Greetings from Cape Town

[Bretty2]

Hi all, firstly thanks for all the great advice those of you that are already in Oz have taken the time to post in order to help those of us still working on it. Much appreciated!

I already have my 176 visa and my wife, 2 daughters and I want to move to Perth. Being a Maintenance Electrician it seems I will struggle to get an unrestricted licence in WA so we may have to settle for Adelaide as for some reason it works differently in SA.

Either way we will be happy to get over there and luckily have friends in either city. Hopefully we sell our house quickly, we haven't had it very long and the market has taken a dip so not too keen on selling it at a loss as our budget is going be tight as it is. I didn't expect the process to be so fast, seriously thought it would still be another 18 months at least so caught us by surprise.

Paul.

[HadEnoughofJuju]

Hey Paul

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on the 176 visa grant. It can be scary when things happen so fast when you're expecting them to take longer. DIAC seems to be speeding the processing of the old 175 and 176 SS visa's up to make way for the new system.

Good luck with the move and the rest of your planning, may it be smooth and uneventful.

[AllisonW]

Welcome to the forum! And good luck with your plans.

[Craig01]

Hey Paul, as it stands right now you could go to South Australia to convert your South African licence to a South Australian licence (three day course). You could then, via a process called mutual recognition simply convert your South Australian License to a WA license for example. Google 'Peer Veet' - they have all the details on their website.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you haven't already done so, apply for your trade to be recognised by ARTC while you are still in South Africa - this took around 3 or 4 months to come through for me (I was assessed as an Electrical Mechanic). Without this ARTC certificate you cannot attend the course and you cannot work as an electrician in Australia.

To add further confusion to the mix, the Electrical National License is due to come into effect very early next year (http://nola.gov.au/) so there will be one electrical license for all states - how this will impact someone in your position I am not sure. http://nola.gov.au/

Feel free to shout if you would like more info as I found the process a bit confusing at first.

ps: where in Cape Town are you?

Craig

[Bretty2]

Thanks for the warm welcome

Hi Craig, thanks for the info. I got some feedabck from TRA while I was trying to get clarity on the whole electrical mechanic and electrical fitter business, they said I cannot apply for an ARTC while I am still in South Africa?

I was origianlly skills assessed for my visa application as electrician special class which is electrcial fitter on an ARTC as it seems I didnt supply enough information about my installation experience which could make me electrician general and therefore get me an ARTC as electrical mechanic when I apply for it.

Are you a maintenance electrician (factory technician) or instalation electrician? How did you structure/focus your ARTC application to get electrical mechanic?

I am in Stellenridge, Bellville.

Paul.

[SafferBlue]

Welcome, mate, and let us know how we can help!

[WaitingEon]

Welcome to this great site.

[deroche]

Welcome and good luck.

[Craig01]

I would check again with them Paul - this doesn't sound right ... unless they have changed the way they do things.

When I did it, you could not RECEIVE the physical ARTC certificate until you arrived in OZ - they required an Oz address to send it to BUT you could certainly apply for and have your ARTC application approved while still in South Africa.

I am/was an installation electrician. All the focus was on demonstrating the type of work I did .... it needs to be broken down into the simplest of terms and explanations. For example: 'I spent an average of 6 months cutting/chasing grooves into walls using a 230mm Angle Grinder, fitting 20mm conduit into the grooves and pulling 2.5mm housewire (called building wire in Oz) through the conduit. I would connect the 2.5mm cable into the switchboard via a 20A circuit breaker...' etc etc etc

I have heard of some people typing up 20 or 30 pages worth of explanation and all sorts of high-level talk. I do not believe this is necessary. My explanation of the work I had done since my apprenticeship amounted to one A4 page.

Of course you also need to submit all the other evidence that they request to prove your apprenticeship, experience and ability.

Let me know if there is anything else Paul

Cheers

[Eva]

welcome to the forum!

[ShaunT]

Hi Paul

If you have a 176 visa then you will have to settle in the state that sponsored you. In this case WA. Did you get assessed by Vetassess? If so and you are regionally sponsored I don't think it is too much of a mission to get your license.