Hi there Liana, nice to hear from you.

In answer to your questions: No neither of us know any Australians. Yes Steve is an Australian Citizen and carries an Australian passport. I have 4 children 2 are not coming with us and 2 are. 1 of those 2 is from as previous marriage as are the 2 that are staying in the UK. All of them were born in the UK. We are intending to apply for Australian citizensip for our daughter who is from my current marriage. My son's father has signed a Statutory Declaration giving permission for me to remove him from the UK permanently.

I have made some enquiries of Australia House here in the UK and have copied these below together with their response:

Hello, I have a couple of questions that I would like to ask about a Spouse Visa. Firstly my husband is an Australian citizen living in the UK. He does not know any Australians to complete the question on the form requring confirmation of our marriage. Can he use UK residents? We have been married for 14 years and have one child. Next can we apply for our own medicals to be carried out enabling us to submit them with the Visa application? How can my husband prove his income etc as he has not obtained employment in Australia at the moment but hopefully will by the time we go to Australia? We will be selling our house and, hopefully, going to Australia with the equity. Once the application and all of the relevant paperwork is submitted how long will it take to process?

Thanking you in anticipation.

Karen Gant


Dear Client,

Thank you for your enquiry.

If you do not know any Australian citizens who can complete the statement then a UK citizen may complete it.

Yes you can have the medicals on your accord.

He does not have to prove he has a job in Australia, you must simply provide evidence that you have sufficient funds so bank statements and current pay slips of his current job would suffice.

Processing times for this visa is approximately 12 weeks.

We hope this information has been of assistance.

Yours faithfully


This seems to answer my questions really well, maybe you will find it just as helpful as we have. We have decided that we will apply for Kayleigh's citizenship first and then take things from there just in case she is not entitled to it and we have to add her to the Visa application. We were hoping to get some more answers at the Australia need Skills Expo at Australia House today (Saturday) but were unable to as Steve was only allowed 2 hours in there and the queue was so long he would not have had time to look around for prospective employers.

Please feel free to have a peek into it for us as the more information we can gather the better we will understand exactly what we have to do and thank you for offering this free for us it is greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards.

Karen & Steve