G’day all. Work wise, life down under has been ridiculously busy recently which is why Getting Down Under hasn’t been getting much love and attention recently.

Still, – I know there’s a small pocket of you who probably wonder what we’ve been up to when you wake each morning (not) so to appease these small few I’ll use this time on the train with my ridiculously small blackberry keyboard wisely and give you a quick heads up on what’s been going on down under.

Firstly where is Jeff? It’s been a very long time now since we saw Charlie’s feline brethren so all I can say is we hope he’s in a safe and happy place.

We got his annual vaccination reminder through from the vets yesterday so if he is out there he better keep away from all those bugs!

Something we never thought about was the fact that Jeff liked to jump into the back of open Vans and Lorries so he’s probably chilling out somewhere around Sydney about now.

Or, perhaps he just got hit by a car and we simply couldn’t find him. Either way, no more Jeff

I know its Mid May here in Australia but by UK Standards we are half way through the equivalent of November.

The mornings and evenings are now starting to get cold! We’re not talking freezing though. This morning at about 7am it was just a touch over 9 degrees Celsius. Perhaps ‘fresh’ is a slightly better way to describe it.

Certainly not short and t-shirt weather, well, not first thing in the morning. During the afternoon we are still seeing temperatures in the low twenties so not bad for late autumn.

I quite like this time of the year actually. Being the sunniest capital city in the World were still getting lots of sunshine here in Perth, just not the sort that melts your skin within 5 seconds of stepping into it.

In other news the missus has started back at work. Not quite full time but 30 hours a week. This meant we had to source child care for junior number 2 and after school care for junior number 1.

As child care in Australia will be quite an important subject for many of you then you might be interested to know that I’m working on a article on the very subject which I hope to post in the next week or so watch this space

The missus is working in the city so it’s nice to catch up for our regular coffee in the morning without the distraction of kids. You forget how important these times alone are sometimes when you’ve been surrounded by a little person (and now people) demanding your attention all the time.

Speaking of Coffee, Aussies love the stuff. You’ll find Starbucks in abundance in Sydney, although none in Perth for some reason. Perth still has several coffee shop per head of population so you’ll never struggle to find somewhere for your early morning caffeine fix.

Speaking of which, I”m at the station now so time for work. More Blackberry updates soon.

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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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Well, we have had our weekly update today. Ok, perhaps not an update as such just a voicemail from the Halifax (after being chased).

Hopefully, it’s just a case of no real news is good news!

The expectation from the broker was that our buyers would have paid the survey fees by now.

The news is they haven’t!

The woman who is looking after our sale (I use the term ‘looking after’ very loosely) finished at 4pm today so that’s it for the rest of the week.

I’m pretty much done with dealing with the Halifax for a while.

We’ve agreed that the missus will be taking over from next week, as I’m finding it harder to speak calmly to these guys on an ongoing basis.

If we are still dealing with the Halifax after another week I’ll make the calls again.

We also need to seriously start thinking about a contingency plan. If nothing happens we may even need to start thinking about re-marketing the property.

Would we do this with the Halifax? I’m not sure. At the end of the day, its been 6 weeks since anyone was last shown around the house so it would be very unlikely that they’d not have found somewhere else by now.

There’s also the option to take what cash we have in savings now and move to Australia before Christmas, in the hope that I could get sorted out job wise in 3 – 4 months.

If we do then we have all the time in the world to sell the house, if we don’t then we’ll need the house proceeds in order for us to have something to live off.

A very big gamble and with a four years old in tow, perhaps one not really worth thinking about until we have to.

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I’ve added quite a few (pre-written) articles to our about Australia section today. Although quite a few of these articles are probably targeted a little more at the folks going on Holiday to Australia as opposed to those looking to emigrate, they still make some very interesting ready and paint a very pretty picture of Australia as a whole.

Happy reading..

On the house front. No updates from the Halifax since my last update although still not particularly concerned at this stage. We marked the house as sold with the little house company. A great concept and perhaps we may have got a commission free sale had we found them sooner but hey, if were going to spend £2000 shipping the cats to Australia what’s another £135??? A lot I know but in the bigger scheme of things…

Anyway, off to phone the Halifax for another update, who’s for putting money that they completely ignore my call back request!

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Well, dare I say it but things almost appear to be happening.

Spoke to the Halifax yesterday who are still beyond useless (not giving us the promised updates resulting in a number of ignored call-back requests). However it seems that we are now progressing with our latest buyers which is the best bit of positive news we’ve had from the Halifax for some time.

All of the mortgage paperwork has now been completed and the survey fee’s have been paid. The surveyors will not be instructed by the Halifax until the Mr of the buying party has his employees reference back. This is pretty standard practice apparently and is expected to be back by early next week.

The SOLD sign has been ordered and is expected any day. Daft though this may sound, this is probably one of the things we’ve been longing for the most.

I know getting the sold sign doesn’t make everything legally binding and it doesn’t mean the house is really going to see. Its just psychological I guess.

Driving around the corner every day when I get home from work to be confronted by our ‘For Sale’ really gets you down after a while. Being presented by a nice SOLD sign will really give us the boost we need to get us to the next level

The fact that the survey fees have already been paid is a good sign as this represents quite a big sum of money. As our home is just under 10 years old I hope that the survey doesn’t show anything up. If it does we’ll need to fork out the cash to get everything sorted. If its structural it should still be covered by our NHBC certificate but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In other news, we’ve had a quote from a company (which appears quite reputable) called airpets for our two cats. It looks like all in all its going to cost us just over £2k to fly the cats out to Perth and house them for the 30 days they’ll need to remain in quarantine. Its a lot of money but we couldn’t leave the boys in Blighty, they are part of the family after all.

Anyway, fingers crossed and lets see what the next few days bring.

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Do you know what, when we decided to emigrate to Australia, the emotions we went through when trying to gain our Visa kinda pale into insignificance when compared to those we are going through now we’re selling our house.

I guess it’s the sheer lack of structure which is the thing that gets to you.

With our visa applications we knew there would be a certain amount of ‘doing nothing’ once we had sent our visa applications off. We also knew there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands in a similar boat.

With our house sale there’s lot of unexpected ‘nothing’ happening which is enough to drive a family nuts!

The paperwork completion and surveyors instruction that was supposed to happen this Saturday didn’t happen.

Thankfully, the Mr of the buying party did go into the Halifax to complete the paperwork but the Mrs was unable to attend as she had a wedding to go to.

Now I’m not sure why she didn’t mention this when she visited us earlier this week. The same visit in which she told us that she would be going into the Halifax this Saturday to complete the paperwork.

Still, at least the Mr of the party went in.

The story from the Halifax (once we chased them) is that the Mr will get the Mrs to sign the paperwork this weekend. He will then take the completed forms into the branch on Monday where the surveyors fee’s will then be paid.

Enough info for the Halifax to mark our property as sold apparently..yay!

Still not enough for a slightly paranoid chap from West Yorkshire to feel relieved though.

Anyway, the brother-in-law comes for a two day visit today, he’s been in France for the last three weeks visiting his missus’s family before they all travel back to Sydney next week.

Perhaps his presence will be the good luck charm we need to finally get this bottomed out!

Here’s hoping eh?

I guess the key message for this entry is this. When were were applying for our Visa’s we felt better because we knew we were waiting with thousands of other wannabe Aussies. One you get your visa you’re only halfway through your journey.

Selling your house is a seriously big thing, especially from an emotional perspective and for those of you currently selling your house, be assured you are not alone. We will all get there…eventually!

Further updates on if/when the paperwork is ever completed later this week!

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As I mentioned on Friday, we were waiting for a formal offer to be made on our house.

It was supposed to be made at around 4pm so I made sure my diary was free for the latter part of Friday afternoon.

At 4pm – nothing! Diddly-squat, so I waited, checking through my e-mails, conscious of the fact that I needed to pick junior up from nursery before 5:30.

Then, at about 4:20pm, we got the call.

The chap from Halifax estates pipes up with something on the lines of ‘well, we have an offer and its a little lower then we were expecting’.

My stomach sunk to the floor when he confirms that the offer will be £12,000 under the asking price.

Prior to taking today’s call, myself and the missus had agreed the minimum we would accept, in fact we’d agreed and stuck to this figure from the day we were awarded our Visa’s and it’s formed a pretty key part of our ‘plan’ I.e. If we don’t get this much for the house we don’t move.

With this key point in mind, the declined the offer.

The chap from the Halifax remained upbeat saying he thought it was just a ‘shot across the bow’ to test the water. He also asked what the minimum figure we would accept for the property, which I told him.

I also give him an idea of what kind of figure we would accept. Most importantly I told him not to disclose any of these figures to the buyer.

He confirmed that he would go back to the buyer and advise we were looking for something nearer the asking price and happy with this, he went on his merry way.

It was about 4:25pm by this point; I hung around for another 25 minutes without another update. At 4:50pm I tried to call the branch.

Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring, ring ring, ring ring…no answer (very often the case with this branch).

So, off to pick junior up from nursery, 5:20 still no updates so back on the phone again…

Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring…you get the idea….

The buggers had gone home for the night and I was livid.

To me this is basic customer service. I couldn’t believe that they had decided to go home for the night without giving us a formal update. Even if the update was that there was no update, this would be better then nothing.

What was the buyers reaction to our decline? Were they going to make another offer? Had they decided it was out of their price range?

Who knows, we didn’t and after over 24 hours of emotion and anticipation there was nothing we could do until the branch opened on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning came. One of our son’s nursery chums had a birthday party at one of these wacky warehouse type places so we were all out of the door on the way to ‘Geronimos’ at about 9:45am

Shoes off and away he went with all of his little buddies. Time for a cuppa and a call back into the Halifax.
The chap who I had spoken to the previous night was on the phone but thankfully became available just a few seconds after his colleague answered our call.

He came on the phone… So what’s happened?

‘Hello sir, well we tried to call the buyer to advise that her initial offer had been declined but were unable to get in contact with her. We’ll be giving her a call later today’.

Phew! OK, the service was still crap (he could have phoned me on Friday night to let me know this) but not being able to contact the buyer was a reasonable enough reason for things not to have progressed at the kind of pace that we wanted to on Friday night. At least the buyer hadn’t been scared off!

Another plus point was the Halifax chap also confirmed that the buyer had referred to her initial offer as being a ‘provisional offer’ which indicated she might have a little more cash to come.

Relatively content with the update, I let the Halifax chap go on his way and I updated the missus.

Time went on, the kids played (I never knew a three year old could sweat so much) and hotdogs/chicken nuggets were eaten.

Back home for Saturday brunch (Sausage sarnies) and back to the waiting game.

Then, at 2:28pm on Saturday the 29th of July we got the call. It was a revised offer! More importantly it was at the bottom of the range that we’ve always said we’d accept!

Now lets just take a few seconds out here. When we planned to sell the house we always had the original asking price at one end of our scale and the lowest price we’d accept if desperate at the other.

Between these two prices would be multiple reductions over a period of weeks to enable those who had shown an interest but couldn’t afford the full asking price to have renewed interest at a slightly lower price.

Only if we were still here at Christmas would we make the final reduction to the lowest possible price we’d accept.

Since putting this faultless plan into action, we’d noticed that the housing market wasn’t as buoyant as we’d expected. Offers that had been made previously were massively under the minimum we’d ever consider selling for.

So here we were, still with a house being advertised at the same price it was advertised for on day one. With a house that hadn’t been re-advertised at one of our incremental reductions.

Here we were at the end of July with an offer we originally said we would only consider if we were still here at Christmas.

What did we do? We bloody bit their hand off, that’s what!

At the end of the day, if we were selling our house for millions then the difference in the top of our range and the bottom could be into the tens of thousands.

With our little home the difference in the top and bottom of the range was into the thousands and we’ve had enough hanging around now. The buyer was also a first time buyer (with a lot of financial assistance from her folks) so no chain = more control over when we need to vacate.

So we accepted their offer with a smile and toasted our new buyers with a glass of champers that very night.

There are still a few more hurdles that we need to get over before we can fully relax. The buyer needs to get a mortgage sorted and then we need to exchange contracts.

Once contracts are exchanged then we can fully relax and I can hand my notice in at work.

Oh yes. I’m sure the Halifax disclosed to the buyer the minimum figure we’d accept just so they could get the sale. Nothing to prove this but just a thought!

Anyway, mustn’t dwell on this. Things are finally starting to happen again so bring it on.

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Latest Updates from Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre

As of 6 June 2006 the Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre is assessing applications lodged on or before the following dates:

ONSHORE – paper based applications: 22 February 2006 (both priority and non-priority applications)

ONSHORE- e-lodged (online) applications: 27 February 2006 (both priority and non-priority applications) Read the full story

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DIMA have finally started advertising the allocation to case officer times.

The information is updated weekly so I’ll start posting the latest updates from time to time on getting down under. The most up to date info is also available by sending a blank e-mail to: aspc.processing@immi.gov.au.

Processing Information

A case officer will be appointed to assess the 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:

The latest figures are below. Read the full story

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Quick update…..

DIY frenzy is now pretty much completed. The garden was finished this bank holiday weekend. The en-suite redecoration is complete and the missus is still doing an absolutely fab job packing all our worldly possessions into large cardboard boxes.

We hope to get an estate agent around in the next couple of weeks to see what kind of valuation we’ll be looking at for the house.

Shared the news with work (gave 6 months notice of my intention to give notice). Quite a safe decision (I hope) to share the news at this time as they are recruiting for folks to join the team doing similar roles to myself and they have struggled for the last 6 months to find suitable candidates to fill them. Read the full story

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Oh well, here we are. Almost three weeks on and we’ll be leaving the beutiful country of Australia to travel back to the UK tomorrow afternoon at 4pm Aussie time.

Well probably spend our last day at Kings Park before heading back home to watch the sunset at about 7pm. Then it’ll be time to eat whats left of the food in the fridge.

We had the brother-in-law, his missus and their son over to stay from Sydney in the past week. They really enjoyed the laid back lifestyle of Western Australia although they were surprised how expensive property had become.

The view from the ‘East side’ seems to be that you can still pick up properties for £50,000.

Now although you may be able to do this in the outback the number of Immigrants moving to the west coast is slowly starting to push prices upwards.

Take Sorrento and Hillarys for example. The number of $1 Million + houses being build and sold is staggering although even for these properties, similar properties in Sydney would cost you 4 to 5 times this amount.

Having said all this, compared to the UK, what you get for your hard earned money over here is significantly better. A house of ‘mansion’ proportions could still be yours for under £200,000 if you had this sort of cash to hand.

I think we’ve made the best of our time here in WA. We’ve got a really good feel for the different suburbs, we’ve identified a school for our son. We’ve got a good feel for house prices and what we’ll get for our cash. From a work perspective I’ve also met with a number of recruiters who’ll I’ll continue to keep contact with when I get back to the UK.

I’ve also taken hundreds of picks which I’ll upload to the site when we get back later in the week.

For now, more updates when we get back to the UK. Just a short 20 hour flight and we’ll be back in Blighty. Oh joy!

I’ve added some pictures of some of the houses we visited so check out this post titled – What will you get for £150k in Australia for more info.

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Well g’day from down under

I was hoping that I may still be able to post small updates and it looks like, due to the wonders of technology I can.

Well, actually, thanks to the wonders of smartphone technology.. For anyone remotely interested. I’m currently using my SPV M2000 to post updates to getting down under (google SPV M2000 for more info).

I had roaming activated on the phone so I’ll be posting via the Vodafone Australia network. I wasn’t sure if the roaming had been activated in time as I never got the SIM update I was promised but thankfully it appears to have worked.

Not sure how much the GPRS roaming costs will be but the posts won’t be that big since using the small thumb keypad on the m2000 isn’t particularly conjusive to typing massive entries.

Anyway, here I am in Sorrento Perth. Its 6:50 am which is a whole 2 hours later then it was when I woke up yesterday morning. Jet lag is a curious thing but I slowly appear to be getting over it.

Staying at the London Heathrow Hilton was an interesting experience. Nice hotel but damn, very expensive. The plan was to use the Hilton to reduce the stress of rushing to the airport first thing in the morning. The hotel links directly to terminal 4 at Heathrow airport so you can stroll over from your room, check in and then stroll back to your hotel room to relax until about an hour before departure where you can then wonder on back to your departure gate for your flight.

Only problem was, Singapore Airlines departs from Terminal 3 at Heathrow airport. Doh!

So, one train ride to terminal 3, a taxi back to the hotel to check out and a second train ride back to terminal 3 later, we were checked in.

Then we had to wait 45 minutes to get through security (due to some increased security checks…cue increased stress levels) culminating in a 1 mile run to the gate (literally).

The gate was displayed as ‘closing’ as we made our final dash and we could only run so fast due the the limited sprinting abilities of our 3 year old little boy. .

It reminded me a little of an old TV program that I used to watch called ‘treasure hunt’ presented by Anika Rice (spelling!) where she had a set amount of time to find clues which she would do before shouting ‘stop the clock, stop the clock!’ But we made it, and theres nothing like getting yourself, hot, bothered and sweaty in preperation for a 17 hour plane journey!

The flight itself was excellent. We have flown with Singapore Airlines 6 times now and I would highly recommend them. The inflight entertainment is excellent although with a three year old to look after, we didn’t see that much of it.

The flight time was a little shorter then I was expecting. Just over 12 hours from London to Singapore and then 5 hours flat from Singapore to Perth. It’s longer by about 2 and a half hours on the return (something to due with jet streams apparently).Our little boy slept for approx 4 hours of the first leg and 2 hours of the second which really helped us with the flight. Last year when he was just over 2 he didn’t sleep at all! Saying that, neither myself or the missus slept this time, however, reduced inflight stress made this flight a much better one and we were both really proud of how well our little boy did this time around

So, we’ve landing in Perth, go though immigration and get our visa’s stamped. Two years of blood sweat and tears and we’ve made it. We are now officially Australian Residents!!

I actually thought our Visa’s (the sticker they insert in your passport) would be stamped. However the lady in immigration just stamped our passports as normal.

She explained it’s the date on the stamp which is this important thing. The paper Perminant residency Visa is the Actual Visa but the date on the stamp in our passports validates the visa as it was dated within 12 months of issue.

We now have a further 5 years to settle perminantly in Australia although we know it will be much sooner.

So, the perminant residents pick up the hire car from Hertz and drive the 45 minutes north from Perth Airport to the beautiful town of Sorrento.

The drive was great and we were thankful for the aircon. It was 32 degrees C when we arrive at 2:30pm but who’s complaining. After the miserable weather we’e had in the UK of late it was a seriouisly refreshing change.

The layout of the highway network in and around Perth seems really well organised and pretty logical, almost modular. With my co-driver/primary navigator at the side of me, it wasn’t long before we came over the brow of a hill and caught our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean and Hillarys boat harbor…Stunning!

Off to the estate agents to pick up the keys for the house were renting here in Sorrento. Get to the houe (nice!) drop the bags off, back in the car again to find a shop for some grub (it was getting near dinner time) and some wine of course! Back to the house and time to finally sit down and relax.

First impressions of Sorrento? Fantastic. Compared to the East Coast of Australia Sorrento seems so much more chilled out. Lots of people chatting and walking along the beaches. There are mainly residential areas lining the beaches in Sorrento. Dee Why beach near Sydney where we stayed last year by comparison seemed alot more commercial. More cafes and shops.

I know there will be places more like Dee Why in Western Australia to, but for the time being I’m liking what I’m seeing.

Time to check out now, typing on this small ‘thumb board’ is going to leave my thumbs permanently deformed if I’m not careful. However I’ll post further updates as our Aussie adventure continues.

Small sidenote: My roaming charges came to over £100! Next time I’ll get an Australian SIM card

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Getting down under was created by me as an online resource for people within the UK (and anywhere else I guess) who have a yearning or an interest in emigrating to Australia.

2006 is going to be a massive year for my family and I. We have our permanent residency visa’s but we’ve still to pack a single box. The house hasn’t been put on the market yet and we still have tons of stuff to do.

I thought it’d be a good idea to launch a website which documents the highs and lows of our journey from the UK to Australia. I’ll aim to update the site regularly with updates and will add as many snippets of useful information and advice that I can along the way.

Unlike many folks who emigrate to Australia. We did everything ourselves. We didn’t utilise the expertise of a Migration agent so we had to do tons of digging along the way.
Read the full story

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