Quoll

Hard to say. Personally I think you know if you belong or not and there's nothing magical about the 2 year thing. However, belt and braces and all that - if you can hack it for 4 years and get citizenship then you can come and go at will. But, you said your kids just can't settle and that's probably key here - if they're teens then it's a hard gig to move to a foreign country on the other side of the world and some cliques in HS can be monsters towards new migrants. If it's only been 6 months you stand some chance of getting much of your life back. Leave it much longer and the world back home has got on without you and there is no going back, only moving forward. End of the day, there's nothing in the rule book that says you have to love and live in Australia, it's just another first world country and the UK has just as much to offer. You may end up with curse of the expat and have perennially itchy feet or you may just get back and feel like a pig in mud, you're not going to know which it will be until you do it. Personally I would not be buying a new home until you're 100% certain that your future lies in Australia - nothing like a bloody great mill stone around your neck to make you hate the place even more if there is no semblance of escape possible.

Is your BA a 4 yr degree? If it is then you can register with the state you're proposing to live in. Whether you get work is another matter altogether. If your degree is only 3 years then you won't be being a teacher as you need 4 years of a University course with the right number of supervised practice hours. Teacher aide positions are low paid, erratic and often given to those who are known to the schools. Not much required by way of qualifications although more and more are getting cert 3s to bolster their cvs. Quite a lot are teachers who just want party time work while their own kids are little. You might be better off aiming for private tutoring if you want to stay teaching or into office work of some description of you're flexible about how you want to spend your time.

Easy, they go home, lodge off shore and wait. They can visit every now and again. That's what they're supposed to do, rather than rocking up as tourists, lying to immigration about their intentions and hanging out on a bridging visa for aeons.

Most of the flexibility about year levels is when an older child wants to move down a year. If you want a younger child to be up a year then you would have to demonstrate extreme giftedness along with comparable social and emotional development and even then, it’s not a decision taken lightly at all. The rules state age peer placement (except for when younger kids are very close to cut off and the recommendations would then most likely be to wait - especially in NSW which has the latest cut off ). Why should they have special rules for kids coming from foreign countries? Returnees to U.K. have generally reported that their kids go back into their age peer groups and schools have been very helpful in ensuring that kids are supported to help them catch up.

Foreign country, several different education systems but an August birthday anywhere is going to put a child turning 6 in August into Kindergarten (or equivalent thereof). Why should a foreign education system bend their rules just because you think your child should have preferential treatment? That’s a Pandora’s box that NSW definitely isn’t keen to open. Early entry usually requires a full psychoeducational assessment including adaptive behaviour and social/emotional assessment with a profile demonstrating extreme giftedness, not just that a kid has had better early childhood teaching in a foreign jurisdiction. Put him with his age peers, it’ll all work out in the end. BTW he wouldn’t be “repeating” anything, he hasn’t done K in Australia at all.

Put in your off shore application in July and if it comes through in time then you win. If not, you can go over and visit on a tourist visa until your pr comes through, then you just have to leave the country for a few days while it’s issued. Arriving on a tourist visa, lying to immigration about your intentions is never a good idea and you run the risk of being turned around at the border. So just do it the straightforward way to start with. Then you have the choice - either he reapplies for a UK extension, or he goes and you wait or you go as a bone fide tourist while you wait. It’s no hardship to stay in one first world country while waiting on a visa . It’s inky going to be a few months whichever way you look at it.

That wasn't the weather I ordered for my holiday! Should have brought more jumpers. Didn't much appreciate being woken up at some ungodly o'clock with one of the brightest lightning flashes and loudest Thunderclaps either shortly after some dammed possum landed on the tin roof and skittered down the slope. It'd better warm up or I will go home for some nicer weather lol

Would your husband be prepared to go back? If he says no then you don't have any choice. Your 13 year old is probably the victim of the Queen Bees and wannabes. Yr 8/9 girls can be absolute bitches and if they are not letting her into their cliques then she's in for a very miserable few years. In UK she'd be about to start her GCSE course wouldn't she? Perhaps she needs to go back and get on that merry go round while the rest of you make up your mind. She could stay with whoever your son is living with, perhaps. Your youngest son doesn't really have a leg to stand on he just gets to go with the adult flow and if his parents are staying then he gets to stay too but it's probably grieving the loss of his whole family.

Flew to UK on my own with a 12 week old baby and back when he was 5 months - and with a 3 yr old in tow as well. Looking back I still can't believe I did it but it wasn't that bad while I was doing it - apart from my altercation with a BA bimbo flight attendant who took 45 minutes to bring me a cup of tea in the middle of the night because she was chatting up a bloke further down the cabin and then tried to blame my sleeping 3 yr old for turning the call light on. My tips are to travel as light as possible, you don't need the kitchen sink. We never had a stroller for the kids anyway but the sling I used was invaluable on the plane - much better if you need to stand /walk to be able to pop them in the carrier and keep your hands free. If you're BF then it's a doddle (and don't be afraid to get up and demand a cup of tea before you start!), never used bottles so no idea how that works but if you take the basics the cabin crew are usually good at helping out. The loos have a pull down change table which works well and now that everyone uses disposable nappies is a hell of a lot easier than when we flew to Australia the very first time with DS1 at 6 months before they'd been invented! If there are two of you it's much easier to tag team so that one of you can sleep at a time but otherwise it's a case of "when baby sleeps we all sleep " but don't be afraid to walk the aisles, that's preferable to having a screaming kid for all concerned. Feed on take off and landing - swallowing equalises ear pressures otherwise you'll have a kid with hurting ears - and that's easy because the baby is strapped to your seat belt with an extension. Bottom line though, have faith in your parenting, it's just like dealing with the bub on the ground. Book your bassinet ahead of time and with kids under 6 months you'll be prioritised and they're generally fine for the kids to sleep in but if your child is a co-sleeper you'll need to get them used to sleeping alone before you fly (one of my granddaughters struggled with that when she flew as my d-i-l was an earth mother kinda gal and thought co-sleep was the thing to do.) Biggest problem you're likely to have is jet lag - theirs, not so much yours. They will have just got into some kind of waking/sleeping rhythm and you will totally screw that up and it took a long time for my son to change - we were still disrupted well over a week from memory. Then he got disrupted again on the way back to Aus poor kid. Good luck, it'll be fine just don't stress about it too much.

This

Have you seen the posts on this and other boards about the oversupply of nurses in Australia with new graduates being churned out and unable to find jobs. Usual advice is to train in something you are absolutely busting to do, not because it might one day get you a visa for another first world country.

It's pro rata so you'll only be paying for the time he's in school.but it is up front payment - by the term I think.

27 years ago! - I wouldn't assume that she will get a RRV at all. If she had skills to migrate in her own right then she might be better off going for a totally new application and putting her kids as dependents (providing the eldest is still in full time education and totally dependent on her). She might also find that as she had been over on holidays - one assumes on visitor visas - that they have superceded her PR so that it's no longer valid. Another issue might be the kids' father - would she have his permission to remove them from the country? You definitely need to talk to a MARA agent because I think it's far from certain she would be allowed to return after a quarter of a century and much of that as an adult with free will. I doubt you will find that there are many options for the kids at all.

Do you have his card or a card on his account that you're using to shop or are you using your Australian card? I have a card in my name on my dad's account and so the billing address is my dad's address. If it's your own card you're using, what happens if you have the billing address the same as the delivery address? Is it rejected at that point? (You'd want to have a word with your bank before you try so they know it isn't an unauthorised item on your card). I've sometimes had to put a UK address in the billing field (we have an Australian cc) and it's gone through OK with the delivery address. I was wondering whether the post office might be an option for cash for him too - if that's easier to get to, it should be possible - I know the old lady across the road from us has her pension paid into a post office account or at least she has someone pick it up from the post office for her.

Weren't her kids on her original pr application? If not then she could struggle to get them over. There's no guarantee she will get a RRV either - just having family there isn't really enough seeing as she couldn't be bothered to move to Australia within the time frame given. She can apply for a RRV and see what she gets. She should have had her kids on her previous pr in which case they apply for their RRV too. If she didn't have them on her previous application she will be hard pushed to explain why she's magically now got teenage kids. But they will need 101 visas (the eldest needs to be in full time education and totally dependent as he's over 18)

Yup, very lucky! A few miles up the road from Macquarie Uni and the teachers would have been going "huh???"

Sorry I had trouble following your question. Do you mean she had a visa but she didn't enter by the date required in which case it had lapsed? In that case, unless she had spent a significant time in Australia and has ties there like house /relatives etc then she will need to reapply for a visa and get kids will be on the new visa as dependents. If she is still eligible to apply that is.

I don't know the answers to your questions but interested in hearing the advice you will be given. I'm in UK and generally have had to trek around with POA in hot clammy little hand to get institutions to talk to me. Recently though a couple of agencies have accepted scanned POA documents and have been really helpful. If you have POA on his bank account you should have a card of your own in your name such should be quite ok for ordering groceries on line I would have thought. It might be that you need a one off trip back to get everything sorted and as much on line as possible. If you have a health and medical POA be sure that is registered with his GP as well, otherwise they won't talk to you if needed. Good luck, it's far from easy wherever you are.

It's recognised of course, but not as a funded disability - except perhaps in SA, I know they used to do things a bit differently. Otherwise it's very much luck of the draw how kids are supported through school funding and support is often through accommodation such as increased time for exams, access to alternate technology (although everyone probably had that now) etc

Probably not going to be an issue but with medical conditions the recommendation is to always talk to one of the agents who specialise in medical conditions - George Lombard or Peter Bollard are the two most usually mentioned but I know others now have medical specialists. The issue may be if she is statemented - however, kids with dyslexia don't attract additional support from disability programs in Australia so she won't be getting any additional support unless the school uses its own resources hence she wouldn't be a burden on the tax payer. They may need to be sure that there isn't an underlying cognitive impairment which would make her eligible for disability support. Hopefully the assessments will include an iq test which would indicate intellectual disability (or not!) but if they can also do an adaptive behaviour test and current level of functioning that would also add to the battery of information. Also, if her eyes haven't been tested you could try a developmental optometrist (I assume they have them in England) as functional vision deficits (Like tracking or fatigue) often go hand in hand with reading difficulties. But all reports are helpful to make the case.

It used to be a way in through the back door but not so much now and certainly not something to be recommended. If you're going to retrain in something then train in UK and hope it's still on the skills in demand list when you've qualified but only choose something that you really want to do in life, not just because it might one day happen to get you a visa to another first world country.

You'll need an Australian passport. It doesn't take long and you can apply to have it expedited at an extra cost. If you're not going o/s until next month you've got at least a week to get it but you will need to get your skates on.

Think you have to be either a citizen or have permanent residence to get an apprenticeship Apprenticeships

Have you thought about leaving the child in UK to finish A levels? Either that or put them into year 10 if you arrive in term 3 and let them do the full 2 year WACE course. Personally I'd do the former, it keeps all their options open for further education in either country just in case.

I think part of the problem is that you're expecting to slot back into your old life and very few people can do that. You have to treat it like a move forward, as if you are emigrating to a new place - its harder work but worth it. Find the things you want to do and go for it. I doubt one place is inherently better than the other (neither would really appeal to me I must admit) and what you're probably experiencing now is the anticlimax feeling / like the adventure is over, now what???