Where to visit?

[kt1981]

We are hoping to go to Australia in May this year. We have just started the whole visa process after scoring 135 on on-line points system. I have spoken to Go Matilda and we are going to use them as our migration agents. The question that I have is that we are not certain of where in Oz we would like to live, never having been there before. We are visiting as im just to faraid to take the risk of emigrating never having been there!!! Can anyone give me any suggestion of where would be a good option? (We have young family and husband is a director of IT) We have looked at various places on-line, but I just cant decide. We dont want to waste our hol. Im also finding it difficult to find a holiday home to rent, it all seems to be hotels right in the city. Thats not the sort of thing we want, we would like to be fairly close to beach in either some sort of villa or holiday apartment, or rented house in a nice suburb or something. I was hoping someone could give me some useful web addresses or recommendations of where would be a nice place both to visit and settle. I just cant decide, keep going between Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane!!!!! So pretty much everywhere! Help!

[kaz101]

Hi KT1981,

Welcome to the forum.

Check out the "PLEASE READ....." post towards the top of the forum since that has links to jobs for your husband and schools (depending on how old your children are). It also has links to the various States and weather info too.

Think about the best place for jobs (some IT skills are needed in most places)
Schools depending on your childrens ages
Weather for what sort of temperature are you after
There should be holiday homes available especially since you are coming over when the holiday season is over here. Have you checked out google for holiday homes?

Also how long do you have for the trip over here? Adelaide and Melbourne are fairly close together (by Aussie standards about 800 kms apart) so you can drive (the Great Ocean Road is a beautiful drive) or fly those. You can also fly to Brisbane and Perth too although they are further away.

Personally Perth was too hot for us since I don't like the heat. We never got to Brisbane although there are a few people on this forum that live there.

Hope that helps,
Karen

[kt1981]

Hi Karen,

Thanks, that is a big help to us.

Do you think it matters that the holiday season is over when we plan to visit? Will it be very quiet with nothing open etc? We dont want to be the only ones there and have nothing to do We have been researching and think we may visit Perth this time round, but we will see.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply to me
Katie

[kaz101]

Hi Katie,

In some of the places it can be hard to find accommodation in the holidays here so it's better to go out of season. The places you named are big cities and so it shouldn't matter since they are always open . We tended to look around in January and February just because it was my husbands quietest time of year in the UK since he was a gardener.

Perth has a reputation for being in the middle of nowhere since the other major cities on more on the Eastern side. We spent some time in Bunbury and liked it there but Perth was too hot for us. We also looked at house prices there as well as they had increased a lot since we had started looking and we wanted some money set aside for investments and lifestyle.

For housing (buying and rentals)
Real Estate, Property, Land and Homes for Sale, lease and rent - realestate.com.au (edited: sorry I mis-spelled it first time around)
www.domain.com.au

Regards,
Karen