Quoll

For once I tend to disagree with Bunbury - its your life, live it (that's what everyone always says to those who want to move to Australia and take kids and grandkids away from parents - family doesn't seem so important then!). Your son can come with you if he doesn't want to be without you, ditto your daughters if they struggle with independence. I think at your age you've got a chance of making it work for the longer term but if you leave it much longer you will be past the point of no return and you might never be able to leave because of finances, family etc but now you have a chance of getting set up for old age in UK if that is what you want. I think it's perfectly ok to suck it and see. If it works, you win and if it doesn't then you move on. As long as you have citizenship you can come and go at will. Your kids might decide to follow you, who knows. Good luck! Sometimes being in a place you belong can work wonders on a struggling mental health.

Someone raised the Certificate of Employment thing a while ago and the general response was eh??? I don't know if they mean a certificate which says you are no longer employed by anyone or whether they need a skills assessment that you are what you say you are. Sounds a bit odd but there will probably be an agent along in a minute who knows exactly what they are on about. Sponsorship isn't As big as it used to be, why not just get yourself a pr visa and cut out the middle bit?

Plenty of tourist visas allow you to stay for a few months, that shouldn’t be a problem but keeping a kid out of school in UK for such a period seems more problematic. Your age is certainly going to be against you and as had been noted on here several times, Australia is quite an ageist country. Talk to an agent about the possibilities for you although none have a crystal ball to be able to say whether nursing will still be on the list then, nor whether you would have whatever experience may be required by that point - it'd be down to the wire age wise. Im not sure what you think would constitute a “better life" in Australia - it's just another first world country with all the first world country problems that beset the UK. If something is lacking in your life where you are maybe you can better it by a move somewhere closer. Whatever you do, though, don't put your life on hold in hopes that you may one day move.

Please tell it to cool down. We arrive in 2 weeks and anything over 23 is too warm LOL Even in dry Canberra!

Many years ago my parents did that for 16 years when they retired. They built a granny flat on our block and golfed in perpetual summer until the trip got too onerous and the travel insurance too prohibitive. They arranged for someone to inhabit their house in U.K. every so often to comply with insurance, sometimes having a house sitter all the time. They didn’t have a problem with the NHS but things have cracked down since then but they had their house there and it was their place of residence so I guess it would still be ok for NHS purposes. They considered moving to Australia - they loved it more than I do - but decided they didn’t want to even though I am an only child.

Your son will be in Prep which is the first year of full time school. Your daughter in year 2. Schools very much reflect the suburb they serve so if you wouldn’t want to live in a suburb you probably wouldn’t want to send your kid to school there. General rule of thumb, find a house you’re prepared to live in 24/7 and the school will fall into place. They’re really much of a muchness - no frantic Ofstead chasing in Australia. So, find your home for all the things that tick your boxes - size, availability, cost, accessibility, proximity to other important things. Once you’ve got your home, rock up to the local school with visas, evidence of residence and vaccination records and theoretically the kids can start there and then but they usually ask you to wait a day or two so they can organise. If you don’t like the local school you can apply to any other school you fancy but they are under no obligation to take you - they may, they may not. Or you can look at private schools - some have long waiting lists others don’t. There’s pretty much a parallel Catholic system. Take your time to find your home. Nobody’s going to give a toss if the kids aren’t in school while you get organised.

I agree, the onshore route is more risky, why would you risk being turned around at the border and being issued with a 3 year ban because you’re caught lying to immigration? You won’t have to drop everything and fly off instantly as long as you enter for the first time within 12 months of your medical/police check. And even then, if it’s in line with the skilled visa, you don’t need to stay, you’ve got 5 years to make the move permanent so you can pop over for the day, if desperate, to activate the visa then come home again. While you wait, you should make sure that your DH gets his British citizenship if he doesn’t already have it. You never know if and when you might want to move back to U.K. and it makes life much easier.

Most people apply for their partner visa offshore. The strategy you are proposing is risky - if he lies to immigration and says he’s going to be a tourist when he blatantly is not, he runs the risk of being turned back at the border and getting a 3 year ban. Get his partner visa application in offshore right away and either he waits for it to come through (optimal) or if he needs to be with you then advise your case officer and go for visits on a tourist visa as long as he’s off shore when it’s issued.

Well, it'll either get better or it won't I guess. It sounds like you're doing all the right things and its good that you've taken yourself off to see a counselor but in my experience you'll probably never have those connections that you had "back home" - friendships formed over times of developmental angst stand the test of time better I think. It might help if you don't consciously try and replace those mates with new "best" ones but just resign yourself to having acquaintances and if perchance one of them happens to stick as a friend then you've won but otherwise pride yourself on your independence and self sufficiency. The thing to watch out for though is what do you do if it never fails into place? If after all the "lovely lifestyle" you're still empty inside? At what point do you say enough! And move on. Don't let yourself go past that point of no return so that you find yourself continually empty and resentful - it can happen I assure you. For a couple of decades my head told me that Australia was home and like everyone else I spouted the usual platitudes "great place to bring up kids", "lovely lifestyle", "good jobs", "great opportunities" - all the usual ones that keep getting trotted out - but my stupid heart never got with the plan so that after 32 years in Australia I was clinically depressed with exogenous depression because I was in the wrong place amid the wrong people and no amount of papering over the cracks was going to make it better . If you'd have asked me back at the beginning (40 years ago at the end of this month eek!) I would never in a million years have imagined that happening. So, my one caution would be not to make any irrevocable decisions (I don't know if children feature in your future but they're the number 1 irrevocable) until you're 100% sure that Australia is where you want to grow old and die because once you have them (kids!) you will be trapped and nothing feeds that feeling of empty displacement like being trapped where you don't belong. Look after yourself!!! Good luck.

But the light rail /tram or whatever will be working. Hope it's less of a mess than it was last year.

Good luck! It won't be easy and perhaps the bulk of your job is going to be to get your siblings to step up to the plate and do their bit. We're caring for my dad now - never thought it would be this long when we came 7.5 years ago on holiday and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. I think we are nearly at our tethers end now though and have said we will look at getting him into long term care once we are back from our months holiday in Australia over April. I'm an only child so leaving him here alone (in a caring care home with lots of other people) is going to be hard but we need to look after ourselves too and we've done a lot with zero thanks. I think he will actually be better off but he's trying very hard to be good at the moment since his last episode where I began to fear for my safety and his. We shall see. He's 95 and looking pretty good for it. I've found community support to be quite good so I hope it's good in your area and I absolutely cannot fault the NHS for what they have done not only for my dad but my mum who died 2 years ago and my elderly aunt and uncle. Anyway, all the best, my hat's off to you!

Were you born in Britain? If so they are automatically citizens by descent. Children born to British born mothers have been citizens by descent since 1982 and even those born before that date can become citizens by descent quite easily. As they are obviously post 1982, all you have to do is apply for their passports. If you yourself are a citizen by descent then you can only pass on your citizenship if you have lived in UK for a defined period (think it's 4 or 5 years).

Emigration is neither quick nor cheap these days. There was a time when ACT used to go over to UK every couple of years for child protection workers - the ones they brought in had usually gone home by the next time they went. Haven't heard that they're still doing it but the guy then in charge used to like his trips back to Ireland on business every couple of years. Like many positions in Australia, be careful what you are offered if, indeed, you are ever offered anything whilst overseas. The general rule of thumb is that they will put you in a place that nobody else wants to live - often about as far from the migrant dream as you can get. Really, the best way is to see if your skills are on anyone's list and apply for PR if you can and in the meantime save up a lot of money because you're going to haemorrhage it in the process. Then once you are in country, apply for positions where you think you might want to live.

School leaving age in Australia is 17 so she will have to be in full time education somewhere until she is 17. As she's not heading to Uni she should probably enrol in TAFE - Australian employers are still going to ask for Year 12 so she could do some yr 12 subjects at TAFE and then add something career specific as well. I wouldn't bother with a school in this instance as she will be a year behind her peers, HSC is stressful and she will be looking towards employment rather than study. I wouldn't be too concerned about the friends - they're all going to go their separate ways at the end of year 12 anyway and she could make friends in other venues like sports, arts, other interest.

Impacted me too even though I’m on the other side of the world at the mo. I worked on the Gippsland recovery much overshadowed by Marysville at the time and almost forgotten now. The stories from some of the survivors were harrowing. Then my son got burned out about 5 years ago in Gippy too. That followed Canberra’s experience years before. Hope you and yours are ok with the trauma revisited. Fires scare the pants off me now!

Good luck! I've tended to move with backpack only. Declutter and be ruthless.

Nope, very clearly states 4 years course from a university.

The agreement covers "medically necessary" care - pregnancy would sort of fall into that although it is neither illness nor accident (generally:-)). Australia has a co-pay system and though a lot of UK migrants seem intent on replicating the NHS and demanding free medical treatment, the bulk of Aussies co-pay, so each GP and specialist visit will cost you something and some scans could cost you something. Under medicare you get the doctor you get and you get treatment in public hospitals. Private health cover usually has the 12 months waiting period before cover for pregnancy. You could self insure of course and pay for any private cover and choose your own doctor and get a private room in hospital

NSW, SA and ACT charge, more than WA generally too. It’s the cost you will incur after you return to U.K. that should give you pause. International Uni fees are eye watering and even if Aus yr 12 scores could get your daughter into a course she might have to do a Foundation year and pay international fees throughout.

I would add that your kids’ ages are against you too, they’re coming up to crucial education time and though the 13 year old might just squeak through and return without deficit, the 15 yr old would be up for international student fees if they decided to try for Uni at 18 after 3 yrs in Australia. In WA the school fees would be about $4k per family, in Vic temporary residents aren’t charged. If you left your eldest in U.K. to get through GCSE and A levels she’d probably be better off than trying to get into Uni with an Australian yr 12 cert then paying international fees.g As for employment - my paramedic niece has had to leave Victoria because jobs are hard to come by and she’s gone down to Tassie. I think there’s rather a glut of paramedics. Ditto what has already been said about visas and sponsorship.

I came back to Cambridge because that’s where the olds are. Lovely area but eye watering expensive unfortunately. It’s rural enough but close enough to everything you’re ever likely to need. Our village has a good community thing going on as well. No hills if you need some undulating in your life but that’s my only niggle. However, we’ve been all over the place and I’d say you’re spoiled for choice, there’s lots of places I’d be happy to live in.

Equally, if one person in a relationship has mental health issues which could be ameliorated by moving elsewhere is it not selfish of their partner to facilitate that move. Compromise is always key but to fail to acknowledge or work with a partner who has exogenous depression - as the OP may well - is abuse. As for giving birth in UK - I think you just declare that as your habitual place of residence and you have the baby there, they can't force you to return the baby to Australia. However, the ramifications of splitting up siblings is not a situation to be taken lightly. I guess it all depends on your state of desperation.

Immigration law isn't about fairness. It's a set of rules put in place to cover everyone. A lot of people are denied pr visas because of medical conditions and they can whine all they like but the rules are there to be followed. You seem to think there is an assumption of entitlement to pr just because you've been temporary which is not the case. We would be in a right mess if immigration were governed by emotional blackmail. I thought the medical treatment visa is for when you aren't fit enough to leave the country and so couldn't be repatriated but would be visa -less if you had to stay. If you're currently on a temporary visa and have health insurance why is there a problem?

Of course it's fair. Not that that fairness per se should be the issue anyway. You know when you sign up to be a temporary resident that you will be a temporary resident and expect to return to your home country when your temporary residence is done. If you don't want to do that then don't bother becoming a temporary resident. It wouldn't be fair on the Australian tax payer to foot the bill for a non permanent resident - and now you want to bring your family in to help too. You can get health insurance in your home country if that's what you've had before. One hours that you also have private health insurance in Australia to cover your bills.

Oh dear. Hate to say it but you're screwed. Not only may you not leave the country with your kids, your ex can restrict exactly where you do live - so if you're in Sydney and would get better support in Melbourne you can't. Apart from sympathy there isn't much else unkess he's been abusive to either you or the kids and you feel for your safety in which case some of the women's services may help. So sorry for your predicament but we do warn of it fairly constantly. Edited to say, as your desire to leave is so strong and will be impacting on your daily life, a few sessions with a counselor might help equip you with the tools to cope with each and every day you are trapped.