Moonlight Cinema and a picnic in Kings Park

After work last night we decided to head on down to Kings Park for a picnic.

The weather was still gloriously warm at about 6pm and it seemed a perfect way to relax and wind down whilst letting the little lad run his legs off.

For a four year old he appears to have limitless energy and having such a vast space within 10 minutes drive seemed as good a place as any for him to have a run around before bedtime.

So we packed up the cool bag with sandwiches, Christmas cake (which we are still eating…yummy), juice and a nice bottle of white and headed on down to our favourite part of the park, the Western Power Parklands which has a great play area for the kids and a huge expanse of grassland for us adults to lounge around on.

When we got down to Kings park we quickly became aware that there had been a fantastic addition since we were last down there. At one end of the Synergy Parklands (which is an even larger stretch of grassland on a gentle slope adjoining the park), a huge outdoor cinema screen had been erected.

I had read that there were a number of outdoor cinemas which open during the summer months but keep forgetting that the seasons are reverse in Australia and we already well into our first Australian summer.

Although the show was not on at the time we arrived (it kicks off at sun down which is appropriately 8:30pm) it was great to chill out whilst listening to the ‘funky grooves’ that played whilst the cinemas patrons took their seats (most of which were carried in by hand).

The cinema is run by a company called Moonlight Cinemas who run cinemas in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. For $12 (about five quid) or $8 for children (under 5’s are free) you can buy a ticket to one of the latest releases (or more retro depending on the day) and simply chill out on a picnic blanket or chair whilst watching the film.

If you really want to live the high life, for $28 you can buy a ‘Gold Grass’ ticket. These tickets give you prime viewing spots, a glass of bubbly when you enter the venue and best of all a super comfy bean bed to lay down on whilst watching the movie.

I really cannot think of a better way to watch a film then chilling out under the stars whilst eating a picnic and sipping on a cool beer. Whether or not the little lad would be able to stay awake through a whole movie is another matter though. Still, it would be a treat for all of us and worst case is he’ll drop off, we’ll cover him in a blanket and then load him into the back of the car once the films finished.

Expect a full review once we’ve watched our first movie.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Applying for your Australian Tax File Number - how to apply for your TFN

Since arriving in Australia there are a number of forms and services we’ve had to apply for. To help you easily get on your feet when you finally arrive in Australia we’ll provide details of some of the basics. The first of which is applying for your Tax File Number.

OK, to start with what the heck is a Tax File Number (TFN) ?

A tax file number (TFN) is a unique number issued by the Tax Office in Australia. For those looking at moving to Australia from the UK, the TFN is pretty much the same as your National Insurance number.

When you move out to Australia, its pretty important to get your Tax File Number sorted sooner rather then later because without it, you’ll be charged tax at the highest rate (currently about 46%) on any earnings you’ll make whilst residing in Australia..

Only one TFN is issued to you for your lifetime. Once you have been issued with a TFN, there is no need to apply for another if your circumstances change – for example, if you move to another Australian State (e.g. from Western Australia to New South Wales), change jobs, change your name in any way , acquire investments, or claim government benefits.

Thankfully applying for your Tax File number is a pretty painless exercise. The Aussie Governments Taxation office have been kind enough to create a web site that enables you to do pretty much everything you would ever want to do online.

If you are a working holiday maker, a New Zealander (who are automatically granted a visa upon arrival), an oversees student, someone (like us) who has a permanent visa allowing you to stay in Australia indefinitely or someone with a business visa. All you need to do is pop over to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) Web site and fill in the appropriate forms.

You’ll need your passport number as this is used to verify your existence (and check your residency illegibility and an address to which the ATO can mail your taxation number out to.

The ATO asks you to allow 28 days for your Tax File number to be processed but when we applied it only took 10 days. It really is easy as that.

At time of typing the Tax file number information can be found on the ATO website by clicking here If that link doesn’t work then pop on over to the front page of the ATO web site (http://www.ato.gov.au) and select the Tax File Number option from the Forms and Services option in the main menu on the left.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Current Australian Immigration processing lead time as of December 2006

Current Australian immigration processing times for December 2006. It looks like the folks at the ASPC are still experiencing delays due to a backlog of applications - Note that due to the Christmas and New Year public holidays this is the last update available from the ASPC, the next updates will be available on the 15th January.

Applications have been allocated for processing over the next month so the dates below reflect the cases that will be processed in January of 2007. Therefore there may be some delays before applicants and their representatives receive advice from their case officers as they assess these applications. Please note that the ASPC will be closed from 25th to 27th of December 2006 and on 1 January 2007.

Acknowledgment of Applications

The ASPC is current experiencing some delays in receipting and acknowledging applications and regrets the inconvenience this may be causing applicants and their representatives. While this backlog exists information will be provided here about receipting. Please note that these delays do not affect the date on which a valid application is recorded as having been received and is the date used for processing purposes.

As of 19th December 2006 the ASPC is receipting offshore applications received on 13th of November 2006 and onshore applications received on 8th December 2006.

Please note that the update on allocation dates follows.

Processing and Allocation Information

As advised on the DIMA website processing of an application will usually commence within seven (7) working days of its receipt by the department. This means that an application is receipted, acknowledged and a file number is allocated.

Once this has occurred a case officer is appointed to assess each application as soon as possible, however, the ASPC receives a large number of applications and you will not be contacted immediately. Applications lodged on the dates shown below are currently being allocated to case officers for further processing.

As of 19th December 2006 the Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre has allocated applications lodged on or before the following dates for processing in January 2007:

ONSHORE APPLICATIONS

Student/Graduate

Paper based applications: 16 August 2006 (subclass 880 ) and 21 August 2006
(subclass 881) and 24 August 2006 (subclass 882)
E-lodged (online) applications: 07 August 2006 (all subclasses)

Skilled Independent Regional (Provisional) (SIR VISA)

Paper based applications: 18 September 2006
E-lodged (online) applications: 07 August 2006

New Zealand

All applications: 15 June 2006 (all subclasses)

OFFSHORE APPLICATIONS

Applications for Classes BN, BQ and BR (subclasses 134, 136, 137, 138 and 139)

Priority Applications: 23- 26 May 2006
Non-Priority Applications: 9 May 2006

Skilled Independent Regional (Provisional) (SIR VISA)

Paper based applications: 30 August 2006
E-lodged (online) applications: 13 December 2006

Notes

Onshore: means that the visa being applied for can be granted while the applicant is in Australia.

e-lodged: applications lodged online have quicker processing times.

SIR visas: All applicants for a Skilled - Independent Regional [SIR]

Offshore: means that the visa being applied for can only be granted when the applicant is outside of Australia.

If a visa application was made more than two weeks before the relevant date shown above and you have not been contacted by a case officer please contact the Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre from the web page http://www.immi.gov.au/contacts/visa-enquiries/professionals.htm

Applications eligible for priority processing

1. Applicants whose nominated occupation is on the Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL)

2. For applicants whose nominated occupation is not on the MODL, applications for any of the following visas are given priority:

a) Skill Matching (Migrant) (Class BR) - Subclass 134 - Skill Matching
b) Skilled - Independent (Migrant) (Class BN) – Subclass 137 - Skilled - State/Territory-nominated Independent
c) Skilled - Australian-sponsored (Migrant) (Class BQ) - Subclass 139 - Skilled - Designated Area – Sponsored
d) Skilled - Independent Regional (Provisional) (Class UX) - Subclass 495 - Skilled - Independent Regional (Provisional)
e) Skilled New Zealand (Residence) visa class (Class DB) - Subclass 863 - Skilled - Onshore Regional-Sponsored New Zealand Citizen
f) Skilled — Australian-sponsored Overseas Student (Residence) (Class DE) - Subclass 882 - Skilled — Designated Area-sponsored Overseas Student

Eligibility for priority processing does not mean that any processing requirements can be waived.

Finalising Applications

Please note that the information provided above is not about the time it will take to process an application to completion. The time it is expected to take to process a General Skilled Migration visa application to completion is detailed in the department’s service standards. Service standards are specified for applications lodged with complete documentation. Individual cases may take longer than the service standard depending on the completeness and complexity of the case.

Popularity: 3% [?]

New Australian Lifestyle Category

One of the things that really attracted us to Australia was the lifestyle.

Now we have finally made our way out to Oz I thought I’d create a new Australian Lifestyle category to which I can assign posts where I write about many of the great things we’ve done during our time in Australia.

I hope you find this new category a useful addition.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Ooh what a real scorcher

I remember back in July I wrote a post about how damn warm it was in the UK during one of our annual heatwaves.

Walking along Hay Street in Perth’s Central Business District this lunchtime I realised what a scorcher really felt like.

The weather is really hotting up here in Perth at the moment but I must say, even though walking around the city streets can be a sweaty affair, I’m certainly not complaining.

Enjoying weather like this in December is something we had been looking forward to for years.

Even now we can contemplate the option of going out to the park with a picnic tonight for dinner as the evenings are starting to warm up to.

Its 4:38PM at time of typing and the temperature outside is 97F. Tonight it will still be plenty warm enough to enjoy some food alfresco style..Happy Days

PS. For those who are interested in the current weather in Perth, you should be able to see a nice little widget I’ve added from the weather.com website.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Our First Christmas in Australia

Well, yesterday was our first Christmas in Australia and the day lived up to all of our expectations?

Our little boy did really well, sleeping through until about 7am. Then we all went downstairs to see if Santa had been!

It transpires that Santa managed to find his way to our new home in Perth, crawled down the air conditioning shaft and deposited a great selection of gifts under the tree.

It was a beautiful morning. At I guess I would say it was in the early to mid 70’s fahrenheit when we all woke up.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue and we had a stroll around the park (just over the road from where we live) to try out the new ‘big boy’ bike our little lad had received as one of his presents.

Christmas dinner consisted of cold hams, prawns, roast beef (and some Christmas pudding) followed by a swim in the pool.

It got very hot yesterday, peaking at about 96F. I guess traditionally we always thought that we would end up going to the beach on Christmas day but it was too hot.

Funnily enough, local Aussies think its quite strange how all the poms think they spend Christmas day on the beach.

The only people you’ll probably see on the beach on Christmas day are tourists or those who are spending their first Christmas here. Most if not all home grown Aussies will be stuck in a nice shady spot at home or in a park.

We decided to save the beach for some other day, I’m sure with the weather and the temperatures yesterday the sun will have taken it’s toll on those who went over the top with the turkey and beer but not the suncream!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, I hope you had a great one!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Trying to find a property to rent in Perth

To try and bring us a little more up to speed I thought I’d write a note on the joys of finding a house to rent in Western Australia.

This is the largest entry I have written here at getting down under so when you get to the bottom of the page, click on the page numbers at the bottom to go to the next page in this entry.

There have been many stories about house prices in Western Aus (Especially Perth).

It is being reported that the five year house price boom is over, however its still expected that Perth will overtake Sydney as Australia’s most expensive city for home-buyers.

Recently, the median house price in Perth has surged 39 per cent to over $491,000 (approx £200,000), in the 12 months to September 2006 and over 500 people are entering Western Australia both from abroad and the East coasts looking for work and somewhere to live.

More interestingly for people looking to rent, it may be worth while keeping in mind that in and around Perth, house SALES have reduced by nearly 50% in the last 12 months. Many analysts put this down to the prices of many properties becoming out of the reach of the first time buyers. For me this means if they aren’t buying then they must be renting…..great!

I guess when we planned our move to Australia we were a little naive when it came to how long it would take us to find a suitable property. In the 12 months prior to entering Australia we had a good look through may of the Australian Real estate web sites to get an idea of the properties available to rent. There were hundreds of properties and the initial enquiries we made earlier in the year indicated that we wouldn’t be hard pressed to find somewhere nice pretty quickly.

When we arrived in Australia just under a month ago we rented a ‘holiday rental’ in a place called Mindarie Keys. Mindarie is about 15 minutes drive North of Sorrento, the place we stayed when we did our Rekkie and Visa activation in February. Its a beautiful little suburb with a man made harbour at its centre with easy access to a large shopping centre and the city via car or train, the latter of which can be caught from the train station in the nearby town of Clarkson.

We’d never been so far north before, when we were here in February I think we drove up about as far as Ocean Reef which is about 10 minutes south of Mindarie. We really liked the place although for us it was a little too far from the city and the little lads school to be a convenience. It was also a little too quiet for us. Mindarie appears to be a popular spot for those lucky enough to have a second ‘holiday’ home and has a large population of retirees also living there. Its a really nice place but not quite home material.

Anyway, onto the house search. I had managed to cheekily ‘piggyback’ onto someone’s wireless internet connection from the house we rented. Unfortunately I could only get a signal sat in the downstairs bathroom but it was good enough to do a daily search on realestate.com.au to identify the latest properties that had come onto the market.

We organised an Australia PAYG Mobile with Vodafone within the first week of being here. This meant we could be contactable and also had the means to quickly call estate agents to arrange viewings.

We were targeting areas within a commutable distance of the school that our little boy starts in January. A place called Iluka was recommended to me and having seen the suburb it quickly became one of our favourite areas.

Iluka (pronounced eye-luke-a) is a pretty, modern looking suburb with a really nice park at its heart. The houses are modern and expensive (to buy) although rentals can be picked up at a half decent price.

We identified a property which was being shown during an ‘open day’ which is basically a day and a set time when the estate agent turns up at the house to let interested parties view it. You turn up at the same time and have a look around and if interested you pick up and complete an application form which you present to the estate agent the following day with your application deposit.

The application deposit is typically the equivalent of one weeks rent and is basically put in place to stop potential tenants from showing an interest, being accepted by the owner and then deciding not to proceed.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Cat update!

Well, it looks like the cats are going to be spending Christmas, and welcoming the new year in whilst based at Airpets in Heathrow.

We had an email from Airpets confirming that Quantas were fully booked right through to the first week in January so the cats will not be flying out to Australia until Sunday, 7th January.

Fortunately, we will not incure any additional boarding fees from Airpets, I’m assuming this is covered off by the insurance which is going to pay for the second set of flights etc.

When shipping out your pets from the UK to Australia its pretty easy to look at the charges associated with flying your pets out with a company like Airpets and think - phew, thats a lot of cash for something you can sort out yourself.

The professionalism, peace of mind and insurance provided by Airpets when things go wrong makes it money very well spent in my eyes and we would certainly do the same again.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Problems flying the cats down under

Some news on the cat front. We got an email from Airpets yesterday evening advising that the cats will not be travelling out today as planned.

Apparently, when the vet saw them for their export health certificate she has said that one of the boys has an upper respiratory infection, it could possibly be contagious and therefore he has not passed his health check. Poor lad..

So he’s on antibiotics now and will need to remain on these until he gets a second checkup on Thursday.

Fortunately for us, Airpets is insured against things like this happening, so the re-booking of flights and quarantine space will not incur any additional costs. Another big tick in the box for Airpets.

A lot can be said about how a company operates when things go wrong. So far, I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Still a shame that its going to be an even longer stretch in the confines of the cattery for both boys but still, once they get that sunshine on their back the purring will soon return.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Finally an Update from Down Under

OK, its taken an absolute age to find the time to catch up with the Blog but I’ve finally been able to find a spare half an hour so that I can update any folks interested with the details of what’s been going on in the last few weeks since arriving here in Perth on Saturday 23rd November.

I’ve taken quite a few photographs which I will add to the diary entries or our Photographs section but as in the past, I’ll need to add these at a slightly later date when I have a little more time.

I’ll break the next few posts into a few different chunks to make the entries a little more relevant and appropriate. To Start with though, the move down under went very smoothly. Leaving the house for the last time was an extremely strange feeling. My parents are keeping an eye on the house until the sale completes (still ongoing but looking unlikely this side of Christmas) so as we’d already left one set of keys with the folks, we posted our last set so that they could pick them up when they came to check out the house a day later.

As the company car had been picked up earlier in the day, posting the keys left us…well….keyless. For the first time since I was a young lad, I had no keys to my name. No house keys, no car keys, in fact the only keys we had were the padlock keys for the 6 suitcases which represented all of our worldly possessions for the next few months. Pretty heavy stuff when you think about it (the circumstances and the suitcases) but it also left us with a flutter of excitement as our journey had finally begun.

The fight over with Singapore Airlines was great as always, I can whole heartily recommend these guys and even though we had previously used our Visas when we validated them in February, there were no questions asked about our double baggage allowance when we checked in. It may be down to the fact that the pages with our visa’s in were not physically stamped when we entered the country (they were stamped on another page) but it was pretty obvious, being a family of three with 6 massive suitcases that this wasn’t going to be just a normal holiday visit.

In the end we probably got more then the double baggage allowance, we had quite a few cases well over 30kg, but they were all checked in with no issues. I think I put that down to the charm offensive the little lad had with the check in assistant - we taught him well.

Fast forward 24 hours, a family of three from West Yorkshire lands in our new home. It was great to be back in Australia. Even waiting an hour to get through Australian immigration didn’t bother us to much. I’m sure all of the Australian Passport Holders really appreciated having the Aussie Immi guys ferry none Australia passport holders through their ‘fasttrack’ but we all got ther ein the end.

Hire car picked up from Hertz and off we drove, tired but happy, up the Mitchell Freeway to Mindarie Keys (Via a bottle shop of course).

Popularity: 2% [?]