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Here at Getting Down Under HQ we’ve focused our efforts on publishing news and articles specific to what’s going on in the world of Australian Immigration right now.

The thing is, there isn’t ALWAYS something going on (of interest to our readers anyway). This means that the pages of our site don’t update as often as we’d like them to and if you are one of the many folks who visit our site every day, it’s not going to be particularly exciting for you either!

With this in mind, we have decided to introduce a number of articles written by guest authors. These Articles are focused on educating our Getting Down under readers on the process of migrating to Australia and we’ll look to publish a new article every day for at least the next couple of weeks. If the articles prove to be a popular introduction then we’ll look to source some more. Continue Reading

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Hi all, well for our more regular visitors, you may have noticed that the availability of Getting Down Under has been very off and on of late.

Since January 2006, Getting Down Under has been hosted on it’s own server located in (of all places) Texas!

As technology has evolved we’ve found ourselves becoming a little left behind and the recent crash was a sign that we needed to move our site to a more stable host.

With this in mind on Friday morning we started to backup out site in preperation for the move to a new web host and it was during this process that our old server completly died! Continue Reading

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Hey Everyone

We’ve recently updated some software on the server that hosts Getting Down Under and this has caused some significant issues with out forums.

Let me take this opportunity to apologise for the downtime. We are trouble shooting the issue with our host and VBulletin (the guys who make the software we use for the forums) and hope to have everything back on line as soon as possible.

Please feel free to keep in touch by either posting a comment at the bottom of this post or via the discussion option within the Getting Down Under Facebook Group which you can view by clicking here. Continue Reading

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Since launching Getting Down Under in January 2006, our site has evolved from my own personal Blog, tracking the move of my own family down under to more of an online Australian Immigration Magazine providing the latest Australian immigration news, reviews and of course, the odd joke!

Since these early days the internet has continued to develop so today I thought I’d officially launch a couple more channels to keep in touch with our site and with other folk around the world looking to make the move Down under.

Facebook

If you haven’t heard of Facebook then where have you been! Facebook is a free-access social networking website. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and hobby to connect and interact with other people. We’ve created our own user group on facebook for folks looking to make the move down under. We have 51 members in our little Facebook club so far so lease consider joing us by Clicking Here.

Twitter

The second group we’ve launched is with Twitter. Like Facebook, Twitter is a free social networking and ‘micro-blogging’ service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers).

As well as my own random dribbles, any news updates posted via Getting Down Under will also be tweeted to Twitter. If your already a user of the twitter service and would like to receive details of any related Aussie news then become one of our followers on Twitter. You can access our Twitter account by Clicking Here.

Email Newsletter

As well as our new services available on Facebook and Twitter, I’d also like to use this as an opportunity to remind folks that all of the latest posts and news appearing on Getting Down Under can also be sent to you on email via the Getting Down Under newsletter.   To join the other (at time of typing) 1158 people who already subscribe to our newsletter then please Click Here.

Privavcy stuff : For info, we use the services of a company called Feedburner to provide our newsletters. Feedburner is a company owned by the search engine dudes at Google so be rest assured your details will be held in a secure environment. We also promise to keep your email safe and will use it for only this purpose.

Getting Down Under Forum

Last but not least, our Australian Immigration advice forums have already been providing help and support to a great community of like minded people for some time.   We currently have over 5000 members in our community (who have asked over 28,000 questions) so if Facebook or Twitter accounts are not something that takes your fancy consider joing our community forum. The key word here is community and you’ll be joining a great bunch of people online within our forums.

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Getting down under has been around for a number of years now and during this time we we’ve written quite a large number of articles.

I know that it’s a given that you need to speak a decent level of English to migrate to Australia, the IELTS tests see to that, however I’m also mindful that English may not necessarily be the first language of all the visitors who come to our site.

With this in mind we are in the process of translating Getting Down Under into Multiple languages.

Apart from the  native English version of Getting Down Under we have choosen to translate Getting Down Under into four additional languages.

From today  getting Down Under is now available in Italian, German, French and Spanish.

We’ve translated over 900 pages at time of typing and will extend into additional languages as time goes on.

I’m not saying the translations will  be perfect but hope the translations will helps those folks who’s first language is not native English to find some useful information on our site.

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It’s been a while since I played around with the look of our site and as I have a little time on my hands (with the lead up to Christmas) I thought it was about time for a change.

As time has gone by Getting Down Under has developed from just a personal Blog to an online magazine for people looking to emigrate Down Under.

I’m hoping the new design will help pull together a large part of our content whilst helping people visiting our site navigate through the pages a little more easier than before.

There’s still a little tweaking to do with the design before I’d be fully happy with it but I think it does the job for now

Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or notice anything which appears to have gone a little wrong!

Cheers

Mark

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Way back in March 2006 I mulled over whether or not a forum would be a useful addition to our site.

Back in the day, Getting Down Under was a relitively new site. We only had a handful of visitors a day (less than 20) but I still wanted to create a place on the site where members could interact with each other a little more.

On the 20th of April of the same year, I launched our Community Forums and we had 6 folks register to join our forums in the first week

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m delighted to say that we’ve now got over 5000 members, with 20 – 30 new wannabe Aussies joining our community every single day

Getting down under now attracts over 1500 unique visitors daily and it’s great to see some of the interactions and friendships starting to be formed within our community. Continue Reading

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OK, so at time of typing I’ve written over 330 Articles and Blog Entries here at getting down under.

Some of these have been pretty useful and quite popular, others have been… well, pretty pants.

The content for my Blog entries is pretty straight forward as I’m just talking about what my family and I have been up to since arriving in Australia or commenting on stuff which I think might be of use to wannabe Aussies.

The articles I write however are based on information which I wished was a little more readily available when we made the move down under and I’d like to research and write a few more. Continue Reading

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Hi Everyone! It’s been well over two years since Getting Down Under went live and I thought it was about time that I started to make some radical changes to the look of our site.

Some time ago I  added  an  Articles page in an attempt to  try and make some of our more useful and popular articles a little easier to find.

Having  done this  I still found the historical designs a little cumbersome and lacking in it’s ease of navigation due to the chronological order in which our posts were displayed.

As our site has grown it’s become more of an online magazine covering all aspects of migration to Australia.  

I wanted the design of our site to reflect this kind of format.  Displaying posts from various categories and making these posts, our recent blog entries and Forum contributions available on the main pages of our site.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time looking for and tweaking  the right theme  for the site but I think the new look goes a little way towards achieving what I’m looking for.

Like anything, our new look will take a little further work  before it’s just as we want it, however I think it’s good enough to go live on our site.

I really hope you like the new look getting down under but we still need your help.

If you spot a bug or something looking strange then please feel free to post any comments.

In addition, your own opinions are really valuable to us. As a visitor to our site we appreciate any input and suggestions on things we can do to  help us make a visit to our pages a better visit for you. With this in mind please feel free to provide any feedback by posting a comment using the form below.

All the best

Regards

Mark

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BBC’s wanted down under seems to be drawing in the crowds to getting down under as of late.

I actually remembered that last year when the first series was on the TV our visitor volumes spiked as people jumped onto the web to find a little more information about the show.

This last week its been a little crazy, within two days of the first show airing on TV we’ve been seeing over 2000 unique visitors to the site every day with ‘wanted down under’ and ‘wanted down under BBC’ being the main search terms used to find our site

With this kind of interest I’m still slightly bemused by the fact that the BBC chooses to air the show at such a daft time.   9am in the morning when most people are at work isn’t the best time to show a program like this and I really hope the folks at the BEEB are receiving similar kinda feedback.

If your found us looking for info on the show then make sure you say hi

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I’ve been writing blog entries and articles on this site since January 2006 and its getting to the stage where some of the more useful articles are getting buried deep in the archives.

To try and address this I’ve written a new popular articles page.

Within this page I’ve provided links to a number of articles which may prove particularly useful to folks at various stages of their journey down under.

The popular articles can also be accessed via the popular articles link on our main menu.

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Its been a while since I last updated the look of the site and to be honest I was getting a little vexed by the busyness of the old template and after the stresses of baby stuff yesterday I wanted to get creative.

I’ve updated the theme to something a little cleaner and hopefully a little more pleasing on the eye.

Its always a little difficult to decide whats best when deciding on the look of a site. I guess I’m just basing the layout on my own personal preferences (which can often be described as a little obscure to say the least).

Over time, I’d like to integrate our forums and Photo Gallary a little more with the general feel of the site but I guess I’ll need to look at doing this when I have a little more time!

As always, you, our dear readers are the people that matter so if you have any comments or suggestions then post a reply Continue Reading

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Hi folks, I’ve made a little tweak recently which I’ll be testing out over the next couple of days.

I have set up an email account which automatically (hopefully) posts any emails I send to this account as a blog entry at gettingdownunder.

This way, I should be able to blog via my Blackberry which has to be a good thing right? Especially when I’m sat twiddling my thumbs on the train!

Anyway. no idea if this will work so here goes

Cheers

Mark

Edit: Yay! it works

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** update – Newsgab have the uncensored Lara Bingle topless pictures HERE **

Nearly a year ago I blogged about the wonders of Laura Bingle (a name I have since found our is spelt Lara Bingle) and how the topless comment I made attracted a lot of extra visitors to our site.

I’ve written about Lara a number of times. Since she first appeared on the ‘Where the bloody hell are you?‘ ads she’s drawn quite a bit of attention.

Whether or not the attention has been down to her good looks or the advertisers tag-lines is debatable but for the visitors to our site it seems the Bingles assets are a big attraction.

The reason for me posting this entry is because the wonders of the Bingle effect have struck again!

I’ve noticed a bit of a spike in traffic to our site recently and having done a little digging around it seems that good old Lara has been in the news again.

Top searches hitting our site in the last few days have been:

laura bingle (looks like I’m not the only one who can’t spell her name correctly). lara bingle naked (hey lets cut to the chase and get to the point). Wanted down under - Finally good to see that we have some folks interested in a move down under still viting our site (hello to you ). laura bingle topless – Back to the boobs again. bingle lara (lets try the backward spelling approach) laura bingle naked (different and incorrect spelling of one of the earlier terms) lara bingle (short and sweet), laura bingle nude (not naked but nude this time) lara bingle topless (more users looking for boobs)!

So, whats with all of the interest in Laura Bingle this time? Well it seems that most of our Lara fans visiting our site originate from within Australian shores.

Some time ago, when the ‘where the bloody hell are you?‘ ads were being shown regularly, and Bingles public profile was at it’s peek, the Australian ‘lads mag’ Zoo magazine showed some piccies of Lara Bingle topless (but appropriately covered).

The magazine advertised the pictures as: “World Exclusive! Bloody Hell! TV ad girl, Lara Bingle’s first ever men’s mag shoot” while an accompanying press release declared: “Lara Bingle Poses Topless for New Men’s Magazine.”

Bingle says she did not pose, topless or exclusively, for the magazine and tried to sue publisher Emap in the Federal Court for defamation, misleading conduct and breach of copyright.

Anyway, to cut a long story short it turns our that she DID pose topless and the pictures appeared for a short time on the German version of GQ Magazine.

The Sydney Morning Herald picked up on the story and reported on the story which in turn caused the GQ webservers to crash as a direct result of all the extra traffic being routed to the site.

The crash resulted in even more news which resulted in more traffic to GQ which resulted in GQ removing the pic.

The lack of the offending pics is what appears to be leading Bingle fans on their search for pictures of the top totties assets (damn, I’m starting to sound like a daily star reporter).

Anyway, a GDU toned down version of the offending picture can be found here (Lara Bingle Topless GQ photos). Was the search worth it?

I have a feeling it’s probably not and if you want the uncesored version…well you’ll need to wait for the guys back at GQ to sort their servers out

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Hi Guys, I’ve noticed that we have a few people subscribing to updates from our site using the wonders of RSS feeds.

RSS What? I hear you say RSS feeds for those of you not familiar with the term enables folks to read updates from a number of websites or new services all at the same time from a common interface such as a feed reader (a software package that you down load onto your PC).

There are a few services offered by the likes of Google and Yahoo that also enable you to view these feeds online.

Why am I telling you this? Well, for those of you looking for this kind of functionality, I’ve signed up an account with feedburner.com to enable those of you interested in getting RSS updates a little easier.

Clicky Here for details of the RSS Feed and subscription options (opens a new page).

Receive an daily update by email every time we update the blog.

If you have even a slight interest in what we are up to down under, another of the funky features offered by Feedburner is the ability to subscribe to blog updates via email. Basically if you subscribe, you’ll get a daily update on the days that we get around to updating the blog. If no new content or updates are written then no email will be sent to you.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t want to see you here daily checking out our forums and stuff it might just save you five seconds of your busy lives checking the blog to see if the blog has updated to find the same old post

Clicky Here for the sign up form for email updates.

For those of you worried about privacy or being bombarded by updates relating to entries about my bum then be assured that your info isn’t shared and you can unsubscribe at any time via a link sent with any updates.

Easy Eh? Comments, questions then please feel free to post em!

Mark

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Now then folks. Just over a year ago I asked the question if you would find a discussion forum a useful addition to our site.

No bugger replied but in my defense, at the time I wrote this entry I was only getting about 30 peeps a day reading the Blog.

I’m delighted, chuffed and very slight shocked (OK VERY shocked) to announce that this figure (according to my web stats) is now just over 600 people a day…a very scary prospect indeed, especially for someone who is pretty illiterate

Anyway, I’d really love it if just 10% of you took the time to join our forum which you can find by clicking here . I know some of you might be thinking what do I have to offer?

Well, for folks in a similar boat with similar interests, the fact that your just thinking about moving to Australia makes you a very interesting and useful person to know indeed

I know when we were migrating we were the only people in our sphere of friends, colleagues and acquaintances that were looking at moving to Australia.

Participating in our forum will quickly make you realise that you are truly not alone and having someone to rant to or share an opinion with can really help make the whole immigration process a much more enjoyable and relaxing experience.

Anyway, what the hell, you know it makes sense So don’t be shy, register and post away.

I’ve even started a new thread which you can view by Clicking here…. All you need to do is say hi

See you on the other side, please don’t leave me looking like a mad man…talking to myself…..again

Mark

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