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Cool! Well it is here at the moment! When did you go out?

It's on every day this week on BBC 1 (10am) and Home (11am), but they don't seem to be doing Sydney in this season :(

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We found that when we've been over (twice now, half holidays, half validation/reccie) that it was useful more for ruling things out than in. We had thought we'd like to live in the Shire outside Sydney but having been now we feel it's too far. We had good friends who drove us round a bit and we were able to add certain areas to our list which we mightn't have thought of before and rule other areas out. We also got a better idea of what trasnport would realisitically work and what wouldn't.

I was lucky enough to meet some people in my area of work and that was invaluable to find out what the real salaries are etc (jobs in my field don't tend to be advertised widely so no amount of research from this end would help).

The best advice is talk to as many people as you can lay your hands on. They'll tell you what an area is really like (in rush hour for example), things you may not get to see on holiday or passing through for a few hours.

have fun and don't forget to post when you get back!

Tx

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when we went over it was firstly for a holiday, our second trip was with our 1yr old. as we stayed with my brother both times, from our first trip we decided this time to hire a car.
we visited the local school as my neices were getting a presentation and we met the head who was very pleasant even though our daughter decided to shout ' hello ' at them when they were on stage, so thats how we got to see the school.
we did our own food shopping as we didn't expect to be fed and homed for free (we bought a weekly shop for them before we left) this way we got to find out food costs and asked my brother about electric, etc obvously fuel we were already paying out for anyway doing tourist bits and shopping and travelling to alot of showhomes, which will give prices of new housing just ask the cost of one house as displayed.
one of the show places had the development area laid out on a 3d map model show the next stages (pacific pines i think) which was good to see as by the time we could get out to oz alot would change.
if you do alot of tourist bits you will spend alot more than normal during a week/month.

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Sounds like you had a good time - where was it your brother lives? Is it Gold Coast? You mentioned Pacific Pines - this is where my hubby's Aunt and Uncle live and we are visiting!

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A TIP

If you do a reccie after getting your visa, you won't get extra baggage allowance (40Kg) when you move permanently if you're planning on flying with Singapore Airlines. It must be an unused visa. So a validated visa is useless.

So do your reccie before your visa grant or don't do a reccie, just go. :)

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hi MrsE, yes on the gold coast upper coomera area. where the theme parks are and the australian outback show is:)