrier Reef, the rainforest and suchlike.

Brilliant time though I had, I learned next to nothing about what day-to-day life in Australia would be like for me when I got here. So my first tip to you would be for you to spend actual time on the ground looking at schools, viewing potential homes you could afford to live in, researching the areas you might want to live in, sussing out the local job market, and so forth. It's not going to feel like much of a holiday when you're doing it, but if you're serious about moving out here and have no local contacts (I had my wife to at least give me some information on the more "mundane" aspects of life in Oz), this is knowledge you desperately need to accumulate. Don't, for example, do a day and a half total of research, and then have a nice holiday for the rest of it - you won't learn anywhere near enough to make a balanced decision in future.

You don't say what you do for a living, or what visa route you may take to come to Australia. Would you be emigrating as a skilled worker, for example? If so, tip number two is for you to thoroughly research the visa you desire before you even book any flights for your fact-finding trip. You need to be sure, if you want to come as a skilled worker, that you have the right amount of experience and/or qualifications to meet the criteria to get a visa.

Whatever you do, if you do come, you'll need a job (unless you're very rich indeed, and if you are, then bully for you! ). This is where your statement of "England is not English any more we have less rights and less help than someone arriving in a dinghy" rings some alarm bells, in my opinion. To be brutally honest, if you think Australia will just roll out the red carpet for you as soon as you get here, then you're going to be in for a shock.

For a start, you are certainly not going to be drowning in help from the Australian government - certain government services can be limited or denied to you altogether, depending on your circumstances, visa type and so forth. My wife and I don't have kids, and don't intend to, but I'm guessing you do if schools are of interest to you? I can't confirm this for definite as I don't have kids, but I seem to recall that some migrants have to pay fees for their kids' schooling - so you'd need to factor that into your budget. Someone else here will be able to confirm if this is the case, I'm sure.

The work market can be difficult to break into, too. I've been here since October 2015, and although I really only started actively looking for work from January 2016 (we got married after I arrived, then went on honeymoon, moved apartment, celebrated Christmas etc, so little time to update my CV and scour the job ads during that period), I've had a grand total of two interviews. And I've applied for a lot of jobs. My background was in immigration in the UK - I have a lot of transferable skills, had quite a senior position back home and was pretty well paid. In Oz, though, many equivalent jobs are shut off from me altogether as I am not yet a permanent resident or an Australian citizen. I won't be a permanent resident until approx. 2018-2019, either, depending on the wait times for visas, so those jobs aren't opening up for me any time soon.

Naturally, I've been applying for less senior jobs and trying to make the best of my skill set, but you have to face an inescapable truth - employing a migrant can be a pain in the arse for Australian employers, as there's additional paperwork etc, plus an employer can be held liable for employing me illegally if I mislead them or try to pull the wool over their eyes. If you have a migrant who's not a permanent resident and an Australian with the same skills/experience, who've applied for the same job, it doesn't take a genius to realise that the migrant is less likely to get it.

I lost out on the first job I was interviewed for, even after me being invited to meet two very senior members of staff after my interview (and after they'd checked references with my old workplace). All of my Australian friends assured me that this meeting was just a formality, and that I'd almost certainly got the job. Not the case, as I found out a couple of days later, when they told me that they'd "chosen some candidates who just had a little more experience". This may have been true, but my honest feeling was that my immigration status (although I'm perfectly entitled to work without restrictions) was a key factor in swinging it against me. It was a permanent position, so would it have really been wise for them to spend a lot of money training me up etc only to lose me if something went wrong with my visa application? My guess is that they didn't want to take that risk, however unlikely, as it's just wasted time/money for them.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from another interview I've just had last week - fingers crossed! - but that's for a fixed-term admin post lasting a year. It may be that I'll be worth taking a risk on in those circumstances, unlike for a permanent post. We'll see. Whatever happens, though, it's been a long slog for a job, and I've been lucky enough to live with a wife who has a good job and can support both of us. If you were to come out here and then struggle to find work, how long could you last, financially? Tip number three, then, is to make sure you can financially go the distance out here. Australia's an expensive country, and it could be absolutely brutal if you can't find work quickly.

Anyway, I don't say any of this to be difficult, or to have a go at you, so please don't take this as criticism - all I'm saying is, please do your research very, very thoroughly before you commit to a permanent move.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

jad n rich

Made me smile. The migrant bride or husband. You did the Tour, I got the sales pitch

Does not matter if it was first fleet, sunshine and oranges, 1970, year 2000 or 2014 its a shock.