Emigrating to Australia

[summermumma2021]

Myself, husband and three children are planning on emigrating to Australia in the next 5-10 years. I’m currently in the process of researching job market and the areas we’d like to live in.
Any top areas from your personal experience?

My family used to live about thirty minutes outside of Brisbane and so loved visiting them there.

We’d like to be in a family friendly neighbourhood near to good schools. Our work is in demand and flexible but we’d be willing to commute around 30-45mins. My husband works in finance and I’m a teacher.

Please tell me your top tips for moving and your favourite areas in Australia.

thanks.

I'd say that areas will change a lot over the next decade. Will your kids even want to move then? Surely they'll be mid exams or have left home/at uni?

Being a teacher you’ll be able to find work most places. I assume it’s a standard city finance role, so Sydney or Melbourne would be best. The Brisbane job market isn’t as active. Your husband might be able to get work but there aren’t as many opportunities there. I can’t speak to Perth, it’s dominated by mining so unsure what the finance market is like.

If you do end up in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, you’ll probably have to compromise on your commute time. Unless you’re willing to live in an apartment or have a few million to spend on a house. A one hour commute is pretty standard, most people I know travel more than that. The property market hasn’t slowed down here and will have gone up significantly in 5-10 years. Especially around Brisbane as the Olympics are there in 2032 so prices are skyrocketing.

I haven’t spoken about semi regional towns as I have no experience living there. I love visiting them and if your husband has a generic accounting role they might be worth a look. I personally wouldn’t want to be more than 3/4 hours from a state capital as the healthcare isn’t as good in regional areas. Take a look on Google maps and check how long it takes to drive to the nearest international airport, that should give you an idea of distances.

Once you have an idea of where you want to live, join mums groups on Facebook for the city/town and ask questions about schools and specific suburbs.

For housing look at realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. If you’re buying look at the sold prices for the last three months. If you look at places for sale, if there is a guide price it’s usually about 20% lower than what it’ll go for. It’s usually done by auction.

If you’re renting you’ll need jobs first as it’s very competitive. With steady jobs and a family you should be ok though. You might need to start in an air BnB.

The final thing to mention is distance. Yes it’s obviously far away, but you need to make peace with missing a lot as it’s just not possible to travel back for every event. You can’t be there for family in the way you could be if you’re close by, even from the other end of the country.

Good luck! What’s driving the desire to move?

Have you considered Adelaide? It's considered to be family friendly.
If I could have hacked being a teacher, I would have gone too.
Not without it's problems but Oz is a wonderful country. Good luck!

Have a look at the Australia and New Zealand-board here on Mumsnet. There are some interesting threads about moving to Australia on that board.
Good luck!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/aussie-nz-mumsnetters

As PPs said, finance work is mostly based in Sydney and Melbourne. Your DH may have trouble finding work outside those cities, so it may narrow down your options.

When you talk about commute times, do you mean for yourself or both of you? As a teacher, you’re a bit more flexible. But your DH will need to be near a CBD, which means your options and housing budget needs to be pretty healthy. As you’re probably aware, the cost of housing is insane.

Personally, I think Sydney is lovely to look at and visit. I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s too busy, not friendly, too humid and rainy and the bloody harbour, while beautiful, gets in the way of everything and makes getting anywhere a nightmare.

Melbourne is great, I love it, but I know it’s polarising. The weather is very variable, which you may not be happy with if you’re coming to Australia for the sunny weather. It has great food and culture. There are festivals and events, there’s always something going on.

FWIW, I would move back to Melbourne in a heartbeat, but you need to visit both and see which one you vibe with. It’s kind of a New York/LA thing. You will either see yourself living in one or the other, not both.

With a timeline that far out it’s hard to advise tbh. The demographics are changing all the time, a housing shortage in major cities means you may end up with long commutes and/or housing costs will be a lot more than you hope. If you have any chance of coming with Permanent Residency rather than a work visa it puts you in a more secure position if the idea is to stay long term. Our PR took two years to sort out even with DH on the occupations on demand list but having seen friends have to pack up and leave when they lost their jobs we wouldn’t have moved with three kids with anything less.

I can only talk about Sydney, we have been here 20 years now. People keep talking about a teacher shortage but the reality is that it is very difficult to get anything other than contract or casual work (one of my kids is a High School teacher) and obviously you need to re-accredit which takes time and money. Just to make things more complicated being a registered teacher in one State or Territory does not allow you to teach in another. The finance world in Sydney is very much “what school did you go to” so if there is any chance of a transfer from a UK firm even just to start with I would strongly suggest it. I would imagine it’s the same in Melbourne but the people I know working in finance are in Sydney. Overseas experience is not as highly valued as the recruitment agencies would have you believe. As someone else said if you are after finance jobs as an immigrant you really are limited to Sydney/Melbourne.

Having said all that it is the best move we ever made. My kids will never leave, they had an education we could never have afforded in England and my boys in particular have definitely done better academically than they ever would under the English system. All three of mine have at least an Undergraduate degree and have good jobs. My only regret is not moving sooner - unless there are compelling reasons for the long delay I would encourage you to come sooner if you can.