First few days in Australia

[tifu]

Awesome HEOJJ.Enjoy the ride...

[WaltAM]

Welcome to Brisbane!!

Reading your experiences has put a smile on my face as I remember back to when we first arrived and had the same feelings and thoughts!

Btw.... weren't you very surprised to not walk through any security at the bank?

[GideonVD]

And I reckon he hasn't once had to dodge a bloody taxi

[team44]

Awesome to hear your experience and thanks for the valued info. Wish we could be there too....already!

[BellaR]

Welcome to Oz!

[MrsJ]

Loving these updates, keep them coming!

[SmellyN]

Exciting times you guys! Congrats again! Hope everything goes smoothly for the settling in!

[Jamie]

Well done on achieving your dream. Happy landings and have fun settling in. Relax and enjoy now, and I hope you find an awesome car!

[Alida]

I've been following diligently and eagerly, waiting for the next part of your story !! Wonderful to know you're there !!

[SafferBlue]

HEOJJ, I m stoked to see that you guys have landed Down Under!

I can remember when you first joined this form and here you are today!

Welcome, mate, this great country is your home now!

[Corrinne]

Welcome to Australia! I hope you settle in quickly and enjoy your adventure.

[MandC]

And now?? No more updates?

[GideonVD]

The well has run dry or the internets are low

[jm01]

Maybe the internet is very slow over the,hehehe.

[Sunnyskies]

HEOJJ will be back. You have no idea how hectic the first days, weeks and months are once you move over, combined with the emotional journey you go through after you arrive. Give him a chance to catch his breath and work it out.

[AndreaL]

HEOJJ and family are looking to secure a rental and looking at schools as the school term starts back next week. I'm sure he wouldn't mind me updating on his behalf.

You can't believe how hectic it is when looking for a rental....at least is was for me in Perth.

[HadEnoughofJuju]

Thanks Sunnyskies and AndreaL.

Immigration is the single most difficult thing you will attempt in your life. I have deliberately kept myself away from adding to this post since the last update because if I had it would have not been a true reflection of what is going on in my life and on my Journey.

I can't speak for OYBR but for me this has been very tough emotionally. I have hit a low and am not doing at all well. To only post the good experiences and withhold the bad would be unfair to the rest of the forumites that still need to embark on this journey. Please don't get me wrong, I would not trade what I have got here for anything in the world and I am definitely not planning on going back, we have simply sacrificed too much and spent too much money on getting this far to let it fail.

Trust me when I say that you will have those not so good days and you will just want to curl up into a ball and stay in bed for the rest of time. Wednesday past was one of those days for me. My wife managed to drag me from the bed and get me to go out and we drove around a bit and had a look at different areas and I must say I am glad we did because we saw a place that we have fallen in love with and plan on moving to if we can find a rental there.

I will try and pick up where I left off in the last post but please forgive me if I forget something (not that any of you would know if I did) or if I seem to be all over the place.

We managed to find and purchase a car on Wednesday morning, two days before we were scheduled to move to Maroochydore. Looking for and finding a car was an experience that I had forgotten about and wasn't really looking forward to going through again. Cars here are bigger, older and have far more km’s on them that what we are used to in South Africa. The best place to look for cars is online (pretty much like anything else you will have to do in Australia) as with a first world country comes a first world way of doing things.

We managed to find a Kia Sportage 2003 with 145000 km’s for $8890 which included a 5 year, unlimited kilometres, unlimited claims warranty which really helps in the beginning if something really major breaks and you need to fix it. We found the car on line at www.carsales.com.au and tried to get to the dealership by train but that proved to be an adventure on its own because what the car salesman told me and what I heard were 3 different things. The salesman said Trinder Station, I heard Taringa Station and some else told us that there was a Corinda station 2 stops on from Graceville where we got off and were staying. When the Aussie’s say these three names they all sound the same. We eventually got home and I emailed the salesman and let him know that we were not going to be able to make it because it was late and we would not make it by 5pm. I was pleasantly surprised by a phone call and an offer to collect us at the place we were staying so that we could look at the car. Yes, we ended up buying it because it was a good deal in the end. The other thing I was pleasantly surprised by was the complete honesty of the car salesman and I must admit this seems to be a general thing amongst the Australian people. They are all just so blatantly honest with you about everything. Something we will have to get used to. We spent the next day just driving around and buying stuff because we could.

Something I discovered through this process, which turned out to be a very useful piece of information, and there will be people who say don’t spend the money on the visa label because it is not necessary for entering Australia and travelling (and yes I agree it is not necessary for travel) so bare with me on this one.

With everything you are going to do in Australia in the first couple of months you will need to prove identity using the 100 point identity check. Passports and unabridged birth certificates count 70 points and are category A documents where drivers licenses, bank cards and statements, utility bills and Medicare cards are category B documents and count between 20 and 40 points. A visa label (according to the lady at the QLD Transport office) is as valuable as a passport and is regarded as a separate document to the passport. I have used this several times for proof of identity in addition to the passport. When proving identity you need to have 1 category A document, 1 category B document and then 1 from either category A or B. The other interesting fact that I discovered was that your car rego counts as a category B document and a rental agreement seems to mean very little in the process of identification. In fact I think the only time you will really use the rental agreement is when you enrol your children in a state school.
Thursday night we were invited to dinner at Bronwyn’s house. Finally getting to meet her and her family after so much back and forth on the forum was fun and we really enjoyed it. It was (in a rather strange way) nice to see another familiar face even though we have never met them.

The following morning we packed our car and headed off to Maroochydore after spending the week with Eager2Go who really made our landing a soft and pleasurable experience. They also showed us around Graceville a bit and took us to a couple of parks in the area and introduced us to the Translink GO-Card system. If you are going to be using public transport in QLD (not sure if these work or if it’s called the same thing in other states) it’s a good idea to get one of these because it works out cheaper than just buying daily tickets.

Driving from Brisbane to Mooloolaba was really pleasant and the scenery just got better and better and we really liked what we saw. After arriving in Maroochydore we initially thought this is what we were after but this has changed over the last week or so. Maroochydore is a nice place if you are after a surfing/holiday destination. The beaches here are really nice and there is a lot to do but it’s busy and cluttered with people and shops.

Saturday morning we went to Aldi’s to buy some groceries and bumped into another South African couple who when they heard us speaking Afrikaans to our daughter immediately struck up a conversation. We were invited around for coffee and then a BBQ on the beach at the public gas braai’s. It’s just so nice to be around friendly people and have clean beaches and parks and facilities for the kids to play on that are clean, not broken and safe. When you first arrive, try and get to the nearest library and join, it’s like nothing you have experienced in South Africa. There are lots of people, noise, kids playing and running around, people attending free seminars and just general chatter. It’s a vast contrast from the quite “don’t dare fart” libraries we are used to in South Africa. The internet is free and the amount of time you can use it depends on how you use it. If you use one of the libraries PC’s then you get 15 min a day, if you plug your laptop into one of their network cables you get 1 hour a day and if you connect to the wireless you get 2 hours a day free. They also have a toy library for the kids and you are allowed to book out 2 toys and you are allowed to book out 13 items per library card. It was a strange but very pleasant experience.

Finding a rental property has been a very taxing and exhausting experience. We have emailed many agencies and tried to fill in applications online with 1Form, which has turned out to be a waste of time because the agent makes you fill in their personalised application forms anyway. Here it is apparently against the law to apply for a rental without having first viewed the property. Rental agents are very reluctant to allow anyone to apply without viewing first, there are forms you can complete, sign and give to agents but they don’t like this at all.

Now, for the whopper of a curve ball. Plan as much as you can for the move to Australia but leave enough room to throw all those plans out the window and change your plans on the fly. We really thought we had found the place we wanted to live but in reality things are not as we thought they would be. We don’t like Maroochydore and have been told that there are certain schools in the area that we should avoid (which really threw a spanner in our works). After my wife managed to drag me out of bed on Wednesday, we decided to drive up to Noosa (yes you read right, Noosa) and we have falling in love with Noosa and the surrounding areas. We have changed our plans, which may end up costing us a pretty penny in petrol in the beginning. One of the major reasons for moving to Australia was our child’s future so we have figured why settle for second best? If we can put her in an excellent state school then why on earth would we want to settle for an OK state school?

We have now settled on a state school called Peregian Springs State School and have concentrated our search for rentals in that area. Monday morning will see us leaving for Peregian Springs very early to see someone from the school. We have also managed to line up several viewings next week Monday and Tuesday while our child is kept occupied by the school. Hopefully we will find a rental before we have to be out of this place. The problem we face at the moment is most of the rental are either available on 26 April (a week before we have to leave here) or 5 May (one week after we have to leave here). So either we will have to move out of here early and forfeit the rent already paid or we are going to be sleeping in our car outside the school for a week. Either way we lose if we can't negotiate something with the new landlord.

Most of the other stuff we have been doing since we have been in Maroochydore is the mundane everyday stuff that does not warrant a mention. One thing that is getting to us a bit is the fact that it has rained since we have been here and apparently is going to stay this way for another 2 months until winter sets in. Sunshine Coast my butt.

[dkm]

Your posts are always very entertaining and informative, HEOJ. Please don't stop posting now that you're there! All the best!

[Maktub]

HEOJJ and OYBR I have been missing you on here! So glad to hear your news!

You guys are doing great...Rome wasn't built in a day!

You sound like an Aussie already with your "First world problems" HEOJJ

(That is said tongue-firmly-in-cheek everyone...with the goal of getting a smile out of it...please don't get me wrong)

[GideonVD]

Good to hear from you man... good luck. I for one agree, plan up to a point. We've just made a shortlist of possible places to try and look for a rental, so I guess the first month is going to be more about roaming around and having a look-see...

Did the car dealer organise you 3rd party insurance?

[HadEnoughofJuju]

Now for the not so good parts of immigration.

If you think this journey and process are going to go by without the downs and hard times then you are living in a dream world. This is tough and as I said in one of my other posts (can't remember where though), this process WILL bring you to your knees emotionally at some stage and you will have times where you wonder what the hell have I done?

Leaving South Africa and watching my child breakdown in tears because she realized the impact of what we are doing and hearing her say that she misses her grandparents. Saying goodbye to family and wondering if we are going to see them again other than over Skype. Winding up our live financially and selling all our assets off and packing our possessions into a container. Not knowing when and if we are going to secure a rental before we have to be out of the temporary accommodation. Wondering whether or not we are going to get jobs. Wondering how long our measly life savings (divided by 10) is going to last. Not having money to be able to call people or even send sms's because we are trying to conserve every penny before we get jobs.

These are just some of the things that are on our minds at the moment and believe me when I say that there are many more things that are weighing us down. Most of the time I appear to be fine but in reality I am broken inside. The part that gets to me the most at the moment is the fact that I own nothing of my own except the stuff in the container and the money in the bank. I know that possessions don't matter and I should not focus on that too much but it is hard. We have been forced to give up everything that we have built up over the last 12 years and that is why I am so angry at the moment and (as mentioned in another post somewhere) I hate South Africa more now than I ever have before. I do not want to go back and infact I don't even want to see any news about the place either at this stage. I physically felt my blood pressure rise the other day when a spokesperson for Nelson Mandela started speaking in his typically South African accent in an interview on ABC1 news.

Having a 189 Permanent Resident visa is a blessing and is truly a "Golden Ticket". I take my hat off to those of you who are doing this on a 457 or other temporary visa facing the uncertainty of retrenchment and having to go back to South Africa. The next time someone calls any of you cowardly for running away or a traitor for deserting South Africa, turn around and walk away in the knowledge that you have (as Donovan would put it) "balls of steel". Immigration is not for the weak minded or faint hearted. I am holding onto the fact that we will be better off when we get jobs than we would ever have been in South Africa. Things here are just so much better and they just work. People are genuinely happy and to a large extent carefree. No-one cares what car you drive or what job you do, they don't care where you live or what school your kids are in and most importantly the don't see skin colour at all, they all just treat everyone around them with dignity and respect.

It's been strange and refreshing all at the same time. We will get through this and we will be happy in the long run but those stripes are earned as is everything else in this country. There is a sense of ownership in one's surroundings and a pride in one's job no matter what it is that just makes this journey all worth it. It's going to get hard and you will question the decisions you have made but stick it out and never give up.

I am hoping that once we have a rental that we can call home and our things arrive and at least one of us find a job that it will start getting easier but until then we will just keep slogging away at it and making it work. Good luck to those of you still waiting no matter what stage of the process you are at. I hope things work out for you all the way that you want them to.

[HadEnoughofJuju]

Did the car dealer organise you 3rd party insurance?

They can but it is easier and probably cheaper to arrange 3rd Party, Fire and Theft through you bank. The dealer arranged for us to be driven to the nearest Commonwealth Bank to draw a bank cheque (which seems to be the accepted method of payment for a second hand car) and while we were there the very friendly and helpful banker asked us if we would like to take the insurance through the bank. This way the money comes straight off the account and you don't pay fees on the transaction.

To give you an idea of price we were quoted $163 per month for fully comprehensive insurance which we at this stage can just not afford so we elected for the 3rd party insurance. It's just a good idea to have this because if you cause an accident and you are found responsible then you are going to pay. Once we have jobs and can afford to go the fully comprehensive route we will revisit it.

Another thing I find really annoying is that even if you have got 20 years driving experience in South Africa and you can convert you license, the experience means nothing in terms of insurance. You are a newbie driver and your premium gets calculated according to this.

[Werns]

Well, now you guys will be even closer to where we will be. Noosa is only about 45min from Gympie and we were planning on doing semi-regular trips there since Gympie doesn’t have a KMart or Bunnings yet. We will definitely need to make plans to meet up. En ek sal glad nie omgee om ’n bietjie Afrikaans te hoor nie. My vrou is Engels so ek kry maar bitter min Afrikaans in. Ons dogtertjie is 4, so die twee mag dalk lekker speel ook.

[GideonVD]

Boet, you've got my respect... few have the balls to say it like it is... good on ya.

They can but it is easier and probably cheaper to arrange 3rd Party, Fire and Theft through you bank. The dealer arranged for us to be driven to the nearest Commonwealth Bank to draw a bank cheque (which seems to be the accepted method of payment for a second hand car) and while we were there the very friendly and helpful banker asked us if we would like to take the insurance through the bank. This way the money comes straight off the account and you don't pay fees on the transaction.

To give you an idea of price we were quoted $163 per month for fully comprehensive insurance which we at this stage can just not afford so we elected for the 3rd party insurance. It's just a good idea to have this because if you cause an accident and you are found responsible then you are going to pay. Once we have jobs and can afford to go the fully comprehensive route we will revisit it.

Another thing I find really annoying is that even if you have got 20 years driving experience in South Africa and you can convert you license, the experience means nothing in terms of insurance. You are a newbie driver and your premium gets calculated according to this.

Good to know, yup, 3rd party will be the best bet in the beginning

On the insurance experience, I wonder if a members/claims certificate from your previous SA insurer might help with the loading?

Good luck anyway... keeping an eye on your progress.

PS: Friend me on Facebook when you get the time

[Sa2Nz2Oz]

Now for the not so good parts of immigration.

If you think this journey and process are going to go by without the downs and hard times then you are living in a dream world. This is tough and as I said in one of my other posts (can't remember where though), this process WILL bring you to your knees emotionally at some stage and you will have times where you wonder what the hell have I done?

Leaving South Africa and watching my child breakdown in tears because she realized the impact of what we are doing and hearing her say that she misses her grandparents. Saying goodbye to family and wondering if we are going to see them again other than over Skype. Winding up our live financially and selling all our assets off and packing our possessions into a container. Not knowing when and if we are going to secure a rental before we have to be out of the temporary accommodation. Wondering whether or not we are going to get jobs. Wondering how long our measly life savings (divided by 10) is going to last. Not having money to be able to call people or even send sms's because we are trying to conserve every penny before we get jobs.

These are just some of the things that are on our minds at the moment and believe me when I say that there are many more things that are weighing us down. Most of the time I appear to be fine but in reality I am broken inside. The part that gets to me the most at the moment is the fact that I own nothing of my own except the stuff in the container and the money in the bank. I know that possessions don't matter and I should not focus on that too much but it is hard. We have been forced to give up everything that we have built up over the last 12 years and that is why I am so angry at the moment and (as mentioned in another post somewhere) I hate South Africa more now than I ever have before. I do not want to go back and infact I don't even want to see any news about the place either at this stage. I physically felt my blood pressure rise the other day when a spokesperson for Nelson Mandela started speaking in his typically South African accent in an interview on ABC1 news.

Having a 189 Permanent Resident visa is a blessing and is truly a "Golden Ticket". I take my hat off to those of you who are doing this on a 457 or other temporary visa facing the uncertainty of retrenchment and having to go back to South Africa. The next time someone calls any of you cowardly for running away or a traitor for deserting South Africa, turn around and walk away in the knowledge that you have (as Donovan would put it) "balls of steel". Immigration is not for the weak minded or faint hearted. I am holding onto the fact that we will be better off when we get jobs than we would ever have been in South Africa. Things here are just so much better and they just work. People are genuinely happy and to a large extent carefree. No-one cares what car you drive or what job you do, they don't care where you live or what school your kids are in and most importantly the don't see skin colour at all, they all just treat everyone around them with dignity and respect.

It's been strange and refreshing all at the same time. We will get through this and we will be happy in the long run but those stripes are earned as is everything else in this country. There is a sense of ownership in one's surroundings and a pride in one's job no matter what it is that just makes this journey all worth it. It's going to get hard and you will question the decisions you have made but stick it out and never give up.

I am hoping that once we have a rental that we can call home and our things arrive and at least one of us find a job that it will start getting easier but until then we will just keep slogging away at it and making it work. Good luck to those of you still waiting no matter what stage of the process you are at. I hope things work out for you all the way that you want them to.

HEOJ - Such true words, we are doing exactly what you are doing right now minus a child to worry about - makes it a bit easier. We are also just a week here and at least found temporary accommodation which is pretty good as everything is supplied but as you say - divided by 10 and no job YET, it makes one worry, we almost secured a rental but decided to stay here longer as this place gave us the option to extend weekly/monthly. We also have a container coming so we do not want to move into a empty house without anything. I have lived here before but it has taken some adjusting again but it has been something very new for my wife, she loves it but also stresses about work and living in limbo with only a bank account. We are also on the market for a vehicle and will be having to pay all upfront for one as we do not have jobs YET. We love the way things work here and the clean streets and walking at night, people do go out their way to help you as you have also noticed. But you know what we will come out of this with jobs and a life in a better place - look forward, be positive, go get it!