brits1

But why then employ someone from the other side of the globe (as my friends of friends have) instead of someone who is a lot nearer to Australia....who already has the experience of migration and all that entails..... you'd think Australia would be eager to employ people from NZ such as the original poster, I wish him and all his family the best of luck and to maybe highlight that (if not already done so) on his resume..

Brisbannite

Weren't your friends offered sponsorship in other states though - SA and NSW? Maybe EscapedtoNZ should consider doing the same?

brits1

One was sponsored the other is a dentist and is going on a permanent resident visa

Perro

Good onya

Job wise, worst case scenario you could get a casual position/warehouse work paying $30 an hour plus super, in comparison to NZ that's moombeams.

Best of luck

escapedtonz

Hey hey hey.
Thanks for all the comments - keep them coming

So the latest news........jeez I love all this chopping and changing
So, I did make a proposal to our Senior Leadership Team, offering my services in another department that supports where I normally work. That department is short staffed and struggling under the mountain of work they have and as we get nearer to summer it will get massively busier by the day. A couple of people have recently left for promotion elsewhere and another due to leave on maternity soon. My plan was to go and help them out on a secondment basis during recruitment and training and then when the time came to migrate, I would carry on working for them remotely....pretty much just like working from home as they've all been doing the past several weeks because of lockdown and then when my services no longer required I would be in Aus and I'd just resign and hopefully have an Aus job lined up.
Anyways, their senior manager declined my offer, so that idea kind of got kyboshed - bummer!!!
Not 24hrs later, another of the employees resigned and since he hadn't completed his probationary period, he just left at the end of the week so, BOOM....department down another employee and in serious trouble.
Their senior leader has since come back cap in hand to my manager asking for us to help out since we are a team of 26 on shift and can usually offer some assistance. Nobody has volunteered to help except little old me ha ha!!!
Seems I am their only hope.
My boss thinks its is the perfect solution so has been working hard the last couple days trying to get something agreed, so I am hopeful that we'll actually be going to Aus and I'll still be getting paid from my NZ employer and working for them remotely for a temporary period.....it's like a complete U turn within a couple of weeks. Hopefully have something agreed by early next week and I'll come off shift pretty much in the next week or so and then move in to their department as a Senior System Security Engineer with the responsibility of assessing all the Grid outages before they hit the control room in Real Time. Being a secondment means I continue to get paid the same money which includes a 20% shift component even though I'm not doing a shift job, AND since I'll be working from home I'll also save on the 220km round trip commute which will save me near 3hrs / $25 per day, AND no need for after school club for the kids or anything like that as I'll be home.
Working for them remotely in Aus will be a little more complicated since I'll have to resign from my job which subsequently affects the secondment so we are looking to set up a casual contract where I work on say a month by month rolling contract till I'm either not needed anymore or I find a job in Aus.
Will let y'all know how I get on.
Cheers

Brisbannite

All the best mate, don't forget to set up superannuation accounts for yourself and the missus when you get here.

escapedtonz

Latest update

Sold the wife's Mazda CX-8 and she then relieved me of my Pug hatchback, which meant we're down a car that could tow and for me to get to work
Eventually found a cheap replacement and had a towbar fitted so we're all good again.
Have signed on for the house listing. Full prep day on 27th. Photo's/Video's 28th. Twilight open home for the agents and close neighbors 1st Oct.
House goes live online 4th October. First official open home Sunday 10th Oct.
Ideally want to fly out to Brizzy around 26/27th November but since the travel bubble has been paused for a further 8 weeks, AirNZ have pulled all flights till at least Nov 30th now so the wife is in full on stress mode!!!
She's now convinced we're gonna be stranded here in NZ with no jobs, homeless yada yada
I'm a bit more relaxed about it as what will be will be. Nothing we can do but go with the flow.
By the time we get around to late November, we'll have both resigned. The house will be sold. Our items will be in a shipping container hoofing it over to Aus and we'll not have any responsibilities or mortgage etc. We'll just have us, the kids and a car to look after.
I see an opportunity for a nice chillax couple weeks in the Coromandel while we await the chance to travel to Aus.
Luckily my NZ employer has agreed to let me stay on doing ad hoc work after my resignation date and keep paying me until we can travel and I have over 300hrs annual leave to take that I was just going to cash in so at worst we may have to live in a motel for a while. No great disaster in my opinion.
Hopefully by the time I get home this eve she'll have calmed down a bit and worked out a plan

escapedtonz

Back again like a bad penny with latest update!

House sale went live on Monday. Had a couple private viewings on Monday with one of those submitting a pre-auction offer Wednesday, however even though the offer was pretty good, we're playing hard ball and would like to at least have one Open Home under our belts which is planned for this Sunday. We've responded with a very polite thanks for your offer but at the moment given that we are only 3 days in to selling the answer is currently No.
Had another private viewing today and we have another booked in for tomorrow then we'll be getting ready for the Open on Sunday.
We expect we'll have other pre-auction offers by early next week and we'll be bringing the auction forward to the Mon/Tue the week after that.
With regards to the Brisbane move:-
We have removals booked 24/25/26 Nov.
Planning to handover the house keys to the agent 27 Nov.
Settlement Day 29 Nov
Air NZ flight booked 2nd Dec
Brisbane CBD furnished apartment booked for 3 months till end Feb 2022.
Highly likely the Air NZ flight will be bumped or cancelled and we'll just get a credit for them due to ongoing Covid19 travel restrictions, however we have the option of taking a charter flight which will guarantee us entry and a place in MIQ in Brisbane.
Not making the call on that as yet, however following the value of the pre-auction offer, the fact that the charter flight costs would be an extra $30k on top of what we have paid for the Air NZ flights doesn't really seem to matter. On their own, the cost of a charter flight seat is stupid money, but in the grand scheme of things and after potentially making so much money on the house we feel it may be worth it just so we get to Brisbane when we planned and it bypasses all the government travel restrictions and how that affects scheduled flights. People who have travelled this way in the last week or so say it was an absolute breeze and an experience not to be missed even though the cost is so high.

So thats me for the moment. Hope you're all good ?

Pollyana

So just interested from a professional point of view.
MIQ is not a term used here.
There are basically 3 types of quarantine for international entry to Queensland at present
- standard within the cap flights, basic hotel imprisonment for 2 weeks/
-sportspeople. TV stars, rich-who-can-afford-charter flights where they barter with the government to get possession of an entire hotel outside of the cap, and fund everything themselves, often involving media headlines as the stars break quarantine and gloat about how they got in while Aussies desperate to reunite with their partners are denied entry
-seriously important stars like Minogue, and politicians, who are instantly allowed to fly in however they like and then get to isolate at home in their own mansion for two weeks surrounded by friends family and staff.

I guess if you are in a charter you are in the second group. Good luck, and I genuinely mean that.
A word about the insular State you are flying into. Just be careful when you get here as you really are one of the lucky ones, many children have been apart from parents, husbands apart from wives, etc for 20 months and a lot of Queensland falls into one of two camps - we are badly impacted by the border closure, or the other large camp - don't care at all about us and want the borders closed indefinitely. They are the ones who have the backing of the Premier, and her line is currently "why would people want to go abroad anyway?" The reality is that Qld and WA are likely to still be locked in by State borders while everyone else is celebrating being together again.

Having said that. hope it works out for you!

escapedtonz

Nope, even though we would be charter, the quarantine booking is - standard within the cap flights, basic hotel imprisonment for 2 weeks. We have to provide all the necessary details to the charter company and complete the necessary declarations and the charter company book the quarantine spots and we are charged by the QLD state for those spots which is additional cost $5000 in total for 2 adults 2 kids.
Had a quote for the charter this morning it'll be $7500 - $8300 each seat (dependent on passenger number as its an 8 seater jet), plus $140 each PCR test, plus quarantine $5000 - so pretty much $36-39k
Stupid stupid price and at any other time we would never even consider it but with $1.2M/$1.3M in our ass pocket when we leave NZ we'd probably earn that back in interest during the period we receive it and when we come to spend it on a house in Brisbane so we feel why not if it guarantees us getting there when we want to travel.
I completely understand the situation for many others and that there are tens of thousands of people being prevented from travelling. I completely sympathize and will most definitely keep our arrival low key.
Cheers

Brisbannite

Hey I have a lump sum to put into savings, please share with me who is paying that incredible rate of interest?

Do you know where you want to buy and where the good schools are near to where your wife will work?

Don't hang around more than a few weeks before buying, its coming to peak property season here in SEQ and there's the added fun of two weeks over Christmas where QLD comes to a standstill and nothing happens.

You'll be competing with cashed up movers from NSW and Vic, investors and residents returning to Australia from abroad. The property market is already red hot, when borders start to reopen in a few weeks its going to go thermonuclear. I'm seriously considering a change of career to auctioneer

Final tip, don't forget you have to pay stamp duty on house purchases, a purchase price of $1.2m will cost you $42,350.

All up, with sellers fees, stamp duty, moving costs, car purchases etc. your burning desire to move to Brisbane is going to cost you around $150k.

Good luck

escapedtonz

OK, so latest update.
Has been a bit of a whirlwind the past couple weeks
House sale went live Mon 4th Oct. First pre-auction offer received Wed 6th Oct. First Open Home Sun 10th Oct - at that point we'd had around 30 groups through.
Second pre-auction offer received Tue 12th Oct which was better and met our reserve so after a bit of negotiating on the unconditional conditions it was accepted so ultimately we'd secured a sale and sold at our reserve price but obviously we were still under auction conditions. The second offer still not enough to take it off the market and just sell at that price, and the secured buyer happy to go to early auction.
We then brought the auction forward by 3 weeks and sold for an additional $265k to an Aucklander bidding on the phone sight unseen
We even exceeded our Champagne price!!!

So at the moment we're slowly selling things off and packing up ready for the removals people coming on the 24th Nov. They're coming back Thursday so we can finalise what size container we actually need and we're hoping we can get in a 20ft container.

We did change our AUK-BNE flight that was booked 2nd Dec. Were now on a CHC-BNE flight on the 10th Dec and gonna fly down to CHC on the 26th Nov to have a 2 week holiday, see some friends before we leave and do a camper van trip etc down there with the kids before (hopefully) flying out to Brisbane on the 10th.

New owners of our house just want to get out of Auckland as they're sick of lockdown and want to escape. They may move in early and rent for 2 or 3 weeks before they take ownership on settlement day which is currently set for 17th Dec and if that happens we've already agreed $1k per week rent and they're paying an additional $10k for some bits of furniture/ride on mower etc they want us to leave for them.

Mrs has already handed her notice in and officially leaves 26th Nov. I wrote my resignation letter out last night and will submit that probably next Monday 8th Nov and my final day will be Xmas Eve 24th Dec. My last shift currently 22nd Nov and then I'll be on annual leave until my exit date as I have loads of accrued annual leave so may as well use some of it up while still getting paid for another month or so (plus it means I qualify for a further 60hrs shift leave from the 1st Dec). The remainder of my leave plus the 60hrs bonus can be cashed in so I reckon that's worth around $11k gross for my final pay.

So we're just trucking along and hoping all the arrangements go according to plan. If anyone gonna screw it up it'll be good ole Air New Zealand

Hope you're all good

Mishclark

So pleased it's all falling into place for you 😊

scrubbedexpat094

Really pleased for you and just a little bit green with envy

escapedtonz

Woo hoo!!!
Greetings BE'ers.
Has been approx 7 weeks since I last logged on with an update.

Mrs left her job, sold loads of stuff, cars, quad bikes, caravan etc. Got rid of a load of furniture etc in the house that we didn't wanna take with us and reduced the shipping container contents as much as we could which also brought down the cost.
House got packed up 25th Nov and we left for Christchurch 26th November to stay with friends and have a bit of a holiday.
My last day in work was 22nd November night shift and since then I've been on annual leave as I had heaps remaining. I officially leave Transpower on 24th December and the good thing is I still have heaps of annual leave remaining which will get cashed in, I've still been getting paid.
Was great to see old friends in Rolleston and Amberley and the camper van trip with the kids was awesome - we did Christchurch, Lake Tekapo, Wanaka, Queenstown, Cromwell, Haast, Franz Joseph, Greymouth, Reefton, Hanmer Springs and back to Christchurch over 2 weeks and did 1500kms.
As expected Air New Zealand did screw up our Aussie travel plans by cancelling the flights again so we booked on to a private charter flight Christchurch to Brisbane to leave 13th December.
That went without a hitch and we arrived in Brisbane (quarantine free) Monday 13th December and have been here 9 days, living in a city centre 9th floor exec serviced apartment right on Coro Drive and the river. Has been a great experience so far and the kids are loving it. We have so much within easy stroll distance its crazy.
We are both jobless, all homeless and all we own is the luggage we brought with us, a brand new motor we bought cash when we arrived and the 2/3rds contents of a 40ft shipping container that is somewhere unknown in the Southern Hemisphere.
House settlement went through without a hitch, mortgage paid, agent & solicitor fees paid and we transferred our final balance over to Aussie so we're sitting here with zero debt and a real healthy bank balance and it is such a strange feeling.......liberating......scary.....fear of the unknown etc.

Can't do zip now till after New Year as just like in NZ, everything shuts for a couple of weeks so we'll be ready to hit the ground running from 5th January as businesses etc open up again.
- Need to buy a house, get a job and enrol the kids in to school.

Taking the Christmas/New Year period to have some fun with the kids. Already been to the Gold Coast and Warner Bros Movie World and done the White Christmas show. Did Brisbane South Bank beach and the Brisbane Wheel yesterday and back there today for another swim and doing the Brisbane city Christmas show. Going to some friends approx 30 mins out of the CBD for Christmas day & Christmas dinner so it's all slowly coming together

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year. Have a great one and make it count!!!