Visa validation trip...
 

Well we finally did it and we had the most awesome time of our lives.
We flew with emirates which i would highly reccommend. They gave us excellent service from the food ( little spicy ) entertainment and comfort, and i think at £2300 for 4 of us wasn't too bad. All flights and connecting flights were on time. The only thing i have to say is .....shit a brick it was a bloody long flight . Don't get me wrong i knew it would be long but the jetlagg we felt the day after was like being kicked all over and your eyeballs scratched with cats claws, but we got through it and it certainly didn't put us off.
I was dissappointed when we arrived at Sydney as i half expected them to have thier are open wide with banners saying welcome to Sydney all i got was 'take you sunglasses off' as he looked at my passport :blink:
SYDNEY

Spent the next 6 days in Sydney which was amazing. Being in a big city was very daunting especially for the kiddies. We stayed in the central Travel lodge which was just perfect. The hotel was clean and took us 10 minutes to get to Circular keys. The day we saw the Sydney Harbour Bridge on one side and the Opera house on the other was a day we wont forget it was just spectacular. We both managed to climb the bridge whist we were there, unfortunatly we had to do it seperate as the kids were too young and they provided no childcare. But we were made to feel comfortable and safe and that climb and those views will stay with me forever. We took a trip to the blue mountains the following day which were breath taking and be prepared as it is a full day. Not only did we go to the Blue mountains but the trip included a wildlife park, The Olympic stadium, a cable car ride down to the rain forest and leura. Well worth the money at £350 for the 4 of us with lunch provided. A trip to manly beach is a must and we actually had two days there as we really liked it there and it had some good surfing shops if your in to that. Definatley worth buyng all your gear out there, from flip flops to sunglasses it's cheap.

PERTH

On first impressions into Perth i have got to admit i felt dissappointed ...not really sure why, maybe i had this image in my head of lush green grass and copious ammount of lush palm tress but the grass wasn't lush and the tree's wilted but as Trev kept reminding me they were in the middle of summer with a terrible drought. But as i got further into Perth it seemed better or maybe i just got use to it.

Perth is just beautiful with the most amazing beaches that you will ever see. Crystal clear water with fish swimming through your legs.....just perfect. You do need to watch for the tide it is very strong and make sure you swim where it has a life gaurd. I am a strong swimmer and i felt my feet go under from me a few times.

We found it very easy to drive around Perth. Watch your speed limit though especially on the Freeway. The first trip down the freeway was a complete nightmare, we had a massive row and where it should have took us 20 minutes to get to kings Park it ended up taking 1 1/2 hours. Petrol is very cheap and over 16 days we only used about £ 70 worth and we did alot of driving about.

There were some fantastic places to visit...here's my favourites

1) kings Park....just an amazing park, beautiful and clean with lots of wild birds just waiting to be fed. the views of the city and the river are awesome. The park holds nighty open cinema viewing too and you can hire a beany bed and watch your favourite movie under the stars. It has BBQ areas and a childrens play area with a small cafeteria. Free parking

2)Perth zoo.....Fantastic zoo costing only $45 for 4 of us ( £ 19 ) not as big as Chester Zoo but just as good. Kids loved it , plenty of facillities with lots of drinking fountains. Great range of animals and parking once again is free.

3) Freemantle The Prison only closed 15 years ago and is incredible to see. If you have ever watched the shaw shank redemption you will know what i mean. You can either park right outside the prison or in the centre of Freemantle itself. Parking costs about 80c per hour...cheap as chips !!! the prison holds different types of tours. Ours was 1 1/4 tour cost $42 for 4 of us which i thought was great value for money. My kiddies are 9 and 6 and they loved it. The officers were great with the kids. Freemantle market has a great indoor market too which has fresh fruit, veg and fish along with clothes and gifts to buy. I could have spent a fortune but obviousley we needed to think about getting the stuff back.

4) Rottnest Island.......YOU MUST VISIT HERE !!!! only 200 people live on the island with 25 kids attending the school. The island has delivery cars only the rest of the islanders/ visitors have bicycles to get around. It has two small cafes where you get a nice lunch and a bar...watch out when buying slushes for the kids though...i bought two for my kiddies and didn't realise they were vodka slushes :o :beer: :beer:

5 ) Hillaries Boat harbour.....the favourite place for me.....lovely beach for the kiddies as there is no surf as such and they can paddle. Also have big play areas and a fair for them too ( although mine hate the fair) The harbour is beautiful and has a good choice of resturants and cafe for reasonable prices. Overall i thought Perth was very cheap to eat out.

So there are some of my favourite places we visited but we visited many more special places including the most amazing beaches you will see. Cottesloe had to be my favourite though . It had the best fish and chip shop in the world and battered crab sticks are a firm favourite of mine now.

We also took time to visit schools for the children, we viewed houses all over Perth from Ashby right down to Scarborough, we wanted to see what we would get for our money. I arranged a visit to Perth General and got myself a job if i want it and we also opened a bank acount, you just need to take you passport with you , easy peezy.

We were glad we visited first it gave us a good insight to what life would be like to live there. It gave us the strength we need to take the bull by the horns and live our dream. So we are now home have the house to sell and then we are off.

Leaving Perth was a very sad day for us but we know we will be back soon.

Re: Visa validation trip...
 

So,when are you planing on returning? Did you not consider QLD, Vic or SA?

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January 08........and no we staying put in Perth. Although i will visit there for holidays in the future :)

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Really informative post Issie:thumbup:
J x

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Great post:thumbup:

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Interesting post that Issie, glad you liked Perth...

7 weeks to Perth reccie...

HoHo

Dave

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Great post. Glad you had a lovely time.

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Ahhh, takes me back 3 years to our first visit. You've still got exploring Margaret River area to come. :)

Karl

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I believe the Margaret River area has some good wineries :beer:

We also wanted to go to Monkey Mia but just didn't get the chance to.

Are you in Australia yet ?

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Just remember you've got your whole lives ahead to explore. We were mad about seeing everyting when we first arrived, but it suddenly dawns on you that these 'once in a lifetime' trips are now the norm, while travelling back to Europe is the once in a lifetime thing.

Glad it all went well, and hope the final lap goes smoothly for you:)

Carl

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Lots of good wineries, as Ann will confirm. I don't drink wine, so I was the chauffeur!

Not there yet. Application lodged last month. If accepted, and if we decide to go for it, we're waiting until our daughters' A Levels and GCSEs are finished in 2008.

Karl

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Good Luck Karl :)

How does you daughter feel about the move...excited ?

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I'm so glad you enjoyed your trip Issie, now come on I'll race ya on the house sale! :lol:

jackie x

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Thanks. Youngest wants to go. Eldest is a born worrier, and it's not so clear cut in her case. She also wants to be a vet. Then there's us - we'll be 46 (me) and 42 (Ann) next year. Pretty old to be starting from scratch, and a big financial risk too.

It'll basically come down to gut reaction if we ever get the visa granted. If we're both jumping up and down - we're off! If one or both of us is undecided - we're staying here.

Karl

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HA HA.....good you sound like us. My daughter was homesick on the bloody holiday:ohmy: so god knows how she will be.

I still get waves of doubt but i think most guys will confirm that it is relatively normal to feel like this.

As my Mum said yesterday.......don't live your life with any regrets...go for it and if it doesn't work out you can come home with your head held high and said ' we tried it ' but it's not for us.

Are you heading for Perth yourself ?

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Perth is where we'd like to go. My brother and his family also live in Perth. We won't be taking a huge amount of capital, so there is the consideration of (a)will we end up in a $300k property with a reasonable mortgage, but surrounded by bogans and hoons, or (b) living somewhere nice with a really nasty mortgage.

So, depending on property situation here and there, Adelaide looks tempting too! (Apart from less active jobs market).

Go for it. Much easier to do if you're in your 30s I feel - not so easy to start from scratch when retirement is less than 20 years away. In our case (thinking of worst case scenarios) we could spend two years struggling to find employment, during which time all our capital would have run out. No chance then of getting back on UK property ladder.

If that sounds too much doom and gloom, there's more to life than owning property. Brother in Perth is quite happy renting following split from partner. He's mid 50s now and NO chance of buying property again.

Perhaps I should start an "Old Gits" thread in the main Forum? :rofl:

Karl

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Hey less of the Old Gits.......You are only a couple of years older than us;)

OH is 40 this year and we will be starting from scratch too. We have a very established house here which needs nowt doing to it and a low mortgage.
( bought a right time )......but if we were not intending to move to Australia i would move from this house anway as it is not somewhere i want to spent my retirement days.

Prices in Perth are staying put at the moment and there is talk about them falling slightly, so we may be in with a chance.

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I hope so. REIWA Quarterly median for Dec 06 was $450k for Perth, but that's based on figures from the previous 12 months, so "real" median is higher.

Attadale here we come! Or do I mean Armadale? ;)

Karl

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:eek: :lol: :rofl:

Re: Visa validation trip...
 

hi there,
this is my first contact with this site. I have posted all the applications off to the ANMC, QNC,and visa application I am a community childrens nurse and hope to move to Cairns where my brother in law and his wife live. I have my husband and two children hopefully going with me!! my daughter is 12 and my son 15 so he will be left school when we leave.We are 37 years old. Its good to find out that we are all feeling the same about leaving our lives behind, my brother in law emmigrated 5 years ago and hasnt looked back really,but my sister in law has suffered along the way with home sickness,but has settled now is anyone else planning to go to cairns? I would love to hear from you thanks Trudi

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Old Gits thread sounds like a good idea to me. I happened to come across this thread by accident. We are new to ths site and still finding or way around, so it was great to read about people in a similar position to ourselves.

OH is 46 this year, just managed to get the visa application in before he turned 45, and we have two young boys(6 and 2). It is quite a daunting thought starting from scratch when you're in your 40's and the worry of OH not getting employment and running down the capital especially when we have such a young family. Anyway we have decided to go out for a rekkie once our visas come through and see just what the job market etc is like.

I think that once we go out it will be a case of we can't come back certainly the way the house prices are going at the moment.

Re: Visa validation trip...
 

Swings and roundabouts. If you're in your 20s or 30s, you've got more time to make mistakes and move on (literally), but chances are you've got less capital behind you.

For us 40 somethings...if things go belly-up, that's the last 20 years' worth of equity blown, and retirement is only 20 years away!!

So it helps if you're reasonably certain that Australia is worth (a) all its bad points and (b) risking blowing most of your savings.

Personally I am budgeting for a smaller salary and a bigger mortgage in going to Perth. We'll only have about $150k to put down on a place, which'll mean a motgage of between $200k to £250k to buy somewhere very modest.

Means we have to be confident that we'll be gaining more from the move, than what we'll be leaving behind, which is quite a lot. I'm fairly confident we will. Also, I don't have rose tints, as my brother has lived there for the last 20years and so we get to hear the good and the bad.

Good luck :)

Karl
PS: Ast, I hope you're reading this. Your collywobbles are completely normal!

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But how exciting it all going to be too.:)

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Oh yes. Very!!!!

Then there's the mind boggling decisions like:

Which AFL team? (I hate sports usually, but when in Rome...);

Which bumper sticker (Australian or State, like my avatar); and

The Quest for a decent Indian Restaurant.

Karl

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The last being the most important :p

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Plus the Quest for strong cheese. Oops, have i just lit the blue touch paper? :rofl:

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:rofl: :rofl: ;)

When are you hoping to get there Karl ?

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Youngest and eldest daughters sit GCSEs and A Levels respectively next June (08), so we're not looking to move before then. Ideally, to cut down on disruption, we wouldn't want to sell the house and move into a rental in the UK in the run up to the exams. However, we'd like to be in Perth before xmas 08, so they can benefit from a whole academic year starting in Jan 09. Eldest wants to be a vet, so her A Level results are critical.

Counting my chickens, as we're still waiting for a CO, and obviously no guarantee we'll get visa/pass meds etc.

So, a long time scale for us. On the plus side, Perth house prices should have stabilised. I've even seen some talk (in Real Estate section of PomsInPerth) of slight house price fall.

Anyway, probably have to make a validation visit sometime before next Easter.

How about you?

Karl

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You have done a lot of planning Karl......kids eh .....what we do for them :blink:

We will be there for next Easter so you could always pop in for a cold one .....we will be needing a bit of company and a few laughs to keep us going.

We are leaving the UK mid January. Have got the kids into primary for the beginning of the new term

Re: Visa validation trip...
 

Yes we'll all look forward to a cold one while discussing the best part of Armadale to live in... (or Kwinana!!).

The girls are the biggest worry - is it the right think to do for them etc etc? On the plus side, they're looking forward to getting away from chavs.

Karl

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It IS the best thing for them. Although it is a difficult age, but i have met a guy on here and his son was nearly 17 when they arrived 2 1/2 years ago and they and ( the son ) have never looked back.

if you don't go you will never know :)