Tasmania

[Elmo]

Hi all. My name is Elmo. I am just waiting for my visas to be approved then I am on my way to OZ. I was looking at photos of Tasmania the other day and was all most sold on the idea to immigrate to Tasmania. Can anyone convince me otherwise not to go there. I live in Durban at the moment and am a electrician here. My plan was to go to Brisbane.

Thanks guys

[lyall]

i sent you a pm

[Mara]

Hi Elmo

Well if nothing else you have gone from one extreme to the next.

Brisbane is tropical, typical Durban weather, hot very humid summers and mild winters.

Tasmania is much further south, cold in winter and not so hot in summer. I would not mind living in Tasmania at all, but then I do not like the humidity and I love the cooler weather.

Quite frankly, I think you need to do a search on google with regard to weather patterns for the two areas, and decide whether or not you would be able to live with the weather in Tasmania.

What exactly was it that you like about Tasmania?

[jackboy]

hi Elmo

i am also an electrician and am waiting for my visa to be granted which we expect any day now. My wife and myself have done huge research on tasmania for the last year and a half, and if you consider the facts and statistics tasmania is not nearly as bad as what most people make out. The bad press is mostly caused by ignorance and therefore will never give and educated informed view. If you consider that Tasmania has the lowest crime in Australia, Hobart (capital of tassie)actually being the second driest city in Australia(just behind adelaide), fastest growing House price index, slowest most relaxed way of life in austarlia, then Yes it really is great. Downside is the island is quite remote when considering they are always the last to get any new form of technology, Service agents of certain products etc, not as much work opportunities and salary (defenitly Electricians) being a lot lower than brisbane.

i was over in September and was actually sold even more on the place and now cannont wait to go

Henry

Pm me if you want any more info

[Bob]

I've worked in Brisbane many years ago and also lived 13 years down the Channel region of Tasmania, just below Hobart.

They're quite different places to live in their lifestyle, climate, etc.

You need to figure out what you want in Life and just go for it.

Personally, I could live in both places happily . . . . . . but then again, my missus reckons I could be happy living in Birdsville on the edge of the Simpson Desert in far south west Queensland!

[Elmo]

i sent you a pm

Thanks I received your pm. Just check if you got it because I am still new on this forum thing and dont know yet what to do.

[Elmo]

hi Elmo

i am also an electrician and am waiting for my visa to be granted which we expect any day now. My wife and myself have done huge research on tasmania for the last year and a half, and if you consider the facts and statistics tasmania is not nearly as bad as what most people make out. The bad press is mostly caused by ignorance and therefore will never give and educated informed view. If you consider that Tasmania has the lowest crime in Australia, Hobart (capital of tassie)actually being the second driest city in Australia(just behind adelaide), fastest growing House price index, slowest most relaxed way of life in austarlia, then Yes it really is great. Downside is the island is quite remote when considering they are always the last to get any new form of technology, Service agents of certain products etc, not as much work opportunities and salary (defenitly Electricians) being a lot lower than brisbane.

i was over in September and was actually sold even more on the place and now cannont wait to go

Henry

Pm me if you want any more info

Thanks for the info Henry. How long have you been waiting now for your visas because they tell me I am going to wait ten to twelve months. Are you going over to look for a job or have you got one already?

[Mara]

This is to Jackboy

Not sure if your message was aimed at me "The bad press is mostly caused by ignorance and therefore will never give and educated informed view." For someone still in SA, that is highly opionionated!

All I did was point out to Elmo that the differences between Brisbane and Tasmania is extreme, especially weather wise and especially for someone coming from Durban.

Here are some of the 'mean' temperatures, which is the AVERAGE high and low for the year. Please note the difference between Hobart and Brisbane.

Hobart : rainfall 600mm p.a. Temperature High 16.9 Low 8.3

Brisbane : rainfall 1146mm p.a. Temperature High 25.5 Low 15.7

Adelaide : rainfall 600mm p.a. Temperature High 22.1 Low 12.1

Melbourne: rainfall 646mm p.a. Temperature High 19.8 Low 10.2

Sydney : rainfall 1214mm p.a. Temperature High 21.6 Low 13.7

Just remember when you get 37 degrees and 98% humidity in Brisbane, you are scarcely able to breath.....that will never happen in Hobart! When you get the dry winds in Melbourne, that have raced across the desert and you go outside the wind actually tends to burn you.... that will never happen in Brisbane or Hobart. So you see, you actually have to live here to experience all of these things, a few weeks visit makes you a visitor who was lucky enough to have good weather during their visit!

I also asked him to tell us his reasons for considering Tasmania, once we know what they are, it would be that much easier to advise him.

You almost make it sound as if the rest of Australia is a den of robbers against Tasmania.....yeah right, actually it is not the location but the size of the city that makes the difference. If you go to the Australian 'platteland' then you will also have far less crime!

To Elmo

This was an 'educated and informed view' of someone who actually lives here. If you really want some valid information you need to speak to 'Bob' who has lived in both and has a 'master's degree when it comes to differences between the two!

[Prieska]

Hi all. My name is Elmo. I am just waiting for my visas to be approved then I am on my way to OZ. I was looking at photos of Tasmania the other day and was all most sold on the idea to immigrate to Tasmania. Can anyone convince me otherwise not to go there. I live in Durban at the moment and am a electrician here. My plan was to go to Brisbane.

Thanks guys

Hi there Elmo

We've been in Launceston, Tasmania now for 6 months, coming over from East Londen in South Africa (before that George in Western Cape). We came here specifically for the cooler weather, the rest of Australia is too warm for us. We love it here, the winters are definately much cooler than anywhere else we've stayed in SA, and the summers don't get that hot. (Excluding today of course, its a real scorcher here today, whole 29 degrees!!) If you love being close to nature, cooler weather and a very relaxed life style (perfect for the kids, they are so happy here) then this is the place for you.

But then as Henry mentioned as well, we are remote from rest of Australia (although we have the Spirit of Tasmania Ferry and airports with daily direct flights to the mainland) and a lot of young people leave for the mainland to study or find a job. Our boys are still young and we would love for them to grow up in this lovely safe environment, and a lot of other South Africans here, feel the same as we do. You are more than welcome to PM me anytime if you want to find out more.

All the best with your decision

Prieska

[PhillipJ]

This is to Jackboy

Not sure if your message was aimed at me "The bad press is mostly caused by ignorance and therefore will never give and educated informed view." For someone still in SA, that is highly opionionated!

All I did was point out to Elmo that the differences between Brisbane and Tasmania is extreme, especially weather wise and especially for someone coming from Durban.

Hi Mara

I do not think Jackboy aimed at you at all. Your initial response was quite balanced

You forgot about sunny Perth

Mean Max 23.3 °C

Mean Min 13.3 °C

Average Rainfall 869.4 mm

PhillipJ

[Mara]

Hi PhillipJ

Thank you, I know that my responce was balanced, but not sure if Jackboy knows how 'balanced' my view is!

[jackboy]

mara,

my response was by no means directed at you at all. if you have spent as much time as me researching the entire Australia including tasmania, you will most defenitly pick up that Tasmania has a huge amount of bad press with regards to the weather, people, slow way of life. etc etc All you have to do is ask around austarlia (like i did ) and you will pick up awnsers like "why do you want to live there they are mostly so and so"

I find your response totally overboard and offensive to say the least, prehaps a bad day ?????

regards

Henry

[Mara]

Nah, I never have bad days.... I have lived here for 10 years, so my research is live and not internet or holiday based.... you have to get the Aussie sense of humour.... the 'in breeding' in Tassie is a huge problem....you will have to wait till next week to get something done.... no time this week.... going fishing! Let us not get started with the on going mud slinging between Australia and New Zealand.... but it is just a joke, very few people actually take it seriously!

Jackboy, perhaps you should read some of your own posts before you call mine overboard and offensive.....something about removing the needle out of...

[Bob]

Bad press can be seen in two lights.

It can turn people off, but that only highlighted the place for me, when we went there to live for just a two year "adventure" back in Feb 1981.

We came back, with three kids, in March 1994 . . . . . . not a bad couple of years!

The day before we hopped on the ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania to start our lives there, we stayed with a Lutheran minister in Melbourne that my wife knew years earlier.

He'd been a Presbyterian minister before becoming a Lutheran, and ministered for fifteen years in Tasmania.

We were told in 1981 that Tasmania hadn't really been "discovered" by the rest of Australia at that stage.

We found that to be true. It was like the rest of Australia back in the 1950s and 60s.

It was old world in its charm, relaxed and friendly, honest and frank.

Tasmanians don't trust "outsiders". They need to get to know who they're dealing with at first. They need to put you in a category, so that they can accept you.

We were "outsiders" for the first couple of years until our kids started to arrive on the scene. That broke the ice.

After that, Ginnie (my wife) would talk to the new mums all having their first babies and we'd be part of the "scene".

We built a wooden house in the backblocks of Margate, a town about 20 mins drive south of Hobart. We fell in with the local folk there and soon found ourselves babysitting each other's kids, helping each other building houses, and looking after each other's places when away for a while.

We were broke, financially, but so were all the other people living in the district, so that didn't make us much different from hundreds of other Tasmanians around.

I worked with the best bunch of blokes I've ever worked with for many years in Hobart. I loved my job. Years later, I'd still phone across to the workplace in Hobart and I'd get offered my old job back if I wanted to come back. It was tempting.

Lots of Christmas cards that I see on my wall are from old mates and families we got to know in the 13 years we lived in Hobart.

My son, being the oldest, still has old mates from his school days there that he's kept in touch with over the years. When he went back to live there for over a year in 2004, we visited him in late December, seeing the New Year in.

I was noticing things that I'd just taken for granted previously . . . . . how thick the bush is in just about 360 degree views, how pristine and "untouched" Tasmania still was, how beautiful it is compared to the dryness of South Australia.

. . . . but . . . it's not the beauty that "makes" a place. It is invariably the people.

It seemed all our old mates were just inviting us, one after another, to have a barbie with them and catch up. In the three weeks we spent there, we must have had 20 or 30 "engagements" with folk that we had got to know.

It takes a while to know people and have a history of association with them. We now have that particular association with lots of folk in the Hobart area and we know we could easily retire there and have people around that would know us.

We had become accepted.

We had become "Tasmanian".

It was tough at first, to be accepted. I distinctly remember feeling sorry for myself, up the pub with a beer in my hand, not drinking with anyone I knew, missing my old mates that I had in Adelaide that I surfed with and shared houses with as a single bloke.

I remember feeling bloody lonely and "out of the loop".

It all began to "gel" once we had kids, a couple of years down the track.

People who just give a place 3 months or 6 months aren't really giving Tasmania . . . . or Australia, for that matter . . . much of a chance.

I understand their loneliness. I've been there and done that, too, in the past, but you've got to go through it and come out the other end.

I always remember what a bloke at work . . . in Hobart, actually . . . . said to me one day.

He used to cut firewood and sell it as a sideline business. It was hard work and he was disillusioned with it all.

His dad told him that if you give it all away when the times were bad, you'll have nothing there when times eventually come good.

Times do come good . . . . eventually.

Just make sure you have something that you've hung onto in the bad times that will become an asset to you when the good times begin to roll!

Life isn't meant to be a bed of roses. It is tough at times and there are no guarantees, other than none of us will get out of it alive!

Be thankful for the small things in Life and learn to appreciate what little you've got. Don't always hanker for the "big end" of town . . . . . that is all an illusion, anyway.

Good luck.

[Mara]

Accept Bob's words as "wise words from a wise man"!

I thank you for your balanced view, my friend, excellent, as always!

[lyall]

thank you bob..absolutely 110%

[DesV]

Hi Mara

I see you live in Victoria, are you aware of the fact that Victorians are living proof that Tasmanians can swim?

Have a good day and merry Christmas.

[Mara]

Yup, because those with leaky boats end up in WA!

[lyall]

you guys make me laugh!!!

[Mara]

Hey Lyall, that costs extra.....and here I thought I was being serious!