Hi there, i recently applied for my holiday work visa. although i am having second thoughts about it as i am only going for 6months and I'm aware that you can only get it once except for if u do a three months fruit picking.

My question is can i cancel this holiday work visa and will i be refunded? or is it too late? I'm due to go to go to sydney on the 4th November.

thanks

DIAC only very rarely give refunds, they don't give them out when people change their mind. There is no harm in asking I suppose.

Thank you for answering my question. I have heard of people cancelling their Work Visa a couple of days before they came to Australia. I hope that I can! as It occurred to me that i only get to work out there once, only if i become a citizen of course.

Cancelling the visa would not be a problem. It is getting a refund and being able to apply for it again that I think could be a problem. Still if you have heard of people doing this then another good reason to give it a try.

I am working in Australia and am not a citizen, so it isn't necessarily the only chance you would have of working there in the future.

If you are granted a WHV it only becomes active once you use it, if you don't use it by the use-by date you can always get another one in the future as long as you still meet the age requirements.

Cant see you getting a refund to be honest.

Are you hoping to come to Oz on a tourist visa instead? Or cancelling the whole thing for the moment?

Erm i just wanted to cancel my WHV and just come over to oz for a long holiday as my uncle lives out over there. I've booked it so i'm there for 6 months... would that be a problem?

If you want 6 months in one go you will need to get a proper tourist visa, rather than an e-visitor or ETA, as they only give you three months at a time.
Have a read of http://www.immi.gov.au/visitors/tourist/

Okay well! I have just contact the Australian embassy in London, and the lady on the phone said I would not be able to get a refund or be able to exchange my WHV for a extended tourist visa. Although she suggested that if I applied for the extended tourist visa this would cancel out my WHV.

Im completely confused guys! I'm going to be out in Sydney for 6 months. My only question is will there be enough stuff out there to keep my occupied for 6months? if so I will probably go down to a tourist visa.

Or do u think 6 months is plenty of time to work out there and it would be a good idea to keep my WHV

Any help?
thanks again everyone.

Mmmm, I know someone else on here once applied for a ETA visa thinking that the issuing of that would cancel the working holiday visa, and they could then get that later..... and it didn't. So the whole WHV was then wasted as they didn't stay long.
Immigration people often give out wrong info unfortunetly.

You could always work for 3 months in something like fruit picking, then you could apply for a whole other years working visa later.

Is there a reason you can only go for 6 months?

To be honest the lady on the phone seemed very unsympathetic and was just very blunt, i didnt completely understand her logic of getting another visa when the other one has already been granted.

I was thinking about it and i don't really fancy paying out for another visa when i have already got one. I highly doubt that i will come back to Australia to work and if i really wanted to the i would probably try to immigrate over there.

I could stay for longer if i like it out there as i am staying with my uncle, but i only staying for 6 months as i thought it would be nice to be back for my 19th birthday and also i was going to re sit an exam in June.Although i am redoing some coursework so if i got a good grade in that i could always just skip the exam and just stay out there for 10 months but i would be there in winter.

The problem with the phone service is that its basically a call centre. The staff there don't have a wide enough knowledge to advise on all types of visa, and its also not really their job. If you want some helpful advice, best thing to do is find a couple of the agents who use this site and discuss the situation with them.