Quoll

Newcastle is in NSW so that isn't going to be an option on a Qld state sponsored visa. Most kids go to their local school and people generally live where they are going to work so rather than starting with schools you may like to start with where you will be working, how much commuting got want to do, what sort of house you want and where your budget will stretch to and where there are houses available. All schools have a catchment area and they are obliged to find a place for a child living within that area. No Ofsted but the closest would be https://myschool.edu.au. Government schools are "free" but you still shell out for "voluntary contributions", uniforms, stationery packs, book packs, visiting teachers, performances, excursions, camps etc etc. Private schools can cost you anywhere between $5k and $25k pa all depending on what you choose. There's a parallel Catholic system pretty much everywhere (bottom range private) but some private schools have long waiting lists. Sport clubs everywhere, drama clubs everywhere although the larger the city the more opportunities in general. If they're top level sports or drama, budget for a lot of travel within Qld (very big stare) or interstate (very big country). BTW in Aus Football is rugby and UK style football is soccer (so be careful which football clubs you sign them up with!)

Yes, what Ali said. Basically, GCSEs mean diddly squat. Get your Alevels before you leave if you can. Failing that, be in Australia when you are just 16 or just about to turn 16 to do years 11 and 12. A levels travel well to Australia for Uni entry (they convert to good scores).

Oh c'mon, Canberra 2003? I doubt there was a single Canberran who wasn't giving bushfires a very serious thought!

I quite agree with you! In PNG there was a whole range of other stuff we lived with too - spiders the size of dinner plates when squashed (that was about 4 weeks after I moved there and the DH was away! I didn't go into the kitchen until he returned!), the wild pigs are a bit of a threat when you were out in the bush and never get too close to a cassowary, those things can rip your guts out! Yes the wasps were a nuisance in UK (and we've got them here in Canberra too and people do freak out a bit) but I hated the horse flies in UK as much as anything. I dunno what it was but almost every Roman site I went to had a resident population of horse flies which took great delight in biting! Much like the March flies here in the Alpine regions which can get you through 3 layers of hiking socks. Bottom line, if you live somewhere you get on with it! Things will kill you wherever you are, things will scare you wherever you are, disasters may happen wherever you are but that's life!!! (I'd be really scared of falling cliffs in Sussex for example!)

Yes, we get them!!!! Last time I came for a holiday in January, before we came back for good, I made the mistake of going out to get the washing in with bare legs - 5 bloody bites that took weeks to heal and I itched all the way on the plane home which is really annoying when you're wearing compression socks! Of course, we were here when the air was the worst quality in the world too from the Bushfire smoke, I didn't mention that, but it put a dent in my outside walks - so, all up I've worn a mask more this year than ever before in my life. The flies have been annoying up to this past couple of weeks even. Apart from walking up the pennine way I've not had them bad in Britain at all. I'd quite lost my capacity for the Great Aussie salute and was getting quite wild with my gesticulating! I have a "thing" about flies, I think it's extreme tactile defensiveness. At least sharks and jellyfish aren't a problem here in Canberra but every now and again we get water bans because of blue Green algae (and I promise not to mention our death cap mushrooms!) Don't have a dog thank goodness! One of my brothers in law is absolutely paranoid about driving these days ever since his wife's car got totaled by a meth head down in Victoria (she was ok thank God) - I admit I hadn't given it much of a thought but after that crash where the 4 cops got killed the other day I guess it's something that I will consider more seriously. As my niece is a paramedic I think my brother in law had been getting stories from her too (she's down in Tas now!)

That's what happened to us. The bastards knew what date our shipping was happening then on that very day came back with a stupidly lower offer! Talk about being over a barrel. We were in a slightly different position though and it's all worked out for us in a very round about way which probably wouldn't be feasible for you. What I would do is to ask for 2-3 weeks following exchange before completion (once you've exchanged they're sort of expensively hooked in) and have everything ready to go. You can get a move cube, rubbish skip and flight at short notice and just work your but off I those 3 weeks. We lived with most things in boxes for several weeks before uplift. In the end, we sent our stuff on the booked date in December, lived with the bare essentials for a while but then made the C19 driven decision to leave before completion. Booked tickets on Thursday afternoon, cleared house and left on Sat afternoon but we'd been selling /giving/putting stuff in a skip for months beforehand (parents house, 90 years of junk!). Even so, we filled another small skip on the Friday/Sat morning. Spent the night with son and grandson, flew out Sunday. Or, more likely, I wouldn't move!!!!! It's a right stressful nightmare and my blood pressure has reduced significantly!

That's probably about right. A small move cube might give you enough space for that and a few more things. We found the pound amount was met with a fee about the same in dollars this end.

Fires? Yes, always a risk in Australia - check out the Bushfire prediction maps for whichever area you want to live in. Floods, ditto, check out the flood zone maps before you buy. Cyclones - the further north you go the more risk you have of getting them, ditto crocodiles. Sharks and jelly fish - yes, along the coast. Spiders and snakes, yes, more likely in the bush although if you've got a garden red backs, white tails or even funnel Web spiders are a possibility. (DH has dealt with a few red backs in the wood pile already and we've only been back a couple of months). You'll get used to the magpies swooping you in nesting season - whilst they don't kill you, they're bloody scary when they do it and you'll probably learn to sleep through a koel (those dammed Queenslanders and then south for the winter) and eventually the dawn cacophony won't wake you up at sparrow fart with the decibel value of a jumbo jet. One of my biggest fears is Ross River Fever because I'm a mozzie magnet and anything carried by them scars the bejesus out of me. Mozzies and flies in general are the biggest reason why I personally don't have such a great outdoor lifestyle in Australia as I did in UK. I only go out for walks (when it's not raining or too hot to frazzled you to a cinder in 30 seconds) and rarely do much else outside. The Mozzies avoid the DH like the plague so he gets to do the garden etc. We don't do bbqs - just never got into them, too much to clean up, too many flies. Still, you're more likely to be run over by someone high on Crystal meth or bashed to a pulp by someone high on something else. Living in a big city you're probably less likely to get the creepy crawlies and more likely to get the human dangers If you want to live in Australia you deal with it - just interested in what you think may be "better"? It's different, for sure, with different challenges.

If you wish to return home not only will you have to apply for an exemption, I regret to tell you that you will need to get your Aus passport renewed as well (insult to injury huh?!) as Australian citizens must enter and leave on Australian passports. You should be fine though.

Yes, very slow - apparently in both directions. I sent something from Aus 28 March which arrived 1 May. My son sent me something about 3 weeks ago from UK, still not arrived.

Are you an Australian citizen? If so you would need to apply for an exemption - if you are a dual citizen you could always say you are going home. If you arent a citizen then you can leave any time you like as long as there are planes in the sky. There are still flights to London, you could leave tomorrow if you are that anxious

You might actually think about returning home before the baby is born - just having a baby with an Australian doesnt mean that you will be able to stay after the baby is born especially if you arent able to continue studying and being a single woman in a foreign country without support is going to be incredibly difficult. You are going to struggle to finish your studies I should think and it might be wise to pull the plug now - end of this semester perhaps - while you are still able to travel without the pregnancy being an issue. But, definitely, it took two of you to make this baby, the decisions should be jointly made.

It is at times like this that the world seems so bloody big! Sorry to hear about your Pops - there are still flights (Qatar are still flying Aus-UK) and if you are a citizen you can apply for an exemption to leave for personal reasons like an impending end of life but be wary of the self isolation requirements in both countries. Maybe just you can pop back ahead of your big move back. We did the move in the opposite direction - decided on the Thursday to leave and went on the Sunday, clearing out my dad's house by the Saturday afternoon when the son came to collect us. Hopefully your plans will be jump started quickly

Need to be more specific - how many years was your degree? For teaching in Australia, you need a degree that has taken 4 years in a University setting. When you say "nursery teacher" what, exactly do you mean? Do you mean the first year of full time school in which case you will be treated under the regulations for school teaching or do you mean that period before full time school kicks in, in which case you will be looking at child care qualifications

Leaf curling spider - Phonognatha Graeffei Pretty little thing isnt it?

Simple answer, yes, unless you have some fantastic out of the box skill set that nobody else has. Australia has always been ageist and very much a place of who you know, not what you know. 50 was always considered the top end and a lot of people have managed to retire in their early 50s - partly because lots of golden handshake offers would have been made to that cohort and often because they had enough in super to keep them going although preservation ages have gone up since those days I believe. Younger people in many occupations seem to be cheaper so therefore more attractive to employers. I certainly noticed a different mind set in UK - I got offered 3 jobs without applying for any (couldnt take them anyway) and the Dh got a couple of offers and we were both in our 60s then. I did pick up a job at 57 when I retired the first time around but, again, I didnt apply for it and it was an offer due to being known by the employer. Coming into it cold and over 50 is going to be a challenge. Not saying it cant be done just expect it to take longer than you thought and be prepared that others dont value your experience as much as you do - unless, as I said you have something unique and in demand in your tool box.

It's always tempting to compare the bad of the now with the good of the then! This damned virus has certainly made the perception of today's "bad" worse in UK at the moment I think. I had moments when I lived in UK (up until mid March for 8.5 years) that Australia looked like a better option but when I was in Australia before I left I was so damned depressed it was as much as I could do to get through each day, but I didnt realise it at the time. Back in Aus now for a month and I know that I will never "belong" here. All sorts of pragmatic reasons for being here and, given the virus, it's the better place to be at the moment and my dad is safe enough in a care home that were very forward thinking. But it's certainly not magically better. We are haemorrhaging cash at the moment with re-establishment and renovations which is very scary and I am being very vigilant and not allowing myself to get into self destructive depressed mode. I guess it all depends what you want out of life - if you have to move on then move on but it doesnt have to be to the other side of the world if you are only itching for a bit of a change and an adventure. Edited to say - remember that the Australian "pension" has never been a "right". Your superannuation will still be there for you when you get to preservation age.

Are you sure you're not confusing it with your enrolment as a student? Your kids will be dependents. Enrolment will depend on place of residence although there is no guarantee that for the dependents of student visa holders they will be offered a place in their local school. IIRC in some states, enrolment is student visa dependents is a central application rather than school application and enrolment.

What's wrong with ACT? You could do much worse and there is always work for paediatricians.

The other thing to scope out is business viability. I think even more than in UK, the market is pretty much dominated by East Asians and there are salons on every corner so it might be a stretch to get a business up and running at the level required for the visa. It needs a very large sum of money and at the beginning I believe it is provisional so you have to keep the business running at that level for several years before the possibility of it becoming permanent. An agent is definitely the way to go but I wouldnt be taking bets on it being successful.

We used a move cube with Seven Seas and really couldn't fault them at all. They've made social distancing changes to their practice as our cube arrived in mid virus season and was just a little bit slower than otherwise but we find them to be excellent. I assume they do containers as well.

If Victoria have decided that he meets their criteria for disability support then they are the most draconian in the country so you know that he must really need it. Other states have marginally more lax eligibility criteria but, still, he has the diagnosis from a paediatric medical practitioner or multi disciplinary team so getting rid of the label isnt going to be that easy. The thing is though, that there is a huge range of ability within the disability and some kids who may have a label are still fairly functional and are able to make it unsupported in a mainstream environment - they are more likely to get visas but will never qualify for the aide time. Real catch 22, sadly.

Are you on a bridging visa or a TSS visa? Bridging visas don’t cut in until your current visa expires. So looks like you might be lucky and get to stay until your TSS expires. Or, knowing you will have to go back, you may decide to return to U.K. sooner Rather than later, they’re generally held to meet the needs of children with autism better than Australia.

If you haven't already done so you will need to talk to one of the agents who specialise in medical conditions - George Lombard is generally suggested in this regard. However, yes, it is quite likely that your visa will be refused. Needing 1:1 aide time for a few hours a day is going to take you over the threshold of cost to the Australian tax payer. Autism is usually cited as one of the most usual reasons for rejection because it is expensive to support.

Nope, it's an average salary at best and for 3, whilst it wouldnt be beans on toast territory, it isnt going to be lush with overseas holidays, big swanky cars and a 4 bed on the beach with pool. Our retirement income for the two of us is about that and with no mortgage to pay we still have to dip into savings for the little luxuries that we choose to engage with. Having just returned from UK, my initial impression is that things are more expensive (we were living on the Aus credit card all the time we were in UK, silly, but we had no idea how long we would be there, so we can see a direct comparison and especially now that we have power, broadband, insurances etc to pay it's looking not so easy). We arent driving much because we were isolated now voluntarily sheltering in place but with all the other little things we need to do to get reestablished in the first instance there's sort of a financial haemorrhage going on. Most of the families I know either have one very high income earner (well more than twice what you are aiming for) or both partners work to pay the bills.