This is one of the issue I had with the lastest (only series that I've seen) of Wanted Down Under. The take people over in the Australian winter and particularly for the people that will work outdoors, the sentiment is along the lines of:

'This is wonderful, it's winter and I can still work outside/wear a t-shirt'(insert shot of family doing something they 'couldn't' do in a UK winter).

But I watch it and think 'there's another side to that coin in summer if you work outside, shove that'!

Disclaimer: I am a namby pamby southern shandy drinking softy who works in an office, both in Sydney and the UK. But I cycle and run a lot and that's by choice, so I do know the heat takes its toll on my performance.

hey roberta sorry the thread was in reply to ice geordie as her other half is a bricklayer but would also apply to you guys.
brisbane is beautiful but is so bloody humid and feels just as hot if not hotter than wa! just trying to play a game of football outside for an hour from nov til april is hard work.

My hubby is a HV electrician, so the vast majority of his work is outside. No work gets stopped on account of the heat. His last job up north had a couple of 45C days (plus humidity) and they're still working. His company (and the mine) wouldn't be too impressed flying workers up, shutting down part of the facilities, and then having the workers say, "Hey, it's over 40C, too hot to work."

Schools stay open too even on 43C days...that took a bit of getting used to as back in Canada, many schools tend to close on days of extreme cold.

I'd say with nursing and electrical that's in your favor, but more so if your hubby has industrial and HV experience. There's tons of regular domestic and commercial sparkies around, but still a demand for HV ones. They asked my hubby last week if any of his Canadian friends with HV skills and cable jointing experience would be interested in coming over. They're looking far and wide it seems.

Plan B should definitely include, what if one of you settles and the other doesnt, what if kids settle and one of you or both dont
What if the kids definitely don't settle .

Re;nursing, i find i have to work twice as hard and longer hours, due to high cost of living and shortage of staff and also because nursing assistants are a big no, no here. But I count myself lucky that i have a job, lots of peeps come and struggle to get work, also at least in my job i have made some lovely friends.

Same here now hun. Staff not being replaced, redundancies etc.
Worry about "any qualified provider" taking over the running of services.
Long hours, some unpaid just to get the work done.
We were told recently by a senior manager that we were the lucky ones as we have jobs!

Yes the situation here is dire! as a student I should be supernumary, but find I also stay beyond my hours and miss out on learning experiences to help out on the floor. Not complaining, but supernumary should be supernumary. I am one of the lucky ones as I took a career break and should be offered a RGN post when I register, but there are 100 student nurses due to qualify in Jan 13 and literally no jobs.

Sounds so bad there, i remember the thing that fascinated me the most was the fact you were paid for overtime here and not 'time-back'.
Not sure what the statistics are but i know there are alot of newly qualified nurses here not getting jobs (which is one of the anf gripes just now), and i think its in the thousands, i am not meaning to scare you, but i believe this to be the truth. Look on anf website (Australian nurses federation) and EBA (enterprise bargaining agreement) for more details. There is a nurses dispute about this and other issues going on just now. I am talking in Victoria only.

However i work in the operating theatre and i swear i could work 24 hrs 7 days a week if i wanted

We have just had 500 from one university in Brisbane (there are several)....one hospital had 25 places for graduates....no different here

Whats going on, why are there no jobs just now I know that the nurses in Victoria are fearing nursing assistants (cant remember what its called here, HBA or summit) are taking their jobs. We were one of the hosps that piloted nursing assistants, and it was very positive, but petition round last week to stop this. I have no beef with it as i was very well used to working with fantastic nursing assistants, but does make you wonder for the long term, it probably contributes to the fact i would never get a job back in Scotland now.

Budgets

There are jobs but is is cheaper and easier for hospitals to recruit qualified nurses than train graduates.

There are also a lot of people looking for work.

All the nurses arriving from the UK can't be helping!

Probably a lot less than there were

This is very true and is an ongoing argument universally for all career choices. So it would appear to be more beneficial to ensure I have gained a full years post-grad experience (at least) before applying ? I wasn't aware of no nursing assistants in Oz and actually couldn't imagine a nurses role without them, over here assistants are trained to a high level .My own post was in wound management and venepuncture and in the ER they are very skilled, so budget wise this would make sense.

Nursing assistants are one of the things i really, really miss in my job, but the nurses here are very wary of the govt and this issue (especially as the govt in victoria are trying to do away with nurse/patient ratio and bring in split shifts) I find the nurses union here much more militant that in the u.k,........... i quite enjoy that really

Nursing assistant worked fantastic in scotland but i admit i am wary of it here, having already met many, many qualified registered nurses who's english is extremely poor, infact contributed to a cock up in our dept a few months ago.

Get the experience and then apply for an independent visa. If you want to work in a major city (and most nurses here do) then sponsorship will not be the best option unless you are very lucky