Quoll

So sorry for your loss, it's a really extra hard time to be dealing with family deaths but (here's the hard question) - are you sure you need to return for his funeral? ( I assume you have an exemption to leave, you dont mention that.) Is there something that you really have to do to sort out his affairs or is that something you can delegate to other family members? Having watched my dad's funeral via face time from my daughter in law's phone last year, I wont say it is easy but it could well be considerably easier than dealing with the hassles of going - what are the quarantine arrangements in UK at the moment for example - and then the problems of getting a flight back and quarantine etc etc. I can see the desire to return to visit him while alive but what do you think he would have said about you returning for a funeral? My folk always said, "dont bother to come back for a funeral". If you do go, you will get a 6 month visa stamped in your Australian passport. It would be a wise move to get yourself a UK passport as soon as you can - let them know you arrived on your Aus passport and they wont chase you for being an overstayer if you arent able to get back to Aus or choose to stay in UK. It's a fairly straightforward process done, largely, on line. Good luck.

It happens unfortunately. Not much you can do except keep checking for flights but given the state of the country at the moment (unless you are heading for Perth) I dont much fancy your chances. Perhaps looking for casual work to keep the wolf from the door and also maybe save to get business class or, heaven forbid, first class seats - they do say you are less likely to get bumped off them. Dont sweat it about the kids, the school year doesnt start here until the end of January (foreign country, different education systems) and kids come and go all year round so they arent the issue. I hope your temporary accommodation allows you to stay so that the kids can get back into UK school in a couple of weeks.

It used to be form C2 http://www.gov.ai/forms/passport/form-c2.pdf all very straightforward I think asking as you are British (other than by descent unless you've lived there for a while). Does your wife have any UK ancestry - UK grandparents lend themselves to ancestry visas which is the easiest to obtain.

Another option is to consider his ancestry. If he had a British born grandparent then an ancestry visa would be the one to go for. All depending on his age he may be able to get the equivalent of the WHV to Australia.

Our ship called at Sydney then Melbourne and our cube was off loaded in Melbourne and driven up (by road!) - logic would have said that was silly but I'm no logistics expert.

Yup, Cambridge is eye wateringly expensive!

Yup it could be a Covid thing!

That's really weird, they delivered ours to Canberra and would have had to have come right past Albury/Lavington on the way up. I wonder if it is a covid thing though ours arrived during covid last April. Are you speaking to the English help line? Might be a case of trying them again to see if you get someone who has some knowledge of the geography. They certainly unload at either Melbourne or Sydney - our ship called in at Sydney but our cube was offloaded in Melbourne.

So sorry for your loss. No idea about your ability to travel especially not at the moment but I concur with the others, the streaming of services is now pretty good - I've "been" to 3 funerals in UK this year and they were all very good. If the service is in a church or crematorium they have excellent broadband facilities. My dad was a Face Time on my daughter in law's iPhone as he was a woodland burial in the middle of a Cambridgeshire field. I hope you can get a quick answer from the powers that be!

Definitely the Ancestry visa then, fewer restrictions than any other visa and easier to get.

You’ll need your NI number. You should have had one when you were born so your mum may have it, otherwise you’ll need to apply for it. Fairly straightforward though. You can swap your Aus licence for a U.K. one but you’re going to need to establish some proof of address quite quickly - usually official documentation to that address. Bank accounts also will require proof of address so it’s a bit chicken and egg with establishing proof! Does your partner have any British ancestry? Grandparents are good because a British grandparent means they can apply for an Ancestry visa which is a whole lot easier than a Partner visa which requires you to prove an annual income over about £20k or savings over £65k (sorry, forgot the exact amounts). I believe partner visa recipients must prove their status (including financial support) every year. Otherwise, if you can take unpaid leave from your current job, you might want to treat it as a sabbatical and see how you like it. Hedge your bets as it were. As for sending stuff - we were happy users of the Seven Seas move cube service but we didn’t have furniture to transport. It was economical and efficient but you do have to pack everything yourself.

Just get your citizenship sorted, even if it means leaving a bit later than you’d planned, and Bob’s your uncle, you can come and go at will after that!

You should get them in plenty of time then!

Australian citizens need Australian passports whether they are children or not. You’ve probably got time to get them given the shenanigans going on at the moment. However, that said, it is technically possible to enter with a foreign passport and citizenship certificate if the airline is prepared to do the work and talk to the right people in Immigration - if they can get hold of them in time for you to catch your plane, which isn’t always possible and you may miss your flight. The airline won’t let you on without verification from Canberra, they aren’t going to trust a citizenship certificate without provenance. The fact that the pax in question are children has nothing to do with it. Again, given the current parlous situation with flights, the last thing you want is a hassle at check in. If you can’t wait 3 weeks for a new passport, I believe you can apply for an emergency passport but you could talk to the HC about that.

Nope, I was surprised at the number too - all of us over 40 years here. As I said, I thought I was Robinson Crusoe. It wasn’t something we talked about until I learned it was ok to talk about it. I guess the clue with my friends might have been the regular trips back! I think you’re right about the Covid jail though, once we can get a sanity hit things should ease up a bit.

I think a lot of people, especially first generation migrants just dont talk about it. Unless they are on boards like this, they probably have no idea that what they are feeling may be quite normal - I certainly thought I was Robinson Crusoe before I found this place. Then I started talking about it to other long term expats like myself in my real life and with one exception, they all said they would go back tomorrow if they could but all had kids, finances, houses etc which just made it impossible. Even our elderly ex next door neighbour (now dead) said he would happily go home to Byker if only he didnt have kids and grandkids here. The only one who said "no way would I ever go back" came from Manchester and still has a Mancunian accent (I could probably relate if I came from Manchester LOL) and she said she left in a snow storm so that rather coloured her departure. To all intents and purposes I think most of us would appear "settled" and until recently we certainly didnt dare whinge about it (those bloody whingeing Poms again!) but I suppose the anonymity of the internet has sort of given us permission to have a whinge. I certainly dont bang on about it in real life and most of my acquaintance here wouldnt know that I loathe the place with a passion.

Your heart tells you where home is. Your head tells you where you live. Sometimes there's a disconnect and no matter how much you may say that Australia is "home" it doesnt necessarily follow that it means any more than this is where you live and where your house is. Home for many of us is where we belong. If you happen to "belong" in Melbourne or Tasmania or even ACT then that's fine and dandy. Sometimes no amount of trying, positive self talk and reframing can make you "belong" where you don't.

Go. It’s just another first world country, if you choose, you can generate much the same lifestyle in any other first world country. Being trapped is the pits, escape while you can.

You know that bed sizes in Australia are different from Europe? Don’t bother with mattresses unless you bring the beds. Ditto bedding (fitted sheets anyway). We used the move cube boxes plus another few packs from storage world. We tended to try and keep them manageable weight - didn’t have any super large boxes but when you can pack 30kg of yarn into a medium size box, wrangling anything larger would have been a nightmare. Thank heavens my DH lifts weights so hefting 30kg into the cube wasn’t an issue for him (I stuck to the under 20kg items). Remember that you’ll have to stack it yourself - our driver chose to be super helpful but that was pre-COVID. Remember, too, that they give you a time limit on packing so have everything accessible on the day and, if you can, have a plan, from your mock up, about which items go in first. Put contentious things that customs/quarantine might get antsy about at the opening end, that way they don’t have to burrow through. We also had a number of good sized plastic boxes, many repurposed, which were a good size for a manageable weight of books - they all stood the strain, maybe because they were firmly packed with books. We bought a bike box but DH was a bit cavalier and didn’t pack it firmly enough, hence the broken mudguard! We used clothing, Manchester, yarn etc as packing items where we could (and lots and lots of newspaper for individually wrapping plates, mugs, vases etc) Can’t remember how long it took but DH was on the job for a good month before it all came together. Some things are easily packed early - like the books and the best China. We had a spreadsheet detailing what (in general) was in each box which proved invaluable when the cube arrived. Cant help with the multi cube thing but in your situation what Id probably do is to stagger them - pack up enough for the first, send it off then start on the second and then you’ll be able to judge what size and how many you’ll need. You can “camp” with very little in reality once they’re gone. Cant help you with insurance either. We chose not to get it as it seemed like a huge faff and we were lucky but I did chew a few fingernails over that as I’m a belt and braces gal. Rather you than me! My DH is a bit OCD at the best of times and he just took it all in his stride. Lists and labels are his thing! (Label 2 sides of the boxes, number them and put the weight of each on both sides so they are easily accessible!)

You’ll be able to track your ship too - we thought that was great fun!

Very positive experience. They were well organised and helpful. Would happily use them again.

So sorry to hear that - this distance thing is a real bugger when the going gets tough, isnt it? Hope it all works out better than it seems at the moment!

Good question - most of the requests for exemption on this and other boards have been for single individuals because the other partner can’t go. You’d hope that they would consider the family unit at times of trauma and stress but it’ll be interesting to find out. Sorry to hear you’re probably facing this, it’sa very worrying prospect.

Yes it does but not as vehemently and people have been allowed to remove children from the jurisdiction with strong access conditions in place. Australia just won’t let them go if one parent says no even if they are the worst drop kicks of all time. If otoh someone nicks off from UK to another HC country then they can be forced to return to UK to face court charges.

I'd say if you aren't sure then don't do it. When I was younger and my parents in their 60/70 I had the naive view that it wasn't going to be a problem and whilst they were fit and healthy it wasn't but your scenario of something happening and you getting the call is probably the most likely down the track and you have to accept that and maybe plan so that you have funds to get you home ASAP if and when it happens. You don't say if you have kids - if you do then don't move until you are 100% certain that it's what you want because (read the Hague Convention!!!!) Australia will not let kids leave if one parent says they can't - so you could be stuck forever in a place you want to escape. Don't bring kids into the equation until you've sorted out your feelings about being isolated and far from home. I can't stress this enough. My DH is an Australian and I'm stuck here - it's OK, I live with it but don't love it but life here with him is considerably less worse than life where I want to be without him - so I guess your big decision is whether She's the girl you want to grow old beside. You can't cuddle a country after all. For us, we weren't that near his family and that worked well. It'll be hard enough to deal with the resentment that she gets to see her folk more easily and you don't but if you were living in her space where she knows everyone, knows everything, knows everywhere and you're the third wheel I think that must be so much more difficult to put up with - move to a place where you both have to start again as a couple /family. It's been 42 years here now and both my parents are dead so there's less of a pull to be where I belong but if the DH would say tomorrow "let's go" I'd be off like a flash! (Not going to happen of course and he did recently spend 9 years with me in UK caring for my parents until mum died and dad put himself into care - dad died when I was here and I got "the call" and it wasn't easy not to be able to get back for his funeral but you live through it) Good luck with whatever you decide.