stevelaird

Bet you have a good time neil but if you dont want to you can swap with me and come to the cold snow in scotland lol

steve

NealD

ooh let me think about that Steve..mmmm..no sorry beers on Bondai beach just win hands down!!

stevelaird

No realy neil i feel sorry for you so i will do it for free lol

joho

We got picked up by relies at the airport, drove for 1.5 hours to their house and went to bed to sleep as we were knackered and it was 10pm. Next day we went to fetch the keys to our reserved holiday let only to find that the owners had let it without telling agents, but they found us another one which was fine and for then on the rest it history.

Jo

Deadmeat

I was met by the Mother In Law and went straight from Arrivals Lounge to the maternity ward of the Royal Brisbane (my future wife had blood pressure complications) and thence to bed for about three days as we received the all-clear.

I don't recommend it.

Nizcac

Slighty of the thread - I hope your OH and baby are nowing enjoying ozzie life

Deadmeat

They certainly are, thanks for asking

They are both Brisbane gals by birth and have successfully converted me too

windog

To a Brisbane girl?

Deadmeat

You'll can see me at South Bank jogging around in the hot pants singing "I Am Woman" ... but only on Tuesdays.

Pollyana

Oh it was YOU was it!

I got off the plane, The Bloke complained about the amount of luggage, I suggested the beach but was told it was too hot, so we went back to his Unit and I plugged in the computer and started job hunting. Wish I could've had that magical "holiday period", as it was it didn't feel like I was in Aus at all, I could've been anywhere

Scrawni 2

Polly, couldn't you do the big 'holiday' thing now? For alot of people the priority is to get a job first etc and they leave the holiday until they are settled.

Hey, when I get over there maybe us girls should have a girly weekend? At the moment it looks like the Gold Coast for us as hubbie has a sort of job offer Imagine it, we could have a scream and let our hair down after all that stress.



Mandy

Deadmeat

You can't beat a bit of Helen Reddy to lighten up your day Cellulite is a curse I tells ya ... I have been fighting mine with an afternoon/evening at the Toowong Bowls Club to celebrate us coming absolutely nowhere in the Summer Warehouse cricket comp ... and very enjoyable it was too ... absolutely hammered I am, I feel a 'work from home' day coming on tomorrow

bigAPE

We arrived in Melbourne on a PR Visa on the 7th March (twelve days ago).

The first day was spent just strolling around getting used to the heat and walking off the flight. Everyone was a little fractious after the flight with our two young boys, but nothing major.

We spent the first 6 nights in the Holiday Inn and hung out in the city activating our bank accounts and ordering credit cads (which were not provided as standard). We also rented a car (critical here) and tested out the Australian PAYG mobile SIM we bought on the web in the UK. We used this as our temporary contact number once we landed.

We had also arranged a 4 week holiday home rental in Glen Waverley from the UK to start us off while we looked for a longer term rental (12 months is the minimum here). The long term goal is to buy, but we wanted a year to scope out the market and the suburbs properly.

So, by the end of the first 10 days we:

• Fully sorted out our bank accounts, got our credit cards (very important here) and Internet banking
• Found and signed contracts on a 12 month Rental in Hampton (outstanding house - we were very lucky)
• Rented a small car from AVIS for a month at around £120 a week all in
• Got our two boys enrolled in the local primary school, they start tomorrow and the school looks ten times better than the ones in the UK.
• We bought two Telstra Mobile SIMs on the Freedom plan which allows us to call each other and upto 4 other Telstra Mobile or land lines for free for $30 per month
• Took out a 12 month contract on a BigPond NextG Wireless Broadband card for my laptop so I can get ~1.5Mbps Internet access anywhere in Australia. Much better than 46Kbps dial-up in a lot of areas. I picked the highest rate for the first month and then plan to drop down to $30 a month once we get our 20Mbps ADSL2+ account setup.
• Met with our new accountant and got our Australian company started up. We were advised to shut down our little UK company before we left
• Spoke to VicRoads and put the final tasks in order for when my car arrives from the UK. We went through quite a bit to get it out here and there is not much 100% reliable advice on it in the forum. So I am planning to write a big article once I have the car in my hand a fully insured and registered.

All in all we got a lot done !

So almost two weeks in and we are quite happy. We love the weather here and the parks are great fun. I know it's what everyone says, but Australians really DO spend massive amounts of time outside compared to the UK. So many families having picnics and BBQ's in the big parks, playing football and for the first time in years threw a Frisbie around in the sun on a Sunday !

Paul&Nic

Arrived at Brisbane Airport, realised we'd got our dates muddled and friends who was picking us up wasn't expecting till tomorrow ... ... but thankfully they was cool and picked up us and let us stay for the night ...

nik04

i went outside to look for the brass band and red carpet, did not find either so had a smoke then got a rental car and drove to my uncles and put an offer in on a house. 5 weeks later we moved in and had to wait 8 weeks for our stuff to arrive