I’ve name changed for this
Right now you’re being too broad.
People are talking about Seatoun, Tawa, Kapiti coast, the Hutt, it’s like talking about living in Camden, Milton Keynes and Bexley!
Firstly Australian citizens can’t come into NZ at the moment except with a special exemption, it’s hard to get but not that hard so that’s the first barrier. However there is considerable delay when you do get one so you might need to factor that in.
Secondly have a think about budget and where you want to work if it is not remotely, if you care to say where that is you will get better advice on where to live.
Thirdly schools vary depending on where you live but they operate on catchment areas so if you are in zone then the school has to take you, but that means that you get mixed year classes which depending on school can be just across 2 years eg 4 and 5 or 5 and 6 or across more years, you can also get some quite big class sizes.
Schools depend on location most religious schools are Catholic and they mostly go to year 8 then to a high school, most religious high schools are single sex. There are lots of people who send their kids to private school for all sorts of reasons, probably most of them are not boarding farmers kids and havn’t been for at least 20 years! Certainly not in Wellington.
State primaries will go either to year 6 or year 8, if year 6 you tend to go to intermediate after for year 7 and 8.
Wellington itself then tends to have single sex high schools (lots of NZ towns do) but there is Wellington High which is mixed. A lot of the high schools in Wellington are also huge. They’re also usually zoned.
Finally traffic in Wellington is dire, Wellington drivers spend longer in traffic than Brisbane drivers (although I have no idea whether Brisbane drivers spend a long time in traffic) that might impact on where you live and where you school your kids.
The winters are not generally that bad, (snow very very rare) as is frost, it’s just that the quality of the houses is so poor, most of those pretty little cottages are just that tiny and poorly designed. They are similar to a garden shed in the UK heaps were built in the 1910’s and 20’s but the lifespan is 50 years. Modern stuff is better but there is a big saga about leaky homes you will need to be aware of if looking at modern and because Wellington is so hilly and small the modern stuff tends to be further out.
Renting is tricky, the gov is trying to improve the standard of housing via legislation so landlords are feeling very attacked, prices have been going up steeply. It will be very very hard to rent with pets unless you have a lot of money to throw at the issue. (Gov has made it illegal to take more bond if there are pets and there have been several tenancy tribunal cases where landlords have been prevented from taking bond money to cover pet damage so no one wants pets any more and there are so many other people to choose from & lots of them wont have pets or kids)
If you want to ask a ? On trademe I’m sure you can find a way!