DH been offered a job in Brisbane and accepted subject to details etc

[Naetha]

The whole emigration idea only started on monday so it's a bit .

I know there's another couple of threads about moving to Brisbane that I've been avidly reading but I really am completely new to the whole thing (but very much up for it!).

Any advice, or any advice on where to get advice will be very much appreciated :)

Am a little bit excited :o

[Naetha]

The final details have been thrashed out, and it's not as good as initally hoped, but good enough :) The big downer is that DH's work want us to go out there in 6 to 8 weeks, which barely leaves us enough time to put our affairs in order, let alone actually say goodbye to everyone.

How did you guys deal with your parents? Were they fully behind your decisions to move?

After initial enthusiasm my Dad is coming across as quite annoyed that we're going - I guess that's just his way of being upset about it, but I can't deny it's put a downer on things. The ironic thing being that of all the parents, he's the one most likely to, and most able to visit fairly regularly.

I'm going to miss my friends so much - thy've been fab over the last couple of weeks since this got going. DS starting to get quite upset at the thought of leaving his friends too. We're going to have a big leaving party for the kids - either in the local park, or in the local soft play centre. I still don't think it's dawned on DS that life won't be the same. He's only 3 bless him. Can anyone recommend any good books that covers all this stuff? Or any tips?

It's all a bit daunting. I had visions of blogging my way through the process but I just don't have the time!

[cairnterrier]

Hi Naetha

Just wanted to say good luck. We spent a year living in Brisbane and it was fantastic! We lived in Kelvin Grove so very close to UQ campus. There are lots of weekend markets all over the city where fruit and veg are much cheaper and there are also lots of stalls with different foods from all over the world. It was such an experience buying freshly picked pineapples from the farmer who had grown them!! I found that the fruit and veg in Coles and Woolies weren't as nice as in the markets. The best place that we found was James St market but twas a bit pricey. Lovely coffee shops around that area as well. Buying meat for the barbie is obv v important and it's worth going to the local butchers for this.

Definitely look for a house with air conditioning - you'll really need it come the summer. I found that clothes were very expensive in Aus and there wasn't the same range in the UK - not really an equivalent to M and S for example. The CBD has a good range of shops though and Myer and David Jones are good department stores.

Rosalie has lots of nice restaurants and bars and a fantastic burger place. The tiny noodle place there does fantastic food and v cheap.

Sorry, could go on for ever but just wanted to say enjoy it!

:)

PS if you aren't bothered about drinking on the flights out there, Royal Brunei do the cheapest air fares and the cabin crew are all lovely. They fly direct into Brissy as well.

[ravenousbugblatterbeast]

Wow Naetha, so quick! Do you want to take a 20ft container or could you put the same money towards getting a smaller amount of stuff air freighted? At least you'd have it in good time then.

I haven't told my parents I've even applied for a job in Oz, so when I get that call for the final interview I've got some explaining to do!!

[eidsvold]

sunshine coast is nicer than gold coast and even living chermside/stafford - you cna take the gateway and it is no time at all you are at the gold coast.

[chloeb2002]

eids... we may be biased.... however you are of course very right!

[chloeb2002]

if it helps we similarly had an interview at the end of august and moved on nov 1st! its is i think better for all that way! manic yes.. but less procrastination! we got married also on october 20th and found out i was expecting dc#2... within that 8 weeks!

[IanLindgren1]

Hi All,
I can see that there is a lot of uncertainty about Living Away from Home Allowance (LAFHA) when you move to Australia and I?d like to take the opportunity to clarify the uncertain issues for you.

My name is Ian and I am the CEO of PayMe Australia. We are the premier providers of LAFHA advice for employees and employers in Australia. LAFHA is the most misunderstood and underulitised allowance in Australia for three reasons. The first reason is that there is no one repository of current knowledge on the ATO web site, and to make matters worse the immigration web site contradicts itself in 13 places. The second reason is that LAFHA has the word "Allowance in it". This means to most people, that they have to pay you more! When in fact your taxable salary is reduced by the LAFHA amount you claim, so there is no more for your employer to pay. They pay less tax on you, and you get in the hand what they do not pay.

The other reason is that LAFHA is administered under the Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) Act, and because people (including accountants, CFOs and payroll officers do not know all there is to know about LAFHA), they automatically take a defensive stance and say "No to LAFHA" because they think it attracts FBT. It does not as long as it is paid correctly.

LAFHA is not an entitlement; it is only paid if your employer agrees to pay it. If you were eligible for LAFHA, and your rental was $650/wk, then you would receive a reduction in your taxable income by $650/wk and if you had a partner and two children and additional reduction in salary for the food component of $293/week. These figures combine to give you $943 per week LAFHA which is $49,036 per year. So if your annual taxable salary was $100,000 it would fall by $49,036 making your new taxable salary $50,964. So you would receive an increase in cash in hand of about $18,000 per year.
LAFHA can continue for the whole 4 years you are on a 457 visa, so long as you intend to return home. The moment you decided not to return home and apply for PR, LAFHA must stop.

Minimum Salary levels now have no impact on LAFHA, meaning LAFHA is considered now as ?salary? for the MSL. The immigration web site is currently incorrect because it does not show the latest legislation. Therefore maximum confusion because 13 different pages tell you 13 different things.

The big things that you must remember about LAFHA are that:
? Each case must be considered on its own merits
? You must intend to return home
? Your accommodation costs must be ?reasonable?, ie not a penthouse unless you are on $300,000 per year and a senior employee, but also not a hovel!
? Your meals costs are fixed by the ATO each year on 1 April.
? Never let anyone tell you to claim anything that is blatantly illegal or double dipping; You've got to ask yourself, hand on heart, if I was questioned by the ATO, could I win because I was truthful?
? Never let anyone contact your employer about providing you with LAFHA. That will get your employer off side (as you have already mentioned), so always control the communications yourself.
? LAFHA is usually worth about $15000/year to you additional cash in hand for accommodation and food components. It does not cost your employer any more money, and does not attract Fringe Benefits Tax is paid correctly.
? You can also claim things like:
o Removal and insurance of household effects to Australia and back home
o Temporary accommodation at home before you leave, and in Australia, and the same on the way home
o Storage of furniture at home
o Telephone, gas and electricity connection
o Leasing of household goods
o Return flights back home during your temporary stay in Australia

Never be afraid to seek assistance from PayMe to identify exactly what you will be paid. Once you understand how we can help you, and what we can provide your employer with so they ?know they can legally pay you LAFHA at no additional cost and with no FBT, then you are usually on your way to being paid LAFHA correctly.

Sure we have some minor one off fees, but you will get these back in your first week or so of LAFHA payments. I hope I have helped in some way. By the way, next week we will have a LAFHA calculator on our web site.

Regards,
Ian Lindgren
CEO PayMe Australia
www.payme.com.au/LAFHA.html

[Naetha]

Thanks for that info Ian, much appreciated!

As for the logistics of getting there, we've been given $5000 to get the 4 of us and all our stuff there. It's not much, but standard for the company whether there's one person or a family going out. The upshot is that we can't afford to take a container. We're just trying to find out the cheapest way of getting say 10 large boxes shipped over there. What are good but cheap companies that will just ship boxes?

[chloeb2002]

I am wondering now if lafha is a tax.. perk.. can you claim it as a backdated claim? As in we were on 457 for 3 years and didnt claim it but now on ens pr... just a query.??

[ravenousbugblatterbeast]

I think it needs to be in place before you start work, so when you are leaving your "home" for a new place, and it must be agreed with your employer beforehand, it's not an automatic tax entitlement, at least from what I've read. Certainly if you're now applying for permanent residency then you've very little chance I'd have thought, as the intention has to be that you will be returning to your original home, and your actions have now shown that you're not.

Is the pr application straightforward out of interest? Are there less hoops than a "proper" skills visa? I have to look into it, but I'm still waiting to hear if I've got the final interview (which I was under the impression should have been organised before now so I'm on tenterhooks!) so I daren't do any more chicken-counting and look into whether we can stay in Oz (if we want to) before we actually get there!

[Naetha]

Arse - can find my BAGA level 5 gymnastics certificate, my 10, 25, 100m swimming certificates, my grade 1 piano certificate, my UK maths challenge 1997 certificate, but not my bloody A- levels certificate!

[ravenousbugblatterbeast]

Can your awarding body supply a copy? If you can remember who they were?

[CocoKev]

Hello- hope you don't mind me joining in. We're also off to Brisbane, possibly at the end of August, but the 457s haven't been issued yet so we're still not sure. DH has resigned already though so I hope DIAC don't take against us for any reason! All this information is great- really useful, particularly when looking for somewhere to live. DH will be based in Fortitude Valley, and is from Staffordshire in the UK so secretly likes the idea of living in Stafford once we get to Brisbane...I'll show him this thread- it's nice to have some more sensible criteria for choosing somewhere to live!

[Naetha]

Hey Coco :) Us new Brisbanites will have to all meet up when we've settled in a little bit!

Quick question - how easy is it to get a used (but only once) tent through AQIS? I doubt I'll be able to get every little bit of dirt and grass off it. Will it get binned?

[ravenousbugblatterbeast]

You might want to try <a class="break-all" href="//www.britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=54" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">British Expats for more replies too (no offence Mumsnet!) as there'll be considerably more who have faced the challenges we are (hopefully in may case) about to face!

[Naetha]

I know, I'm just impatient lol!

[CocoKev]

Naetha- that would be great! Good luck with the move- no doubt our paths will cross on MN again before we meet in Brisbane. Can't quite believe we'll be there in 2 months!

[Naetha]

For those of you going / having gone, what did you do about buying a car?

With the exchange rate as crappy as it is, I'm a bit reluctant to buy one outright (even though we would have the cash). What did you do? Did you just buy a new/used car from a dealer? Get hire/purchase or finance? Buy it from an auction?

What would you recommend?

[Naetha]

And can you get a decent sized family car that doesn't have a 3 litre engine???

[chloeb2002]

as long as you have pr you can get finance very easily.. however you will need id stuff sorted and pay slips etc so it wouldnt be immediate i dont think. we just bought older cars when we got here and bought outright. now we have slowly changed them for new ones.
yes you can buy smaller engined cars... lots of differnt ones!

[Naetha]

Well this is all going well so far - kids passports applied for (1 week wait time) and DH's A-level certificates on their way. These are the only things we're waiting for before the visa can be applied for. Still on track for flying out 31st August.

I'm trying to work out what to pack for the first 10 weeks over there before our container arrives. What do you recommend? What did you take and not need? What did you need but not take?

I'm guessing a fairly limited number of clothes and toiletries, obviously all the paperwork, identification, references etc, but what else?

We'll be arriving in September, what will the weather be like realistically in Brisbane? Will we need coats other than rain coats? What about cardigans/light jackets.

Stuff like sun cream and mossie repellent - is it worth buying it over there rather than before we go? Is it that much better or cheaper over there?

Also what would you recommend for the plane? We will be having a 14 hour layover in Singapore (probably hire a room in one of the transit hotels for 12 hours and chill out a little bit).

[ravenousbugblatterbeast]

I'm still waiting to hear if I've got a final interview (it all seemed nailed-on a few weeks back, now it's gone quiet and I have a baaaad feeling ) but I had planned things like buying some nice picnic plates, bowls and cups and packing them in our suitcases so we could use them before our proper stuff arrived and also as picnic stuff afterwards. Also think about what you buy here more cheaply then over there (pretty much most things it seems!) and if you have room in your container then buy them and bung them in. I was happily hoover-shopping (as I can't imagine getting our existing hoover free from dust sufficiently to please AQA) and also things like a bed, sofa etc, as our existing ones have seen better days. Can any Aussie expats help out of what to bring? I was also planning to get a Kindle, and leave it attached to a UK based account to get UK books.

Singapore airport is fantastic - there's a cinema, butterfly garden (bizarrely opposite the smoking lounge ). You can also tour the city while you're waiting : Changi Airport Who are you flying with?

Gosh, how exciting for you all, although I am also very

[chloeb2002]

I guess stuff must have got loads cheaper in.the UK in the past 4 years ... Certainly we do have aldis , dollar shops etc to buy cheap basic stuff and ikea etc for furniture so I guess we only brought over ... Special ... Furniture . Certainly didn't buy any to bring! And if we ever did move again we wouldn't get a container ! Electric stuff bought in the UK will have the wrong plugs on and no warrenty .. so I wouldn't do that. You can of course buy all UK books a nd downloads for kindle etc. (book depository send here ) and getting a new home with new stuff when you get here is part of the fun ? I'm impressed if you have room for plastic plates ... Our cases were very full just with clothes !
Weather in September is still cool but improving. Spring temps ... So not too cold over night but maybe only 20 / 25 in the day. With the off random hot / cold day.

[CocoKev]

Our 457s have just been issued and flights are booked for the 20th Aug- all starting to feel very real now- eeek! Naetha- are you flying Singapore Airlines? I wanted to (hear they are v child friendly and with an 8 month old DS I think we'll need all the help we can get) but the BA luggage allowance is considerably more so we've gone for them. We're also stopping over in Changi- looking forward to the butterflys and swimming pool!

[Naetha]

It's not that stuff is loads cheaper in the UK at the moment (although clothes are v cheap) but it makes more sense to ship a sofa, table and chairs, kids beds and other furniture than buy new when we're over there given that we'd get a pittance for selling them in the UK, and the cost of shipping them is less than a quarter of what it would cost to buy them all new.

We will have approximately $25-30k in hard earned savings when we get over there - half of that is earmarked for a car, a bit more is earmarked for new furniture etc (if possible a new motorbike for DH), and the rest will be kept as a get out of shit fund if the cost of living is as high as everyone makes it out to be and we find it hard to economise. Unfortunately we just can't afford to buy everything from new, lovely though that would be.

Fingers crossed for your interview Ravenousbugblatterbeast - if for whatever reason it falls through, do you think you'll make your way over to Oz anyway? We decided that even if we didn't get the position in Brisbane, that we'd make our own way out anyway.

Bit of a sad weekend though - we're rehoming one of our four cats tomorrow (people came round to see him today, and they fell in love with him) and have just told DS - he's very upset, doesn't want the cat to go and doesn't want to go to Australia :( Any tips on easing the idea of emigration on to a 3 year old other than emphasising the positive and bribery where appropriate? :o