Bailey1

Hello everyone, My OH & I will be flying into Sydney in the middle of July. We plan to spend the 5 weeks prior to that travelling around Asia.

We have applied for visa 175 (from outside Oz). When we enter Oz we will be using a working holiday visa(WHV) as the 175 will most likely not have been issued by then.
As we have applied for the 175 outside of Oz we will have to leave the country while they are issuing the visa. They reckon this should only take a week. We plan on going to NZ for this time.

Just wondering if anyone else has done this and has any advice for us?
Or if anyone has any info for us about sydney and which suburbs are nice, close to the centre and not too expensive?

AndyR

I'm also interested in this answer, as if I get the chance to apply for a 176 (succsesful RPL pending), me and the misses are likely to do the same. Go on a WHV first and then wait over there for the visa and take an extended holiday first.

Go luck with your visa app btw

Bailey1

Thanks. We are waiting on a reply for the whm. We applied on Thurs 3rd April and no reply yet. It says it takes 6-10 working days(I think). When do you think you will be heading over?

Bailey1

Sorry if this sounds silly but what is the RPL?

POW148

Hi

I had to go to NZ to get my visa issued. Despite writing to the immigration people in NZ and phoning them up prior to my arrival, they still managed to mess me around. I kept on being to told to come back tomorrow. This went on for 5 days but in the end, all was well. The visa was issued and I arrived back in Australia without any trouble.

Hopefully this has changed and the immigration department has lifted their game in the past 13 years, but I would not relay on a quick fly in, fly out with visa.

Barney

AndyR

Its called Recognition of Prior Learning. Its the skills assesment for people in IT who have no certifications or degree's, but lots of work experience. I had to write down what I have learnt during my whole career into a number of categories. Took me 2 months and came out at 102 pages so I just hope it gets approved from this

Bailey1

God thats awful. This sort of stuff really stresses me out. We will both be taking a weeks holidays from our work. So not only will we have to take them(the holiday) at a minutes notice but we can't tell them for sure when we will be coming back.....! Its messy. Its not too bad for me as I plan on doing temp work initially but hope my Oh's (future)company understand.

Bailey1

That sounds awful, U poor thing. Thank God we had fairly straight forward application. I am going as a de facto partner so it was my Oh who had everything to prove - yet somehow I still happened to end up doing most of it....Weird, huh?

Bailey1

I suppose I can't complain cause if it wasn't for his degree then we wouldn't be going anywhere!