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Our Journey to Sydney


brettsj

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Hi all,

New to the site, been reading posts without contributing for a while so I wanted to put a few thoughts down now and as things happen.

My wife, son and I are planning on making the move in the first quarter of next year. We have gone through the process of IELTS, skills assessment, EOI and the lodgement of our visa (thanks to Migrate2Oz). We’re still waiting for a CO and need to do PCCs and medicals (booked) but then the visa side of it is done. I understand that this is when things start getting real as the procedural bits where you’re given a handy list of things to do is done and the really important list-free things begin like selling up, packing up, finding a house etc.

Luckily we were able to go on a 3 week trip and loved it so that worry of: ‘is this the place for us’, has been shelved, we really loved every minute of it and are excited about the move despite its challenges. We have decided on Sydney after seeing Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth both because of lifestyle and job work opportunities in our industries.

Why are we doing this, God has opened up so many doors. In SA we both have really good jobs, nice house in a good boomed area etc, similar to a lot of people we are in a bit of a bubble. There are a lot of things which are nice to have but we probably don't need and probably aren't too important in the grand scheme of things, people have said to us, you won’t be able to have a live in domestic, gardener, big house etc but what we ‘give up’ here is given back in spades with things that matter to us most, opportunities for our little boy, lifestyle, freedom to move. We see this as going TO Australia for a better life for our little boy primarily and of course ourselves rather than running from SA. Nothing terrible has happened to us in terms of crime in SA, we are still attached to Africa, we just see a brighter future for ourselves elsewhere.

We are in the process of writing a list of reasons of why we’re moving so that when times get tough and we’re tempted to return, and I understand they will, we can pull it out and get a refresher on our reasoning, a tip someone gave us which seems like a good idea.

A lot has been written about money and the ‘will I have enough’ question often comes up, who knows, we think so, we’ve done the numbers and planned as much as we can and we certainly hope so but who knows? I guess though that a positive about moving over with Rands is that you’re starting afresh, you're forced to find out what is essential and what is a luxury for the first few months (hopefully less) while you're looking for a job and spending Rands. You’re forced to cut down to the bare necessities and cut out some of the extravagances for a while, detox. Once you find a job, whether its earning $60k or $200k you can then reassess what you can afford over and above those basics and what you can't and get on with it from there.

What we will be doing to make the transition easier is renting a slightly nicer place than we necessarily need (pretty contradictory to the above I know), not over the top but a nice place to come home to after the inevitable tough day in the beginning, coming back to a horrible place after a tough day is never going to make the adjustment easier. For us, this must be close to the water so the Northern Beaches will probably be the place.

We have a big 10 – 12 months in front of us with selling, packing, getting the pets vaccines etc but it’s exciting, we can’t wait to get over there and get immersed. I’m looking forward to joining a triathlon club and doing some of the races out there, we’re excited for our son to spend his days outdoors on the beach with nippers or all surfing together, we’re excited to spend more time living and doing the things that we love.

Enough for now,

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Welcome BrettSJ,

We've gone through the exact same reasons, questions, decisions and have seen how God has led us every step of the way. I'll be arriving in just over 5 months, in Sydney, VISA's approved, my wife has signed a job starting Dec 1st, found a local Church, know the suburb we'll be staying (inner city for a change from the Cape Town Burbs) and been looking into schools in the area via my sister-in-law.

All the best with the plans, keep them in Prayer and let God lead.

Cheers

Matt

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Welcome Brettsj and congrats on your first post! It sounds like you have everything pretty much planned out which is great! We are also moving to Sydney and will be arriving 30/06/2014 please shout if you need advise or information, we are happy to help.

Good luck!

Edited by Darbia
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Welcome to our little corner of the world! Wishing you the best for your journey... you appear to have thought this out well, congratulations.

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welcome BrettSJ

I have been living on the northern beaches for 7 years now and me and my sons LOVE IT!!

its the best of both worlds - 1st world city on your doorstep but the relaxed life style of the beaches

please feel free to contact me if you have any questions wrt suburbs etc

good luck in your final visa stage

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What a wonderful post, thanks brettsj... you took the words right out of my mouth!

Good luck on your journey :ilikeit:

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  • 4 months later...

It’s been a long while since I’ve been on here but so much ‘life’ has happened which has put our application on hold…

So last time I wrote we had just paid over a massive amount of money for lodging our visas and were waiting for a CO to be allocated. When one was allocated we of course needed to get medicals and police clearances. We booked the medicals for a Friday afternoon and all was going to plan.

On that Friday morning my wife by chance took a pregnancy test and a very faint line appeared which if you tilted the test and held it in a certain light you could just about see. Anyway we went for the medicals and mentioned this to the doctor (Rosebank, not the normal doctor but the stand in guy who was the rudest doctor I have ever been to and completely unhelpful, will definitely never go back there, it was disgraceful) he told us that it would be fine for my wife to do a chest x-ray and that we should just do it and hurry up.

Thank goodness my sister in law is a doctor and she was with us (by chance she was also getting her medicals done) and she strongly advised us (appalled she basically pushed us out the door) to rather not take his advice so we left. We then confirmed the pregnancy with blood tests and went to our obgyn who confirmed how ridiculous it was for a doctor to suggest x-rays as this can severely harm the baby so we were super glad we didn’t listen to that idiot. My wife is 24 weeks now and everything going well so all ended well.

In terms of the visa we had a few choices:

Get the x-rays done and complete the medicals and the visa should be issued to the current people on the application (i.e. the new baby would be excluded). This was obviously not an option for us given the risk to the baby. We could either then choose to have the baby in Aus and she would automatically be a citizen and no extra visa issues or if we had her here we would start a new visa application for her which would cost around R50k

The choice we went with was to put the visa on hold until the baby is born after which we all go for medicals, baby included, and the visa gets issued if all is okay there. This should cost about R8k as she will just be added to the existing visa application.

So the long and short is that our application is now on hold, which the CO is fine with as I guess it happens fairly often, and will kick off again once baby is born.

We will probably delay leaving until she is between 4-6 months old so that we have more support for the really difficult newborn stage.

It has certainly been an interesting journey so far but lot’s still to do and we're still really excited about our move!

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Congrats on the soon to be new addition to your family! Timing is everything, and it sounds like you made the best decision for your family.

I hope you made a complaint about that other doctor. He should be saving lives not crippling/destroying them!

Edited by PTLF
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  • 4 months later...

It’s been a while since I last posted and it really seems like so much has happened.

On 5 Feb we had our beautiful baby girl who is absolutely perfect in every way, she is a happy healthy girl which meant we can get back onto this process of getting ourselves over to Aus.

Naturally the process of moving had taken a bit of a back seat while we waited for the arrival of our daughter but we made sure the building blocks were in place so that once we could carry on there was nothing holding us back. The bits and pieces on the house that we’d been putting off, the pets injections and blood tests, spending time with family etc, things are full steam ahead again now.

We decided to put our house on the market a little early as it is a big house at the top end of a good area in Sandton so the number of buyers at that level would be few and far between. Boy were we wrong, let me tell you, people in this country have money! Within a week we had two offers at just shy of the ambitious asking price and far more than we were expecting, one of whom was a cash buyer and the other had a massive deposit to put in. No gazumping here which is a good thing as although we probably could’ve put them off against eachother we went with the first offer and are very happy. We are so grateful to God for his perfect timing, the people who bought it may buy all the furniture too and are happy for us to stay on until we head over in mid June….amazing result.

So after having our daughter home for two weeks we braved home affairs, it started out as expected being asked to sit and wait but as soon as she started crying a bit we were rushed to the front and the process only took around an hour. As those of you with young children can attest, an hour in a SA home affairs office with a two week old can take years off your life, everyone who coughed or sneezed was a potential ebola carrier trying to infect our baby and yes my wife had to breast feed (very very very discreetly) in the home affairs office (when in Rome I guess). I guess it may be a bit brave to sell up before we have our visa in our hands but the last step of the process is medicals (everything else is with the CO incl PCCs, form 80s etc) and once we have her passport we can book these.

I called home affairs this morning who confirmed the passport is done and being couriered to the home affairs branch, this only took two weeks which I must say I am quite impressed with.

So how are we feeling, I guess like everyone else does/did we keep going through the ups and downs. We once in a while have a bit of a freak out and wonder what the hell are we doing moving halfway across the world with no support but to be honest those thoughts are fairly few and far between quickly pass. The overwhelming feeling is, ‘can we please get on that plane and go now!’ We are so excited to start this big adventure, I think we’ve actually been mentally ready for so long now that we just want to go.

Our attitude has always been one of excitement about going somewhere we want to be that matches the lifestyle we want to live and the life we want for our children rather than a sense of ‘can’t wait to get out of here’ but these last few months are stressing me out. We are continually hearing of friends affected by crime and the stress of ‘what if something happens to us before we can leave’ is really getting to me, I guess it’s probably a natural feeling felt by most but it’s still pretty real.

I’m looking forward to being able to talk to people at work about this as I’ve chosen to keep quiet until after our bonus cycle, this is the end of this month after which I can relax. The plan is for me to head over for 3 or so weeks without the family to try and get a little settled, get a car and hopefully secure a rental and maybe even a job (wishful / prayerful thinking). We’re looking at Sydney’s north shore and Northern beaches, although we’d like to live near the sea, my line of work will probably mean I will need to work in the city and transport options are probably better from the north shore…anyway we’ll see what happens. I feel like we’ll find a way to be close to the beach but practically that may take living in Sydney for a bit first.

Onwards and upwards from here, in around 100 days I’ll be on a plane which honestly excites the im not sure what out of me! Lots still to do but God has opened so many doors for us on this journey that we have complete faith that this is His plan.

As always, any advice would be much appreciated!!

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All the best with the move. We are also heading over at the end of June. It's an emotional roller coaster! But like you said God always holds the grand plan.

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Today marked another significant step in the process, I collected my daughter's passport from Home Affairs. This is hopefully the last time I will have to go there for the foreseeable future. I must say however that given the number of people there trying to get documents and their lack of resources they were all very friendly and efficient and made the turn around as short as possible.

From date of application it took just over two weeks, and today took around 40 minutes to collect.

Next step medicals and then hopefully that golden ticket!

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  • 1 month later...

What a great day! Our visa has been granted! We got the last of our documents in (PCC) on the 13th of April and got the grant letter today, to say we're stoked is an understatement!!

So much has changed since when I woke up this morning, I had a weird feeling that today would be the day so first thing I did when I woke up was to check my mails...nothing...thats okay though because it would be sent by the agents who wouldn't be at work yet. Next I thought I'd log on to the immi account (which I seldom do but never first thing in the morning) and it all looked the same until something caught my eye...Grant letter issued...amazing and quite unexpected, I thought it would only come in July.

On top of this the grapevine reached tipping point at work so I needed to tell all my staff before they heard from someone else, everyone took it quite well although worried about where they go, luckily I work at a large company so they'll be fine.

I have some great, well connected execs using their network to help me find a job and we have the opportunity to stay at a beautiful furnished 4 bedroom home with an au pair and car for a month when we land...God is so good, it seems like He has been completely focused on us today!

I hope that all of you waiting for your visas are granted them soon! We hope to land at end June...lots to do before then!!

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Congrats Brettsj and all the best with the preps for the move. We are also making the move at the end of June.

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That is so awesome! Congratulations!

All the best with your plans and Journey.

We also received a mail this morning that I've been waiting for....only to be another "Request for more information..." At least no I know it will be another month or so of waiting again.

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@Neels Thanks so much, felt like a long time since lodging in May 2014! Ours was a pretty unique case in that my wife fell pregnant just after we had a CO assigned to us (found out when we went for the medicals) but after we had submitted everything it only took 8 days for them to grant. The agents said they had two grant letters in their inboxes today so it does mean that they're still granting albeit a bit slower.

On another note, chatting to the agent today he said that he usually has around 30 applications at a time in his inbox, right now he has over 300. Just shows that the coming year will be a big one for people trying to leave so the fact that your application is in and a CO rather than a computer system is looking at it is really good news.

Hang in there

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  • 1 year later...

Seems I haven't been on here in a while, we've been here just over a year now and are absolutely loving it. There have certainly been some tough times with our health and settling in but these have been far outweighed by the good times. 

 

On thursday we move into our new apartment that we've managed to buy and while small, it's ours! So many things have happened in the last 13 months I'm not even sure where to start but know that if you're committed to the process you'll hopefully fall in love with the place like we have! My wife has kept a journal on the immigration process which helped her clear her thoughts, it outlines our journey from decision to settling in and I think it rings true for many immigrants.

 

Its our story and thought I should round out my journal here, hopefully it helps potential movers and people already here!

 

Link to part 1/4 below:

 

http://allthingsmomsydney.com/immigrating-part-1-deciding-to-leave-south-africa/

 

I hope it helps in some way

 

cheers

 

Brett

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Thanks so mu h for sharing this Brett. So glad that you are settled in Sydney and loving life there. The blog I very honest and shows the real ups and downs of immigration. But also perseverance and determination. ?

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On 9/18/2016 at 1:14 AM, brettsj said:

Seems I haven't been on here in a while, we've been here just over a year now and are absolutely loving it. There have certainly been some tough times with our health and settling in but these have been far outweighed by the good times. 

 

On thursday we move into our new apartment that we've managed to buy and while small, it's ours! So many things have happened in the last 13 months I'm not even sure where to start but know that if you're committed to the process you'll hopefully fall in love with the place like we have! My wife has kept a journal on the immigration process which helped her clear her thoughts, it outlines our journey from decision to settling in and I think it rings true for many immigrants.

 

Its our story and thought I should round out my journal here, hopefully it helps potential movers and people already here!

 

Link to part 1/4 below:

 

http://allthingsmomsydney.com/immigrating-part-1-deciding-to-leave-south-africa/

 

I hope it helps in some way

 

cheers

 

Brett

I just read through all 4 parts of the blog - brilliant stuff, thanks for sharing

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Thanks for sharing. Like that the blog is honest and raw and still manages to paint a positive picture. 

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