Quoll

Which state? They’re slightly different. Also, an6 restraint should have the Aussie tick of approval so unless Mothercare has ventured down under it probably won’t be legal. A quick google summarises Here are the minimum legal requirements for using child restraints and booster seatsin Australia: ... Children aged four years up to seven years must use a forward-facing approved child restraint with an inbuilt harness, or an approved booster seat with a properly fastened and adjusted seatbelt or child safety harness.

I wouldn’t take the kids on a temporary visa, not towards end of school age anyway and your age might well prevent you from becoming permanent. If you were to bring your daughter she would need to start year 11 in January and that’s a 2 year course, you can’t dip in and out and expect to do well. The end result doesn’t travel that well back to UK if she wants to go to Uni and because she won’t meet the residence requirements she would be up for international fees in UK. If she wanted to do Uni in Australia she probably wouldn’t be able to complete her course before you leave and will have to pay International fees there too. Average wage is around $80k but bar and hospitality don’t usually score so well. $120k isn’t a bad salary as long as that excludes superannuation especially if there are going to be 5 of you. The other thing to bear in mind is that if it all goes pear shaped you have 60 days to leave the country.

Most rentals find themselves on www.allhomes.com.au and pets are sometimes welcome sometimes not. Where to live usually relates more to where you’re likely to be working. You don’t want to be living in Tuggeranong and working in Gunghalin for example. Personally I’m an inner suburb gal but we had the luxury of buying our quarter acre before one needed several pounds of flesh to pay for it. Inner North is quite pleasant! Inner South equally so, but more expensive. Usual advice is avoid Charnwood, Narrabundah, Richardson, Chisholm but there are new suburbs now that are probably taking the mantle of “OMG don’t live there” from the stalwart oldies. Personally I would avoid Tuggeranong altogether - the schools there have never been really great. They were built during the era of “open space and team teaching” pedagogy. The schools are much of a muchness really, do the eyeball test and check out the neighborhood- if you baulk at living there you won’t want to send your kids to school there. There’s a strong Catholic system paralleling the govt sector and almost 50% of HS kids go to Catholic or other Private schools. Canberra Grammar and Radford are sort of the elite with eye watering fees. Canberra has a college system so most HS go up to yr 10 then college for 11&12 (there are a few exceptions). It’s a nice enough place to live, plenty going on for kids, nice environments (mostly although I thought it was looking rather seedy earlier this year). Transport - meh! You need a couple of cars if one is used for work. You could do much worse!!!

What visa will you be going on? If it’s a temporary visa then assume your stay will only ever be temporary (your age is against you) and you’ll be home in a couple of years and keep the kids in UK education if you can because getting back on the GCSE/A level roundabout can be tricky and international student fees for Uni. If you’re citizens or have permanent residency and don’t intend to live in UK again, don’t bother with GCSE they mean diddly squat in Australia but she would need to start year 11 if she’s just 16 and that starts end Feb and she would need to do the full 2 year course. $120k - include or exclude super? That makes a difference. If you’re planning to be the only wage earner with 3 kids and lots of activities that’s going to be a bit tight but if your wife can get close to an average salary you should be comfortable enough. If your visa is temporary then your wife may struggle to find meaningful work as a temp dependent as they’re not very attractive to employers.

There was a post on here just last week from someone who knew a friend’s partner had been turned around at the border and banned. So even though some folk might have done it, it rather depends how risk averse you are. Not something I would be doing especially when offshore visas are being processed much quicker than onshore visas. Living on a bridging visa isn’t always too flash either. Not a great prospect for employers to consider. Have you got your daughter’s citizenship and passport sorted?

Why would your partner not be able to work for 3 months? If you apply for his partner visa in U.K. then it’d probably be issued quite quickly and he would be able to work straight away. I hope he’s not planning on going on a tourist visa then lying to Immigration about his intentions - that could result in a 3 year ban, not just 3 months out of work.

Interesting question. I doubt you’d be charged as Queensland don’t charge for temporary visa holders. If your visa is a provisional for Tasmania, however, I’m not sure how the authorities would regard you living in Queensland. Write to the department and ask them. I’d be inclined to Home school until you get the move which could be just a few weeks anyway then there won’t be too much disruption. Nobody will care.

She could apply offshore and pop over for regular visits. Lying to Immigration about your intentions to be a tourist when that’s not what she is actually planning can result in a long ban after being turned around at the border. Alternatively you could stay with her in India until she no longer needs you.

You're really not going to know until you have the assessments done. As Fisher1 has said, parents often dont realise that a child has a cognitive impairment because they grow with them and get used to what they say and do and you are probably helping him a lot. The assessment will be quite objective and will gauge your son against other children of the same age and the skills they should have achieved by that age. Sometimes the delay may be remedied by intervention from special ed, therapists etc but sometimes the "delay" just continues and the child doesnt make progress at the same rate as other children. This will all be discussed with you at assessment. The extent of any impairment and the need for intervention will only be revealed once you've had the assessments and, depending on the outcome, at that point you would be wise to discuss the matter with one of the agents who specialise in visas for people with medical conditions. They will be able to tell you if your son's development is likely to cause concern with respect to the granting of a visa. The agents who are usually recommended are George Lombard, Peter Bollard and Richard Gregan - you can google them. The issue will be what the specialist finds by way of need for intervention. Immigration make judgments based on how much any intervention is likely to cost the Australian tax payer - if it is over a particular threshold then visas are declined. For kids, there is a bit of a catch 22 situation - if a child gets a visa, the chances are that they will not be eligible for any disability support in schools. Kids who qualify for disability support aren't likely to get visas because it is an expensive supplement to mainstream schooling.

You should probably get permission to remove them from jurisdiction sorted sooner rather than later because Aussie courts won’t let kids go even if one parent, be they the world’s biggest dropkick, says they may not and the court process can take months/years. Unfortunately, with kids you don’t have the freedom to just not return from holiday (which is what we did). Good luck!

Nope, not a sausage. You’d be an international student and you’d get no help with child care either.

From the Living in Victoria site Must have two years' experience teaching at least one of the following languages: Chinese Indonesian Japanese Korean French German Italian Greek Spanish Turkish Arabic Vietnamese.

Try not to over emotionalise it - "live the dream" and all that. Be pragmatic, it's just a move to another first world country with all that entails and it will either work out or it wont and whatever happens it wont be the end of the world. Chances are that it will all be fine, the kids will be OK, you will be OK and you will look back on these few months as just a minor blip. If it all goes pear shaped then theres nothing that a passport and a credit card wont fix. I cant say that I went through the emotional turmoil that you went through, probably because for us it was just "the next best opportunity" and life is an adventure after all. As long as you have the freedom to move whenever and wherever you choose you should be good, just dont let yourself get trapped somewhere that you really dont want to be. Breathe! It'll be fine one way or the other.

I know cash is tight but if you can get your husband's UK citizenship you would be wise to do that. You never know if and when they are going to change the goal posts and do something with the Ancestry visa. Also, it's a working visa so if you move back at a time of life when he wouldn't be working that could be a problem. If he's been there long enough to apply for citizenship, do it! Belt and braces and all that.

Have you got the Aus plug to fit into the little transformer box? I was able to get a UK one so I didn’t have to faff about with adaptors. Don’t know if that will help with charging. My Aus MAC charges just fine here in U.K. so there shouldn’t be a difference.

I would think he will fail the medical as the cost to the Aus tax payer is basically going to be an expensive special school provision. There are agents who specialise in emigrating with medical conditions - George Lombard, Peter Bollard and Richard Gregan, they will give you good advice but based on what you have written above I would think it highly unlikely he would get a visa.

You need to get a Medicare card. Take your visa, passport etc and rock up to the Medicare office.

That’s a shame, they were going great guns there for a while.

No, probably wouldn’t but you can but try.

It depends on the visa. If it’s a provisional visa requiring regional residence and work then they’re 100% strictly enforced. If it’s a state sponsored permanent visa then the obligation (at the moment) is moral but that’s not to say that they might change their minds down the track because the states are getting a tad ticked off that their good will is being abused - both the state that sponsors and the big cities that are getting the influx. The 489 is a provisional visa so they check that you’ve followed the conditions to the letter before you can move to the next step. If you haven’t, then you are invited to leave the country. As for working in Canberra, I’m afraid I would tend to respectfully disagree with Beffers. IT bods are ten a penny and the biggest employer in town requires citizenship for permanent work. Local government just requires PR but there’s a pretty big pool of talent available locally. Also, if you’re 46 now, you’re rushing headlong into the “too old” category, not quite there yet but over 50 unless you’ve got a good network it gets exponentially tougher to crack something good and permanent unless you have a skill set that they are crying out for. However, nothing else wrong with Canberra, it’s as good a place as any.

Silly girl! If she’d have come on here and told us what she intended we would all have told her that she was playing a very risky game. Really silly given the very short turn around times for partner visas through London now.

You can let your case officer know you are coming on a tourist visa but you will need to be out of the country before the visa is issued. Visas in London are being processed quite quickly - 2 months or so. If you apply now then you can see how things pan out. Of course you can be separated from your boyfriend for only 15 months, you may not want to but it’s perfectly possible. Get all your evidence and put it in this week!

You apply for it offshore (309/100), much easier. They’re not taking too long from low risk countries these days. Otherwise you run the risk of being turned around at the border for not being a bone tide tourist (you wouldn’t intentionally lie to Immigration I am sure). Offshore applications are quite a bit quicker than onshore ones at the moment.

Could be an orb weaver but they’re often more patterned. Body shape is similar though.

Blimey, don’t look at Melton! Some of the suburbs in that area are best well avoided. As Marisa said, nothing beats the eyeball test! Bacchus Marsh isn’t bad but it’s not a suburb, quite a nice little country town. It’s got a wool shop and you can get good rat poison there (I’m sure the DH could find some in Canberra but we always call in at BM to replenish stock when we are down that way). I’d be more inclined to look in Ballarat and make the commute to Melbourne. You’d get more bang for your buck accommodation-wise.