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.

Article Popularity: 11%

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. Read the full story

Article Popularity: 9%

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. Read the full story

Article Popularity: 6%

Perth Culture

Social structure

The “Western Suburbs” between Perth and the Indian Ocean, contain the highest income suburbs notably the locations of homes of the wealthiest individuals becoming landmarks and tourist attractions.

The “Eastern Suburbs” around the airport are less desirable suburbs, many light industry and main roads co-exist with the residential areas. Crime rates are higher in the “Eastern Suburbs” than the “Western Suburbs”.

The “Northern Suburbs” extend from Northbridge to Joondalup and are mostly based along the coast, contain a lot of new housing, new developments & many new migrants especially from the UK decide to live here.

The “Southern Suburbs” are where the bulk of Perth residents live, extending from Kwinana in the South West, Armadale in the South East, Fremantle in the West & Belmont in the East. Most houses in the “Southern Suburbs”, including Fremantle, were built before 1970 and they are established suburbs with most residents being Australian Citizens.

The majority of industry and jobs in Perth, outside of the CBD, are based in the Southern Suburbs.

The outer suburbs, well away from the city to the north and south, are referred to as “Mortgage Belt” suburbs, where the low to middle income population of Perth are often commented about during Federal and State Elections as to their collective responses to government policies that might affect their well-being.

Isolation and attitudes

Western Australia, or specifically Perth was the most reluctant participant in the Commonwealth. Residents of Kalgoorlie and Albany voted to join the Commonwealth, and the proposal of these areas being admitted separately was considered

The secessionism has been a recurring feature of Western Australia’s political landscape since shortly after European settlement in 1829. The idea of self governance or secession has often been discussed through local newspaper newspaper articles and editorials and on a number of occasions has surfaced as very public events including a State referendum in 1933. Organised groups have been established to agitate when the timing has been to their advantage. Prominent Perth business people continue to raise the possibility of secession.

Almost all the stereotypes of an Australian (‘rough and tumble’, friendly, athletic, etc.) exist in Perth and are very much an integral part of Perth’s culture. When one thinks of a typical Australian stereotype, it came out of Western Australia.

Perth Ethnicity

Because Fremantle was the first landfall in Australia for migrant ships coming from Europe in the 1950s and ’60s, Perth experienced an influx of Croatian, British, Macedonian, Italian, Dutch and Greek migrants. The name of quite a few migrants who arrived during this period are listed on an honour board outside the Maritime Museum. More recently, large-scale immigration to Perth by air from the UK has continued, giving Perth the highest-proportion of British-born residents of any Australian city. In some areas in the far south of Perth (Rockingham) and the far north of Perth (Joondalup) the populations are higher than 20 per cent British by birthplace.

Perth also has substantial immigrant communities from South East Asia such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, India and Sri Lanka (Many of whom emigrate from their home countries for educational purposes). The Indian community includes a substantial number of Parsees who emigrated from Mumbai. Another source of immigration has been Southern Africa, with many white South Africans and Zimbabweans settling in the city.

Many migrants are from New Zealand, due to the fact that New Zealanders, unlike other foreign nationals, are eligible for ‘special category’ visas, which allow them to live and work in Australia.

Article Popularity: 8%

Skilled migrants who have been granted visas under the general skilled migration visa categories are achieving significantly higher levels of labour market success than ever before, the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Amanda Vanstone and the Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon Julie Bishop MP announced today.

A major evaluation of these categories has confirmed good results and has also identified some areas where targeting to the needs of the labour market can be enhanced.

The independent evaluation of the general skilled migration categories has been conducted by three of Australia’s leading immigration experts, Dr Bob Birrell, Associate Professor Lesleyanne Hawthorne and Professor Sue Richardson.

Australia already has the best skilled migration programme in the world, but we cannot afford to stand still, Minister Vanstone said. Read the full story

Article Popularity: 4%

Hi Guys

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our Australian immigration advice forums.

I have had quite a few enquiries from folks using our contact form with questions relating to their move down under.

I’ve answered these questions as best as I can but thought it would be useful to have a forum so that everyone can see the responses given.

In addition to this, a number of our new forums act as gateways to the Usenet communities. You can therefore use these forums to access the Australia and New Zealand immigration news groups from anywhere in the world without having to worry about installing some fandangled newsreader software on your PC. Read the full story

Article Popularity: 5%