Jon the Hat

We are moving in September - our house sale is close to completion in the next couple of weeks and we will move into a rental round the corner. By all reports WA is pretty close to business as usual once you are in. My family in Perth are very much living normally now. If you are ready to go, I think you go for it. The main risk that I can see is if your flight gets cancelled and you have to wait a few weeks to get there. Quarantine is a know cost and time and not a big deal in the long term. The only other thing I would add is that Singapore air is out as people arriving from the UK cannot transit at the moment, and Emirate seems to have cancelled a lot of flights over the weekend. Qantas direct should be ok I guess, and lower risk as no stopover with rules changing.

At this rate we will need to buy a boat!

Congratulations! You guys are the poster family for a succesful move! May your good fortune continue!

Hello! If time is short and you are not sure of your chances then yes an agent might well move things more quickly. That said getting into Australia is almost impossible unless you are an experienced, qualified person with in demand skills. Have you checked whether this is the case?

My company relocation policy includes some air freight, so it is something people do, but it is not cheap. Seven seas do air shipping of boxes, so many take a look on their to get an idea of costs. For us 5 standard boxes to Perth would be £475 for example, vs £140 by sea. It still takes a few weeks by the looks of it, presumably shared air freight containers.

Yes I can imagine - hopefully by the time we come in September things will be a little more stable. If not we might be bunking with family for a few weeks!

Thanks all - we definitely wont be renting anything until we have viewed, I was just trying to get ahead with the admin. I will think about references this end then.

Hi All Looking at Realestate.com.au at properties in Perth, and they seem to use a couple of online reference / application companies, one of which I am looking at Tenant Options. The application asks for a personal / professional reference who is not family or employer of work colleague. These are the only contacts I have in Australia who know me well. What have others done for this question? Mind has gone blank on this!

Skilled visas require post qualification professional experience as well as assessment of the qualification, so you should look into that. Are you intending to move permanently to Australia? If so you might be better off commencing work in the UK asap to get your experience sorted for the longer term.

That's good to know! We will be about a year behind you. Whereabouts are you living?

Not looking forward to it I must say, but with time to plan we will have lots to amuse us, and family who can drop things off if needed.

The approach to Speeding tickets in Australia seems to be unashamedly bent on revenue raising. In the UK you cannot hid a camera at all, they are bright orange - and you need signs to say they are active.

Hi Paul I am a finance director in London office of an ASX listed multinational. Generally our business is doing well in Covid, however we are very limited on recruitment with executive (CEO / CFF COO) level approval required for any external recruitment. I think this is the case in many places, so we are seeing critical roles filled, but project investment roles much harder to fill. We have a big IT team so there are roles. People generally are not that keen to fill roles remotely but I think after 9 months are coming round the idea, so this probably improves your chances of getting a role before you move - you might even be able to start remotely if you need to. On a general note I have to be honest and say I wouldn't be moving from Sydney to the UK right now. Yes things will be better come the summer, but you will be moving to a country coming out of lockdown (again) with a lot of ongoing restrictions. It isn't much fun at the moment, and you may not be able to meet up with family and friends as you would normally. Also you have an economy which is 10% down prior years, with a massive hole in public finances. If I were in your shoes I would be waiting another year.

A few days immediate lockdown makes sense I think; business can get through it. The UK is seeing the impact of making decisions too late every time.

Good luck David, I hope you make the flight ok.

Seeing some demand a little further out already, many would reject my commute of 90 mins door to door, but I rarely did 5 days a week, mainly 3 or 4 in the office, plus some travel weeks with no or 1 day at most. My buyers are moving from Epsom.

I hope so' I've just submitted a 5 year plan with several million $ of real estate savings in it!

Trust me it is being considered already in my ASX listed employer with office around the globe, and we are hardly the fastest to move on such policies. Put simply, if I know the going rate for someone to fill a specific role in Adelaide is $120k, and in Sydney is $160k, and I open the role to anyone located in Australia remote working, if they are in Adelaide I am not going to offer them Sydney CBD money. This will happen naturally over time. It is only a small leap then to say if existing people living in Sydney choose to relocate to somewhere much cheaper as they are not required to come to the office anymore, then they are asked to take a pay cut. Not all companies will want to do that, and local legislation might make it hard in Australia. The problem then is if employers see a 40% saving in making Sydney roles redundant and recruiting elsewhere that can get a lot more attractive.

I suspect it won't be long before companies pay based on where you are living though, so don't get too used to it.

Have you looked at flight costs? Crazy at the moment.

I have spent several weeks in Sydney on my own with work, and I love it, but when a job came up with my employer and they wouldn't pay enough to live comfortably as a newcomer, and not feel I moved across the world to live hours from the coast or harbour, there wasn't any point.

I once technically entered the UK with my driving licence, but only from Heathrow airside after security... it was only when I went to enter the business class lounge I realised I left my passport at home. I managed to get back through the border / passport control, to meet my wife at the drop off point and get back in again in an hour, just in time to make the flight. It only worked because a Kind American chap let me take his place in the once an hour escorted trip back across the border.

My sister in law who lives in Melbourne had a baby in the midst of a mental health crisis during the tightest period of lockdown, so we are all too familiar with the challenges. Fortunately they have all got through the worst of it. Personally I would probably avoid Melbourne given the recent issues, but to be honest the next serious outbreak could as easily be in NSW. I think we can safely assume though that the OP is either a citizen or Permanent resident, in which case he has every right to come and enter Australia as long as he meets all the requirements.

Absolutely no reason you shouldn't fly as soon as you can. Australia has perfectly capable quarantine and testing. And who cares if a few people think you shouldn't have come; some people think we should all be locked in our houses.

It would be bloody awful if some of the measures introduced to stop covid became the norm. Masks are horrible, hand gel rots your hands, and not seeing family and Friends make life barely worth living. Other than that bang on