Holiday before emigration?

[CarterTucker]

Hi all,

We are interested to hear from anyone that visited Australia on holiday before they emigrated there, or have decided to emigrate there & if so how helpfull they found this?

Any tips?

(We are in process of possibly booking our holiday to Australia, with a view to emigrating, we are thinking of mayby hiring a Rv, so that we can travel around easier?).

Thanks, all your views will really help, Kelly & Family.

[kaz101]

Hi Kelly,

We came out to Oz several times before deciding where to move to. We weren't restricted by jobs (we run our own business) or schools (we don't have kids) so we could just go where we wanted to

We used holidays to travel around Australia for about a month at a time, and only decided where we were moving in February 2007 before moving out here in July 2007. Every where we visited we discussed and rated according to what we were looking for.

For us we needed somewhere that didn't get too cold because my husband has poor circulation, and not somewhere too hot since I don't like it hot. We also wanted somewhere we'd still get some seasons. My husband wanted a small town and I wanted something with theatre and cinemas, so we chose Mount Gambier (also known as the Blue Lake City). For us clubs where we could become part of the community was important for us so I had researched that too.

We did things differently from most other people in that because we'd been out here and bought property as investors, and because we were business owners, we were advised to buy a house before we left the UK since what we could borrow would be valued on our then income in the UK. So in February 2007 we came out here bought a house with a long settlement (completion) so that we wouldn't be paying 2 lots of mortgages. It meant that we only stayed in a hotel for one night when we arrived and then frantically bought beds and other basic stuff so that we could move in the next day. Because it's a smaller city everyone was great and we were able to move in the next day with the basics. Most people stay in hotels and then move into a rental place.

I would not have moved to Australia before seeing it personally since I'm something of a control freak It also meant that we had our own place even though everything else seemed strange around us. It's not until you live here that you really see the differences in language & culture.

Regards,
Karen

[Dolly]

Hi Kelly,

If you can do a reccie trip first before you decide to emigrate, it would be fantastic. Firstly, you can check out areas in which you'd like to live, you'll be able to visit some schools and get a better idea of how the Australian system works. But more importantly, your children will be able to see for themselves where they will be living, what Australia actually looks like hence easing any worries they might have about moving halfway around the world to a strange country.

If you have older children, they will be able to see how their contempories dress..I didn't realise until recently that when you're a teenager, there are lots of different groups, i.e. emo, chav in the UK, techo, emo, flouro in Australia. My eldest son is emo-ish so dresses in black with the straight fringe hair-do - he was concerned that he wouldn't 'fit in' so doing the reccie trip really put his mind at east and in fact there are more groups here (at least 10) than in the UK. Geez, teens!!!

Basically, for us, the reccie trip was not only to check out areas etc but mainly for our boys...if they were happy then it makes the whole process a lot easier!!!

Dolly