Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Help! :confused:
Time ticks on ... we've got visas, need to be in Oz by early May, have sold the house but don't know where to settle.. We need to book tickets, ship furniture soon, so need to decide.

The problem, not enough money for validation trip for family of seven.
Kids are 11 down to 3, I'm likely to be the sole bread winner for a while (Logistics IT).

What we want from Oz is primarily quality of lifestyle (outdoor!) for us and the kids with as good an education for the little uns as possible.

(We've lived in Miami before so know the pitfalls of international migration).

I've been applying for jobs on Seek / Jobnet / Jobserve for a while and have established contact with a few interested recruitment agents (Melbourne, Perth and Sydney) but have not managed to progress beyond there. The split by city in terms of vacancies in my line of work are Melbourne 60%, Sydney 25%, Perth 15%.

We both fancy Perth for quality of life, but can't afford to mess around too long without me finding a job.

Which of these options sounds best?

1. Travel out and spend a couple of weeks in both Perth and Melbourne then decide (whilst talking to recruitment agents at the same time). (In this scenario what do we do about shipping furniture?).

2. Go initially for Melbourne for ease of getting a job and proximity to other cities (and better educational prospects??) and evaluate move to Perth later (possibly transfer with same employer).

3. Go initially to Perth for quality of life, and move to Melbourne if I can't get a job in a few months.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Nothing against Perth BUT what makes you think its a better quality of life than Melbourne?

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

If it has any relevance - I'm 40.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Bordy - blimey that was fast!
I guess the image of the beach life, the smaller population etc.
How does Melbourne compare on this scale?

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Loads of beaches, probably less windy. Bigger population but doesn't give the feel of an overly busy city like Sydney does. ( Sorry Sydney)
Loads of Sports, theatres, restauarants from every culture imaginable. Best shopping in Australia I'm told.
Definetly cooler in Winter but thats not to bad either.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Is cost of living similar on average?

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

I'd say house prices are probably higher in Melbourne but so will your salary be & chances of work in IT.
Not that Perth is bad, its a good bit smaller but a beautiful city to.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Sounds like a similar situation to us. I'm 40, work in IT, only 3 kids though, British, but moved here (Melbourne) after 4 years in the US...... my advice is, go where the work is, you'll need the money!

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Ozger, that's our favoured option right now. We have some friends in Perth, but making the relocation as stable as possible has got to be paramount.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

My wife has family in Adelaide (they sponsored us), which would be the ideal place for us to settle I think, but the lack of suitable jobs there means we're staying here for a while.

We have been struggling a bit without a support network of family/friends so in that respect, going where there is someone you know would be the easiest way to get settled here, but ultimately we had to go where ther work was.

It also comes down to the upheaval for the kids. Even though we've only been here 4 months, the kids (13,11 and 8) have made some good friends and I think it would just be just too cruel to move them to another school/city/state so soon.....and hard on our finances to have to kit them all out in new uniforms with new books etc etc....very expensive!

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Yep, my sister in law (our sponsor) is in Brisbane, but we're not considering it due to reduced job prospects and greater sweatiness!

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

The thing that concerns me about Melbourne is the weather, although that is the reason that a lot of Brits move there, as the weather is closer to British weather than Perth. When we went there a few years back, it was October (Spring) but to be quite honest, most British Spring days are warmer. "4 seasons in a day" as they say. Even watching the repeats of "new life down under" a few nights ago had me smiling as the Melbourne crew were huddled in their garage or under umbrellas on several occasions.

Sounds like I'm knocking Melbourne which I'm not. It's horses for courses. If you can't handle the heat, then Melbourne would be the choice. If you want more of an outdoor lifestyle, then I would opt for Perth.

(Hope my comments don't upset anyone. They're not meant to)

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Yup. Coming from a predictable weather situation in Idaho ("fancy a picnic a week saturday....let me check the weather forecast....it's going to be sunny.....ok then!") to Melbourne where you can't plan anything that's affected by the weather, was quite a shock.

Sunny and clear skies in the morning has often lead to clouds and rain in the afternoon.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

You don't know how happy I am that someone has backed me on this. I was expecting to be flamed by all the Melbournites. :)

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Perth is beautiful, extremely clean, beautiful beaches very close to the city, easy to drive, and way cheaper. People are also very friendly. its less multicultural, but you have most things melbourne have in terms of food.
Melbourne is big, grey sometimes, full of graffiti and litter, the closest beaches to the city are FULL of litter (the filthiest I have seen in the world and i have been to places, my friend and I went to elwood beach and not only that the sand was full of litter he almost stepped on broken glass). The Victorian police however is corrupt.
However melbourne has its charm, and people are nicer than in Sydney. you have great food and shopping is the best in Oz. Perth is laking apparantly in that term.
Melbourne is also very close to everything else, sydney is close.
btw, if you want to go to a big city where everything is happening AND which is beautiful then Sydney is the place, however it is very expensive.
THe best bet is Brisbane, great weather, seems very clean and beautiful, cheaper than melbourne and sydney, and has great beaches in the one hour proximity, close to sydney (relatively offcourse :)) and the southbank area with the artificial beach is beautiful.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Not at all, we are all sitting here freezing our butts off for past week in Melbourne.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

I find that trying to figure out what to wear here is difficult. Should I take a coat to work? Looks cloudy and ominous.....yes, better had. 5pm, that's me walking through the CBD in swealtering heat carrying my coat. The opposite has happened too...blazing sunshine in the am....no need for a coat...peeing down when I'm waiting for me bus at the end of the day!

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

I don't know if this thread has helped the originator, but it's made me feel a lot better about not including Melbourne on my shortlist. I'm choosing between Sydney and Perth.

Sydney reminded me of a hot London, so I am tending towards Perth at the moment. Probably 75 Perth/25. I found Perth probably the most relaxing of all the places I visited. Almost reminded me of the 1950s (well, 1950s films that I've seen anyway).

With 3 kids (4, 2, 0) it's a close call. Probably more for them to do when they get older in Sydney, but more familiy oriented in Perth. decisions decisions...

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Why should we flame you. We live here :D. We know how bad it can be

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

If you want to live in a place that reminds you of the 50's, go to Perth, it looks like a picture from the 50's - Brown and out of colours.. :) Even tho I actually like canberra.

Melbourne gave me a great career opportunity, but I would never live here if I could help it. I didn't like London for its litterbugs, and I definatly didn't come here for dirty beaches. I came for clean ones. And sunshine.

Sydney doesn't feel exactly like London, its more like a New York meet London vibe sort of place.. only with beautiful beaches and sunshine. Some people there are also very 'american' in their aggresivness, only in Sydney did I ever had to argue about a place in a resturant, or saw a bus driver shout at a tourist.. It feels much more of a big city than Melbourne in that respect, sadly for Sydney.

I don't know about Adelaide, I wonder if anyone can tell us abit about Adelaide and Tassie.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Yes it is helping youcanlaugh.
All information is good information!
Perth looks best for what we want best lifestyle-wise and Melbourne for a job!
Maybe my original option 3 is best.
It seems crazy to make a lifestyle driven move to the other side of the globe and then to compromise for a job in a British-style climate with British-style beaches (or am I being harsh?).
There must be others who've tried Perth and had to move elsewhere for a job?

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

[QUOTE=bal56]
Glad it's helping. You seem to share my Philosophy in that If I am moving that far, I have to be sure of the reason, and my personal reason is an improved lifestyle for my family and I. If that means that you want to be able to have a much more active outside life (beach trips, BBQs etc) then certainly Perth sounds like the solution.

I would have thought that Perth is the best place for anything to do with logistics ;)

Also, job markets are strange. Let's face it, even on jobserve in the UK, you can wait weeks before you actually find the perfect job, but they do come along if you can be a little patient, and it's always a "I'm glad I waited" sigh when you find it.

I'm in IT, more on the programming side of things, so I am trying to grab a few ears around my current contracts to see if there is any chance of remote working. That way I would also benefit from the pound/dollar. It's got to be worth a try.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Not harsh, maybe misguided. The beaches are far from british, not a kiss me quick hat, ice cream van or 500 people in the same square inch of sand as yourself. Also the weeks weather we've just had would make you stay away from the beach if you value your skin staying on, mid to high 30s everyday. A week of it has been enough for me as the kids won't go out untill 7pm :rolleyes: cos its to hot. Perth can be like that for weeks at a time, it just depends how much/ what you can do in the summer heat. :)

(hevs, signed on as HUP)

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Are you in the same part of Melbourne as bordy hevs ... I thought this week had been cold?
The heat is however a valid point. We had this with the Miami experience - too darn hot in the middle of the day in summer to go out.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Fairly near (Some might say to near :D).

No its been hot most of the week. Had a few spots of rain tonight but they have disappeared.

The thing I like about VIC weather is you can have a run of stinking hot days and then it'll drop 10 to 15 degrees and boy do you appreciate it. Summer hasn't kicked in in a big way yet then again we were up in Sydney for new year and it was pretty lack lustre there too.

HUP (in peace now HEVS has gone to bed :D )

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Well i was born in blacktown nsw but left when i was 3 (with perants help lol) and moved to the uk and have never been back wife has never been there we age going to perth in april with plans not to come back the wife has been told she can apply for here visa in oz so that is what we will do (made easier by the fact i am a ozzi by birth with a ozzie passport thank god) so we are just packing up and going for it no kids no mogage just us and our stuff what have we got to lose and perth is where we want to go all i have heard is good thing about it and it is alot cheaper than sydney that is for sure.We have closed all our bank acounts no credit cards only cash we sent a email to a hotel in perth to ask how we could book with none of these and we got a nice email back saying it was all booked and we could settel up when we were there i have traviled all over the uk scotland wales and irland and have alwayes had to put a deposit down some way or another that just sums up oz to me willing to give you a chance what ever you situation so perth it is sorry if i went a bit of track lol

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

There is no contest......Perth every time.

I spent a year over in Oz a while back and fell in love with Perth. Because the city is so remote....the locals have a perfect outlook on life...."lets make the best of it".

OK, the sun does shine there a lot more than you are used to but surely thats one of the reasons you are leaving these shores.

Find a place to buy on Scarborough Beach and you'll keep pinching yourself. :)

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Bordy,
I migrated to Oz, first Melbourne and then Perth. We stayed a few years and returned to UK. We had 1 young child with us when we migrated and a second child within a few months of landing in Oz.

We did months of research before we came, had plenty of cash saved up and jobs we moved straight into ( health care workers) - we still had problems settling.

Despite what you think you know, the truth is Australia is expensive , there are hidden costs and there is personal taste that nobody can show you, you have to suck it for taste for yourself.

In view of the size of your family and your lack of funds - it is obvious you are not prepared for any mistake and the result will impact on you all in a big way.

Do not expect a few lines on a website to carry you to the best decision.

You have to "get your ducks in a row" way before your family arrive. I suggest you find the money to come over by yourself, do a comparison study between the two cities for yourself, open bank accounts, rent property, get schools sorted and a job. The process will take 1 -2 months.

Once the family arrives - there will be culture clash, heat adjustment, government red tape, missing home and adapting to a new home to contend with.

We had moved from UK to Germany, we had also lived in the middle east for years prior to migrating to Oz, we had no idea how difficult the first few months as "new australians" was to be.

Odaat.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

On a personal opinion we struggled very much to get jobs in Perth but I think it would be 'easier' in It than what we were looking at. Great city etc but we found the people very inward looking. I'd tried the East coast.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

odaat - my visiting first is a good idea, but probably not an option as time is short (and I'm on a three month notice period). In any case I'm not confident that I could make a decision for both myself and my wife regarding overall quality of life (although I could assess the job market first hand).
I certainly don't intend to make our decision on the back of this thread, it's just a effort to gather more useful information and opinions to assist us with making our minds up.
Out of interest, what were the key drivers of your various moves?

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Hi Bal56,

We made a decision to move to Perth after looking at other cities. We based this on a number of things, climate, housing costs, lifestyle etc. Obviously, one of the main factors was employment. I'm a .NET C# developer so I was sceptical about moving to Perth initially after hearing about job prospects for IT, but yes, there are more jobs in Sydney and Melbourne, but there are also many more people going for those positions, so does that make it easier to get a job just because there are more on offer. Not sure. I agree with your point, why should I move to a city that resembles too much of the reasons why I am leaving the UK, when my main motivation to move, is not to find a new job but to improve my lifestyle.

The way I look at it is, if I lost my job now and wasn't emigrating then how quickly would it take me to get a job. I figure I couldn't walk straight into one and will probably have to commute more than I do now, so I shouldn't expect to walk into a job when I get to Perth, but I sure will try hard to get one!

Now, I'm not sure if Perth is the right city for us and hopefully I'll find a job pretty quickly, but who knows! It's a tough one to call, and even to this day, I still think, is it better to go another city.

Not sure if that helps you with your decision though!

Adrian

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Adrian,

Do you have any IT jobsites that you have found useful? We haven't moved yet, but it would be useful to start a list of sites if I can.

cheers

Neil

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Hi Neil,

I do have a list. If you PM me with your email address then I can send you a dump of my Favourites folder with them in it (there are too many to type) and you can pick them out from there. Hope that is OK.

Adrian

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Bal56,
We were young, qualified and used our quals initially to see Europe + America.

We then travelled + worked across Arabia to raise lots of tax free cash.

Once we had a child, we migrated to Oz for the weather, schooling and lifestyle.

What we did not realise about Australia was the *people paradigm*, The average Oz in the street is obsessed with chronic self seeking and consumer buying. If you do not share the passion for sports and beer - be prepared for a life of isolation. There is real prejudice towards Brits who migrate and take jobs off Australian's, especially skilled and management jobs. You will probably have to start on a temp. contract of work - this will reduce your chances of cheap credit and getting a mortgage. Many Australians have no idea how much the world has changed and that Britain is no longer empire building and that non whites + women have rights !!

We are the lucky ones, we were able to leave with minimum loss on our investments i.e. investment property purchases made good money for us.

We left Oz and returned to UK for better paying jobs and a successful business opportunity, our children have settled into the english private prep schools and the wife has got her country house in the english countryside - many are not so lucky and return to renting and starting again.

Migrating to Oz with seven children, little cash and no job prospects is too high a risk factor IMO..... especially as the Australian bank interest rate is up to 7.5%, the property market is fast cooling, the economy is starting to shrink and job losses have been announced. On top of all that - you do not have access to social benefit for the next 24 months.

"cheap" housing areas including council estate housing in Oz do exist - they are just as crime ridden and dangerous as in UK. The use of hard and soft drug taking in Oz is epidemic in proportion to drug use in the UK .... perhaps you should check out the "moving back to UK" thread for more on why it is absolutely imperative to go see and scout before you commit the family to migrate.

As for giving 3 months work notice - I suggest you speak to the management and explain you need time out to investigate Australia and ensure you are moving for the right reason .... i.e. the good of the family and take a leave of absence - they will totally inderstand.

Australia is no longer the "it'l be right mate" social state it once was, it is more like a corporation with the a specific aim of making profit through taxing YOU and other australians.

ps - more skilled australian's *immigrate* than migrate per year - does that tell you something :rolleyes: ?

odaat.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

oop's that last line should start *emmigrate* .... :D

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

The main differences between the two cities is that Melbourne has 3 times the population and is a larger city in size, many people believe this makes it a more exciting place with more to do, but also more conjested and crowded.
Melbourne is more multicultural while most of the populaion of Perth is Anglo-irish in ethnic make up. There are probably more job opportunities in Melbourne. The climate in Melbourne is cooler then Perth, colder winters and milder summers, some people find Perth's summers too hot however the weather is nice the rest of the year. Perth has nice beaches nearby, while Melbournes beaches aren'nt as good, just outside Melbourne along the great Ocean road are some of the best beachs in OZ for swimming and surfing.
Although houses in Perth are cheaper, there are still nice areas in and just outside Melbourne wth affordable housing.

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Odaat - only five kids - even we're not that energetic!
Thanks for all views so far. It's good to hear things from many perspectives.
Odaat - your views are interesting as you've obviously seen a few different countries and cultures - there's obviously thinking to be done!

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Moving to Perth should give you a great opportunity to practice your spelling .

Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

In all honesty, Melbourne's weather is not as bad as peple make it out to be; the only downside is that it does get cold and grey in winter, but no more than the UK as it still stays green. And you may find it cold inside unless you have central heating.

The very hottest days here are warmer than Sydney's. For a day or two, Adelaide and Melbourne are often the hottest parts of Australia (while Brissy and the Top End are in a storm).

Don't read too much in to all this 4 seasons in one day rubbish - sure it's changeable, but more of a hot/cold start morphing in to a cold/hot finish....and sure it did hail stone for a while...

I personally believe beaches aren't the be all and end all....you just have to be more selective about where you go..

cheers
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Re: Melbourne or Perth - Can anyone help us decide?
 

Ahem, actually it should be "emigrate".