emigrating to australia

[liz1969]

i am seriously thinking about emigrating to australia. i am a nurse educated to diploma level and working as a senior charge nurse here in scotland. i am a single parent with 2 teenage children. really want to go but am aware am running out of time due to my age (42).

guess im looking for advice on the best way to go about it, and on the best area to look into. we have a fairly decent life here,but am aware of the high cost of australian life

At this stage, no, I can't ever see us going back. We went to the Uk on holiday a couple of years ago and there were parts we loved - picture 2 teenage girls finding Primark for the first time!- and British pubs beat Aussie ones hands down. However the daily life here is so, so much better and really what matters is how your daily life looks.
I work in a Govt dept and earn very significantly more than I would for the same job in England. Our stress levels are much lower, we take our dinner down to the beach to eat on a midweek night - just cos we can! There is so much space for living and that, combined with the weather, seems to mean people are far more mellow.
Opportunities are very much there and we have had very little impact of GFC compared to England. If you are a nurse and want a 4 bed 2 bath house with 2 reception rooms, nice area, then it's perfectly doable. Yes, your kids may go and travel, but isn't that a possibility if you stay in England? sometimes you have to make a call of "where do I want to be once they grow up and leave?" our children are only on loan to us.
It's a wonderful place!

Migrant you paint a pretty picture. I used to live in Perth before moving to Brisbane and am trying to work out where you could rent a house like yours for $450 per week. Give us a clue.

It is certainly true in the last few years Brisbane has become more expensive to live in. However we have a good economy, a housing market that is hit by the recession but not floored. People have jobs.. we are still recruiting overseas for shortages, so all in all in my opinion a great place to be. Not everyone cup of tea.
When we moved over I didnt work and we lived on one wage for 12 months. Dh earned 80k$ a year. The national average Aussie income is 65k$. People live and live well. property where I live in North Brisbane is between $200 to $500 a week to rent. (thats a 3 to 5 bed house)
We have bought a 5 bed house on 5 acres 45 mins from Brisbane CBD ten mins to white beaches for $540k. Thats why we came. Our kids love it here.

Queensland health..... I am a NG5 with 4 years post grad experience and i earn $32.80 per hour before shift loading. that increases every year till i get to NG5 year 7. I will get a 6 % increase for my masters and i get salary sacrifice for electric ($1300) and $10000 salary sacrifice for mortgage /rent per year. ( tax free salary) and novated lease car ( tax free fuel rego purchase cost). I have no real gripes with qld health. I do my job they pay me... Better than I would have got in the Uk.

Giggly .... Thanks!

DH and I are both earning good salaries. I'm originally from Oz. Have just been back for Christmas, and with the current exchange rate everything - especially housing and food - is SOOO expensive that we've realised we could never afford to move back. Ever.

Think long and hard...

Migrant where are you in Perth? We arrived here before Xmas but have lived here before and DH is a Perth boy.

I think it is worth reiterating that Australia always was expensive, it's just that the exchange rate made it seem cheap. Remember that you will be getting paid in Aussie dollars and if you stop converting all the time it is much less daunting. The days where you could sell your house in the UK and use the exchange rate in your favour to buy a mansion are long gone but exchange rates fluctuate and this will not always be the case. Also when you go on holidays home the buying power is great!

It is also worth pointing out that you pay for public (state) school in NSW on a 457 but not here in Perth.

Everyone's experience is different but I have a nurse friend in Oxford (where we lived till earlier this year) who would pack up and go in a flash because as a senior ITU nurse she would make 2-3 times what she makes in the UK and can have more flexible working hours, or so she tells me. They are looking for a job for her DH now.

ALso I think a lot depends, as others have said, on where you were living in the UK. Housing in Perth is very expensive but so was housing in Oxford. A 4 bedroom house here is about twice the total size of a 4 bed house in SE England cities.

Schooling also varies from area to area. We've moved from a situation where for a variety of reasons we would have felt compelled to send our DCs private in Oxford from reception to one where if they go private it will be in secondary school, and we will be two minutes walk from the local primary.

We rent a fully furnished (very strangely so, but ok for now, and glad we're not staying much longer) 3 bed townhouse in Cottesloe for $700/week so if you look around you can find great deals. (bear in mind that furnished here is very unusual and so more expensive) The problem with securing rentals in Perth is that it is so competitive it is best to do it when you get here and you don't always get a clear picture from overseas.

I'm south of Perth but still very reasonable to commute to the city, especially by rail. Cottesloe would be very pricey to rent!

Cottesloe is peculiar - lots of very, very expensive and some dumps that are amazingly cheap for the location (but dumps!). We are only in Cott temporarily though as it suited us for a range of reasons.

Migrant, so when you say you are in "a good part of town" it's not actually Perth is it? For all that house for $450 a week you must be a long way out.

Roary, Australia has not "always been expensive". I was here as a backpacker 15 years ago and things were as cheap as chips then. It's only been the past 10 years that inflation has taken off in Australia. It used to be a right of passage for Europeans to backpack here but I think they would find it very difficult (financially) now, so it has lost its gloss. A place is only good if you are getting value for money. My daughter stayed in a backpacker's recently and it cost her fifty dollars!

I travelled here in 1994 on Canadian dollars and it was very expensive as the dollars were on par (and the pound had huge buying power). Inflation has made it worse but Australia has always had very high labour costs.

I am also from australia and can confirm things werent always expensive.
Every time I go back im shocked at the rises in costs.
I remember when a main meal in a restaurant was around $10-12. I dont even want to know what it is now!

wow! we could be making the move to Perth in the next few months and now i am even more confused that ever :) My hubs starting wage would be $100,000 - i take it thats quiet a decent wage? I am also able to work on the 457 visa so we would have any income i make too. The company put us in rented accommodation to start us off but im hopeful we can start to rent our own place reasonably soon. We would be going lock, stock and barrel - selling house, cars, everything really. We have to go out thinking we're not coming back! :) we have a 10 year old daughter and just think, at this time, this is the right move for us.

Will the company ship any of your stuff as part of relocation?

We moved out here jan 2011 (Adelaide) & its the best move we ever made! Everyone is different, we came along with many other families as part of a police recruitment drive, most have settled & love it, whilst a few have gone back to the uk, some of which have since regretted it. As regards it being expensive, we kept comparing it to how much things cost in the Uk at first which made it appear very expensive! However the wages are higher here so it kind of balances it all out. We speak to family via facetime /skype all the time & although its not the same as popping round for a natter it feels like they're not so far away..... for us it was all about our 3 children's future & it seems pretty bright now :-)