Already have PR!!

[Die Krugers]

Hi Everyone!

My husband is a millwright (dual qualified in the electrical and mechanical field, but his main function is electrical). He is a maintenance electrician and has almost 10 year experience in the corrugating and printing industry especially. He has a really excellent CV, and his experience is really very good!

He will work anywhere, and we really want to move to Oz as soon as possible.

Please let me know if ANYTHING becomes available, and I will send through his resume.

We are even open to work in NZ if need be.

Thanks a million!!

Tania

[ericks]

Hi there,

I am also an Electrician with PR. We will be relocating to Adelaide in January. To find an Electrician position there without an A-Grade license is very difficult! That is why i'll be doing the wiring courses there and then apply for my A-Grade license. So if your husband has his A- Grade allready he should be able to find something on "seek". Note for 99.99% of vacancies they require an A- Grade!

You can't work as an Electrician in Australia without a relevant state license. Some guys are going over on sponsorships without a license, but they work under supervision...

Good luck!

[CandiceM]

Have you looked at the mines? There always seems to be a ton of jobs on Seek looking for electricians for various mine sites around Australia. The money is very good, normally fly in fly out (FIFO) roles, (meaning the family is based in a major town (eg. Perth/Adelade) and the husband is flown to the mines for his shifts, where he is provided accom and food in addition to his salary) and the rosters are reasonable 8 days away 6 days at home or 7:7. FIFO jobs are not for everyone, but I have friends that do it and it's really working well for them.

candice

[Bob]

Most of the jobs in mines that I know of are 14 days' work straight (usually 7 days of day shift and 7 days of night shift), then 7 days off.

These days are 12 hour working days too.

The pay is very good, but hard on families emotionally, so don't think just of the money. There's always a "price" that is paid for a bloke being away from his family for weeks on end.

However, after you've settled in a bit, then a spell on the mines will see your life savings skyrocket to be able to put a sizeable deposit on a new house in the city.

[Bob]

Hi Everyone!

My husband is a millwright (dual qualified in the electrical and mechanical field, but his main function is electrical). He is a maintenance electrician and has almost 10 year experience in the corrugating and printing industry especially. He has a really excellent CV, and his experience is really very good!

He will work anywhere, and we really want to move to Oz as soon as possible.

Please let me know if ANYTHING becomes available, and I will send through his resume.

We are even open to work in NZ if need be.

Thanks a million!!

Tania

Tania!

If you've already got PR, why are you mucking around?

Go to Flight Centre.

Book flights.

Sell house and pack everything.

Get over to Australia.

Start new life.

You have PR . . . . . you will have access to Medicare, social security and can get housing, etc. You won't die.

In the meantime, get work, even if working under supervision, and get your electrician's ticket to go out and work on your own in the course of time.

There are heaps of jobs you, as a wife working part-time, can do in Adelaide, even if it's making sandwiches at a Subway for the time being to bring an income in while you are getting sorted out. Just do any job to get an income while you're getting established.

So . . . . stop mucking around!

Destiny favours the bold.

[AndreaL]

My hubby is a sparky on the mines, we are residential and not FIFO- his current roster is a 5 on 5 off 4 on 5 off etc, with some pyjama days ( switch from day to night shift) 12 hour shifts.

We are in Queensland, although WA has more FIFO roles.

I am assuming that your hubby will have been classified either fitter- mechanic or both?

I am not certain that print industry experience would translate to mining- although the mines are starting to take on " clean skins" ( those without mining experience). You would be a yellow hat ( supervised) for sometime, until you got all your tickets. Mining is not for everyone though.

You must have an A Grade license and a state license, so you should search for the electrical licensing body of the state you would like to go to and find out what he needs to do to get an Electrical license- even if you work under supervision, you would need to apply for a C-Grade license.

My hubby was lucky that he got his A Grade license in 2006 and only had to pay the costs and do a practical " mini-trade test", and write a theoretical exam at Balga TAFE to get his electrical license - I believe that now you are required to attend TAFE for x amount of weeks and then do the practical and exam- the exact route may differ from state to state, so you will have to do some research.

Bob, is right- depends how urgently you want to get here though........ you have p.r.- both of you could work at any job to make ends meet.

Good luck

p.s. They don't really have millwrights here, so I am again assuming that your hubby will have had his skills assessed as General Electrician?

[Bob]

Bob, is right- depends how urgently you want to get here though........ you have p.r.- both of you could work at any job to make ends meet.

I'm finding it hard to see any sense of urgency here.

I notice PR was granted in Dec 2008, so for almost 2 years the doors to Australia have been thrown wide open!

. . . . . 2 years!!!!!!!

How long does it take to pack the house up, get the kids organised, stroll down the road to book plane tickets, sell the house, etc..???????

Another couple of years perhaps??

[AndreaL]

I'm finding it hard to see any sense of urgency here.

I notice PR was granted in Dec 2008, so for almost 2 years the doors to Australia have been thrown wide open!

. . . . . 2 years!!!!!!!

How long does it take to pack the house up, get the kids organised, stroll down the road to book plane tickets, sell the house, etc..???????

Another couple of years perhaps??

I have had a look back through Die Krugers topics and I think there has been a baby born after the initial p.r. grant and perhaps a job offer that didn't eventuate?

There are probably reasons we are unaware of- I have to say though, don't let fear be the reason you don't take the plunge- there is no time like the present- think, if you had come to Australia when your p.r. was granted, you would have been really settled by now!

Unemployment is low, you would find work, perhaps not in your field straight away, but enough to pay the bills.

In the end it is your choice though. I think it is much more difficult to find jobs in Australia whilst you are still in RSA.

Good luck

[hestie tt]

Two wweks at the TAFE in Perth and you will have your WA license. Just find out when your local TAFE have the course and go for it!!!!!!

[Bob]

After travelling around Australia for most of this year, there are loads and loads of jobs available for anyone who wants to get out of bed in the morning.

Everyone in the caravan park in Alice Springs who wanted to work had jobs, some of them more than one job.

Australia is booming, economically, and if anyone is without work, they are not looking for work outside their own backyard.

I've been to many towns where young backpackers get jobs the first day they turn up in town and there are ads in the windows of shops for workers.

Seriously . . . . if anyone can't make it at the moment, then what will happen to them if we go into a serious recession?

Don't wait for that to happen.

Come over straight away while the good times roll and start making a new life for yourselves while you're able to.

This "window of opportunity" won't last forever.

There are lots of economic data to back up my last statement.

THAT is where the urgency is for real!

Leaving it until things take a downturn and jobs become a whole lot scarcer is not what the smart operators do . . . . and, economically, Australia cannot sustain the good times forever.

[Kita]

Thanks for all the positive info. We are taking the plunge. Arriving in April - hubby electrician. Got our PR in November. Its nerve racking at the moment but I just see others have done the same and are not on the streets. This forum is amazing.

Kita

[ericks]

Just some info,

We arrived in Adelaide three weeks ago. I have an ARTC (Electrician) but not licensed yet, had a job offer within one week, then another a week later. Decided to complete my licensing first (including our drivers license's, as our ZA licenses are not valid!), if all goes well i should have it by 11 Feb. There are loads of jobs here for Electricians, but they want to know that you are at least busy with your licensing...

Hope this helps

Greetings

Erick

[Die Krugers]

Hi Everyone

I posted this request a while ago, hoping an employer might see it and PM us, and totally forgot to come back to it again! Big was my surprise to see all the replies! Thanks to everyone.

I think you are right in a sense, Bob, saying that it seems like there is no sense of urgency. There was once our visa was granted, we thought employers would much rather employ someone who already has a visa, rather than having to pay for sponsorship, and that would give us a big head-start. But after we got our visa, we feverishly started looking for a job for hubby, but that was the time the recession started and there were so little jobs available. Wanting to have our second child in Oz, we waited very long for our visa, and eventually had to have our second baby here, not to have the age difference with our first child too big, which caused us to stop looking when I fell pregnant in February that year,our house was still in the market until March, but nobody was buying at that stage so we could not sell either. So we started looking again when he was four months old.

We don't have savings, all we have is some money in our pension funds, and if we sell our cars, which won't help enough anyway. I've heard that some people are lucky and get work quickly, but some have tried for six months or more, and what will we do if our money runs out? Using RSA money to live in Oz is really expensive, so we won't survive for long. I don't mind doing any job, the same for my husband, but we are worried that we won't be able to make ends meet, we have friends in Adelaide (which is one of the cheaper cities to live in) and they say that you need at least $100 000 per year to survive as a family of four, I have done a very detailed budget about two years ago when our visa was granted, and it showed we needed about $80 000 p/a. And the problem is also that if we both work, then we have to pay the childcare for 2 kids, which is really expensive, I might as well not work and look after the kids myself, so then back to only one salary, which I cannot imagine will be enough to look after 4 persons. We are not snobs who won't do just any type of job, if we can survive on whatever job is available, then great! We do almost everything at home ourselves to save money, right now we are painting our house ourselves, saving us R9000, using our spare time over weekends to work at home to save money.

We cannot claim for unemployment until we have our citizenship, which will take 4 years, so we'll have to have our own money to survive on. Luckily our visa is still valid for three years, so we at least want to try to get a job before coming over, but if we see that it's not happening closer to when the visa will expire, we would have to take the plunge as you guys mentioned.

Hubby has maintenance experience on factory machines, as well as having worked on the machines of the third largest iron ore mine in the world in Kathu (Iscor). He can work on the mines, no problem, and being away from us, we will take as well, but then I cannot work because I will almost never see him when he's off and I'm working, so a good paying job FIFO we would definately consider as well.

He got his visa on a Special Class Electrician, which is higher than a General Electrician. We did it that way to show that he is more qualified than just a normal Electrician, hoping that will help with employment as well.

So that's our story, thanks to everyone for the comments!

Tania