It's our turn now!

[Donnyvcpt]

These journals are my favourite section on this website, I find other peoples storys interesting and inspiring so I take my hat off to everyone who took the time to share their personal experiences with all of us. I hope that my story can help someone who might need it in their own journey.

My NEED to leave SA came about just after I finished my apprentiship in fitting and turning. That was back in 2005, I was in a group of 4 guys who served our apprentiship together. After we qualified we had no garentee of employment and had to basically apply for permanent positions. While the other 3 applied and were successful, I decided not to ask for a job and got myself into a working holiday program in the USA. I travelled, lived and worked all over the US for 2 years before I came home to unemployment. On arrival at JHB airport I could feel absolute disappointment come over me. It was quite numbing, but then and there after being back in this country for only a few minutes I decided that one day I would leave this place for good.

For a while after settling back in and gaining employment I considered moving to the UK. My father and his entire family were born and raised in Newcastle so aquiring residence there would be my easiest option. Something kept stalling me on applying for my british passport though. Truth is that I never really wanted to move to the UK, it was just a way to get away from here.

Fast forward to 2009, my mom fell very ill and there was no way I was going to leave while she wasn't well. I still looked around though and was actually offered 2 jobs in Australia which I turned down because I was concerned about my mum. Being the only child it wasn't only my concern for her that kept me here, but also my responsibility to be here for her. Her health improved though and later that year I met the woman I would eventually marry.

In 2012 my mom fell ill again, but this time it was fatal. She passed away 5 days after her 55th birthday. The way it happened made me hate this place even more. She fell ill at her sisters home the morning, my aunt called for an ambulance which arrived a hour later and only took her to the day hospital. The day hospital decided that they couldn't do anything at 9am and called the ambulance to transfer her to somerset hospital. At 4pm the first ambulance rocked up, but the driver said theres no way he's going to the Waterfront because its far and traffics thick. At around 5pm the next one came after first getting lost along the way. They took her to Somerset and needed to do an emergency blood transfusion, but it was too late. After 5 hours of fighting for her life she slipped away. Losing my mom meant nothing was keeping me in this country, but while I mourned her I couldn't even consider moving away.

In 2013 I propose to my wife (after already having our beautiful little girl....oops). We had a beautiful wedding at the Durbanville Hills wine estate and life started getting comfortable and settling down again.

The beginning of this year my wife, daughter and I were on our way to have a day at the beach in False Bay. While driving the news on the radio reported a 19 year old girl was raped and burnt alive right next to the N2 highway.... right next to a highway. I looked in the rear view mirror at my little princess and decided thats it we can't live here where life means nothing. The problem we had though is that we used all our savings on our lavish wedding and now we needed to start over. I got quotes from various agencies for PR visas and they obviously all amounted to the same R110 000 approx. The price wasn't the issue, but I'm the sole bread winner and I'm putting my wife through university and my daughter in a private kindergarden. Saving was gonna take forever so I put our apartment on the market. In the meantime I applied for work on seek hoping to get a break. I had loads and loads of reject mails, but kept applying. In September we got good news that an offer got approved at the bank so now we'll have enough money to apply for our PR.

3 weeks ago I got a mail from an agent saying that his client is looking for a good fitter and is prepared to sponsor the successful candidate. Naturally I jumped at the opportunity and now I have a company thats sponsoring me and paying for my flight to Australia. I can't believe the timing, propertys sold just in time.

I'll be going to Wagga Wagga which means I missed my mark (Brisbane) by a good couple hundred kilometers, but at least I'll start working and earning immediately. I still have to do my skills assesment though and I'm quite nervous about it. Then it's just the 457 application and I'm off to Oz. My wife and I are busy packing now because the new owners take occupation tomorrow, can't believe how quickly everythings moving now.

Thanks for reading guys, I will try to keep updating.

[Mara]

Congratulations on your decision Donny, and Wagga Wagga is a lovely country town, I am sure you will feel quite at home there. Trust the employer is a great one!

[Wannagonow]

Well done on your perseverance Donnyvcpt! Good luck with the move!

[Maligso]

You seem to choose the path less travelled ... good for you.

[Donnyvcpt]

Yesterday was a mad rush. We completed the move and are now in our rental and absolutely exhausted. My wife was really a trooper, she pulled us through yesterday. I got a quote and accepted it from a removal company here in Cape Town to fetch our furniture and deliver it to our new address. When I emailed the lady to accept the quote I told her that I would contact her to confirm the time to collect once I got confirmation as to what time the previous tennants would be moving out. Once I got all the info I phoned the lady on 3 separate occasions to get confirmation that the truck would be there and the time for collection. So she confirmed that they would be there between 10am and 11am. Yesterday I called her at 9am to make sure again that they would be there at 10 only for the......lovely lady to tell me I never confirmed the collection OMG! We tried calling about 15 different removal companies and truck hire companies only to hear that they're fully booked. Then my wifes dad phoned and told us his brother in law has a truck and would be able to help us out after 2pm. This left us with 3 hours to get everything out, but thanks to some help from VERY good friends and family we managed to pull it off. Now its just a matter of clearing the clutter around us in the new rental and we're good to go.

Today I contacted one of my previous employers for a certificate of employment. I was a maintenance technician for them when I got back from the U.S. While chatting to the HR lady she told me they had me as abandonned on their system. Anyway, a long story short, the manager never bothered sending a copy of my letter of resignation in to HR so they were under the impression that I just abandonned my job. Bleh! Well everything worked out great for me in spite of the incompotent people I've crossed paths with. Perhaps I'm also to blame, I tend to be naive. I trust people to do what they say they're going to do without standing behind them and checking up constantly.

Will certificates of employment and tax certificates be enough proof of employment for VETASSES? I hope so.

[Chantalgr]

I love the journal's section too Thank you for taking the time to share your story with us. All the best for the journey ahead.

[Donnyvcpt]

I'm so stressed out about my visa application and skills assesment it's affecting my sleep. My original plan was to start preparing for my 189 visa application by getting all my documents together over this month and January. Then let migrate2oz guide me through the rest, but now this 457 has completely thrown me in a tailspin. I am completely unprepared and documents from home affairs are gonna take forever. I have already been waiting since November 2013 for my unabridged birth certificate. I've decided to use bunnyhop to handle my daughters birth certificate and our marriage certificates and PCC, but even so they say it will take 50 working days to get them. The agent is on me like white on rice and cannot understand what we have to go through in order to get these docs.

Coupled with that I need a refernce from my current and previous employer. My current employer was not a problem. They wrote me out a letter of recommendation that brought tears to my eyes lol. The previous one will be the problem. He is the boss from hell and I basically left my job because I was sick and tired of fighting with him. It turns out the entire maintenance workshop followed suit after me as well and their turn over of staff has been ridiculous. The day after I gave him my letter of resignation he called me in to tell me that he was gonna fire me before I leave and that he was gonna find out where I was going and he was gonna make trouble for me. So needless to say ai can't expect a honest letter of recommendation from him. So now I'm in a pickle, I don't wanna explain this to my agent because it'll just make me look guilty so I'm gonna ask if I can get a reference from the company I worked for prior to them and just get confirmation of employment from them.

I hope these guys are gonna give me a little time.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Donnyvcpt

[Donnyvcpt]

I still have no news from home affairs about my elusive birth certificate grrrr.... I hope it comes through before they close for christmas at least. This morning I had a very friendly check in call from the recruitment agent to find out if I'm getting the docs together, but I just think he was a little worried that I've changed my mind lol. This coming weekend is our anniversary. I've planned a weekend break away for myself and my wife to a hotel and spa just outside of Cape Town. I think the break from the running around for docs and application after application will serve us well. This morning I sent a ton of paperwork off to an agent for my skills assesment. Hopefully all will go well. Early January I will need to start looking for a good shipping company in Cape Town. No idea where to start with that.

Wishing everyone a blessed christmas and a prosperous new year.

[Donnyvcpt]

It's been ages since I've updated this journal so I thought I'd get on it now. A lot has happenned since December and it's all been such a blur I can barely keep it all straight in my head.

In January I wrote the IELTS. I found it to be quite manageable. In fact I put very little effort into my preparation, but that was simply because I only needed 7's across all bands.

In Febuary I did my skills assesment. For some or other reason the thought of being tested freaked me out and I was a nervous wreck when we started our skype interview. The guy who did the assesment turned out to be a really friendly person so that put me at ease quite quickly. I actually quite enjoyed the assesment. He asked me a few questions and we chatted a little about how different things were between SA and AUS. 2 weeks later the agent contacted me and told me I had a positive skills assesment. We also went to apply for our police clearance.

In March the company offering me my 457 sponsorship arranged HAP IDs for my wife, daughter and I. I had previously asked them to apply for the full medical instead of just the one you do for the 457. The medicals went well. They checked my blood pressure a few times because they found it was a little high, but I explained to the nurse that it would be high because I know they're taking blood next and I hate needles. After a few breathing exercises and a lot of ridicule from my wife my blood pressure came down and all was well. All in all the medicals were painless. We got notification that our PCC was ready for collection.

In April an ex colleague of mine who currently works for the company who was going to sponsor me came down to Cape Town for a holiday. He had heard that his employer wanted to employ me as well so he came to visit me at work to chat about his experiences. Long story short, he advised me to stay away. He is unhappy with the situation, but has no other options available to him. He went over on a 457, but is now on a 187 so he's stuck with them for another year or so while he works out his retention period. This made me feel very uneasy about the whole situation. I had 2 options now, either I go to work at this company and risk it causing me to hate my time in Australia or I ditch the 457 and go straight for the golden ticket. After thinking long and hard about it I chose to go with the latter.

In June, after struggling for ages to get proof of employment docs together, I decided to only claim 5 years work experience as opposed to 8 years. This made my overall points tally drop by 5 points so to counter that I applied for NSW state sponsorship.

In May I received news that NSW has offered me sponsorship and on the 12th of May, Reuven at M2O lodged my EOI for a SC 190 visa. To my surprize, we were assigned a CO at the end of the month.

This brings us to June. Finally after months of skop, skiet and donner with the department of Home Affairs we received all our outstanding docs from them. The problem right now is with my wifes PCC. They only used her maiden name on the certificate. So now after wasting a week calling Pretoria to try and get them to reprint it we're going to reapply for them and ask our CO to give us some lenience on the 28 day rule.

I hope that the SAP surprises me in a good way this time.

[monsta]

You might be wise on your decision not to take the job. It's hard to find a good job here at the best of times.

I work in IT and I have been in a job where we spend our lives justifying our existence. It was at a big company who could have outsourced my department to their china office. We had to constantly proove why they shouldn't shut us down.

China let us do all the work that was hard and could cause you to miss deadlines. Basically, the work they didn't want to touch with a 10 foot pole. But they still fought over the budget we were allowed. So, doing 6 weeks if work in 3 weeks became the norm.

The guys would fly to China and do the work on site, working 14 hours a day. They found it easier than to do it here as they have family responsibilities. When I left, they had started cutting travel allowances. So, it became a case of work 14 hours, then take a one hour trip back to the hotel and cook dinner in a microwave. Then wake up and do it for 2 months without a weekend.

So, yeah. Finding the right job isn't a bad idea

Edited June 29, 2015 by monsta

[Donnyvcpt]

A large part of the reason why I decided not to take the job is because my friend told me he was basically forced to work 14 hours a day, 6 days a week for the first 18 months he was there. When he asked for time off to rest he was told that he's work performance is not up to standard and that if he doesn't change his attitude they would cancel his visa. His family actually sat him down and asked him if this is really what he wanted by moving to Australia. The sad thing about the whole situation is that the people doing the bullying and threatening are South Africans. These guys did the move themselves and know what it's like to be in a new country and what comes with it. They also promised to reimburse his container costs and that never materialized either.

[monsta]

I hate to say it, but that's a universal problem. People who have been treated badly often do it to others

There was a news article that said that Aussie politicians don't look out for the hard working majority. I think it's more than just the politicians.

Aussie should have a good National Broadband Network by now. We should have solved the transport issues in Sydney, etc.. But where there is a problem, there is always someone benefiting from maintaining the status quo.