stevenpoole9

Due to a long drawn out house sale, the story is way too long to go into now, we've told our "buyer" and I use the word loosely, to get stuffed, and took the house off the market. We will put the house back on the market in January next year and move once eveything has been sorted, this should mean we make the big move in March April time, just in time for "winter". This leaves us with the problem of having to validate our visas by 2nd February, 2006.
We are arranging flights/accomodation/car hire etc this week but we've got a few queries:

1. Do we need travel insurance or will our permenant residency visas cover us? (with Medicare)

2. In Queensland we can drive for 3 months on our UK licences, as I will be driving for 3 weeks while on holiday, will this count towards the 3 month grace period?

3. What exactly is the procedure for validating the visas? Is it just a matter of having them stamped at customs when we land, or are there other things that need to be done? we don't want to go through the whole rigmarole and then drop a clanger at the last minute.

ANY help/advice will be gratefully recieved. Any donations of money/beer will be even more gratefully recieved!!!

Centurion

1. You are not covered my medicare until you register with them. Besides travelling without proper travel insurance would be a little silly. What if all your luggage got stolen by the nice people who work in airports ?

2. The three month rule is for those people actually resident. I wouldnt really worry about it. One of the first things you should so when you arrive is to get a licence anyway - its basically the holy grail of australian ID and worth it for pretty much anything.


3. You arrive - you go through customs as normal and queue along with the tourists. The only difference is you have ticked the box on the landing card marked Migrating. You get your passport stamped as normal and if you are really lucky you may even get an immigration officer who might say welcome to australia. No fanfares, special procedures or nothing I'm afraid.

Hope that helps

diddy

Mate,

I'm sure JAJ or someone will give you a fuller answer, but:

1. Looks like Centurion has answered differently to how I thought. What about the recipricol agreement?

2. As I understand it, the three months kicks off from when you arrive permanently, but do a search as this has been answered before.

3. Validation is as simple as passing through immigration and getting it stamped.

Sorry, I'm skint re the beer. Where are you heading?

Paul.

stevenpoole9

Not too worried about the luggage, 15 pairs of shorts, 2 vests and a pair of flip-flops. Oh! and a hat! (note the UK terms) more worried about medical emergencies while we're there. We will have some cover as we are booking everything by credit card so they provide basic cover. Is it possible to register with Medicare when we arrive just to be on the safe side?

stevenpoole9

Sorry Diddy, replied to previous thread too slowly. We're eventually going to settle in South Brisbane somewhere. We've got friends in 1 or 2 different locations that we're going to take a look at. We're heading for the Gold Coast (Surfer's Paradise) for our holiday though. We hope to do the touristy things but also travel up to the sunshine Coast/ Mooloolaba and some of the Hinterland as well.