[Welsh Tim]

Hi guys,
my wife, 2 children and I are escaping Blighty in a few months and moving to Brisbane and we are just starting to look into shipping the contents of our 3 bed house over there and would appreciate some advice. With the exception of 5 cubic metres of good stuff and our settees, dining table chairs and bed all the rest is from Ikea. So is it worth sending everything or keeping it to a minimum.
What are your thoughts?

Secondly, I think our electrical stuff wont work with the Australian system - Is this true?

And lastly any advice on when to ship EG do we wait until we are settled a month in and live without our stuff until then or arrive just after it does??

Any information or tips would be really appreciated!

PS can you do the paperwork yourself because we have been quoted a horrible figure for that

Many thanks

Tim

 

[ChrisH]

Hi Tim

Myself and my partner have been in Melbourne for just over 2 years now - originally on a temp business visa, now we have PR. We're currently looking at getting our stuff over from the UK as we left it in storage. We opted to keep a lot of our big items. If you're paying for a container, you might as well fill it! We've lived without our stuff for over 2 years (we have bought some bits) but it's not too bad. Might be worth checking out the cost of things here - Ikea has prices on their website - but prices are about the same.

As far as electrical goods go, they will work here. Same voltage (240), but you will either need adapters for the plugs or you can get an electrician here to change the plugs for you as you're not legally allowed to do this yourself.

Regarding paperwork - the consultants do charge a lot, but for a lot of people it means they take all the hassle out of the process, but they have no sway in whether something gets accepted or not. I was lucky as my employer here paid for my PR and the consultant costs. But the forms although lengthy were simple enough. Remember, the consultants won't fill them in for you - they just tell you what to fill in and then check them.

Hope some of that helps.

 

[Welsh Tim]

Thanks Chris for taking the time to respond. I must admit because we will probably rent a furnished property initially I wonder if it is worthwhile taking everything?. Perhaps we will just take the TV and everything else that we planned to take. Thats a shame as I was using that as currency to convince my wife that we needed a plasma
Kind regards

Tim

 

[kaz101]

Thanks Chris for taking the time to respond. I must admit because we will probably rent a furnished property initially I wonder if it is worthwhile taking everything?. Perhaps we will just take the TV and everything else that we planned to take. Thats a shame as I was using that as currency to convince my wife that we needed a plasma
Kind regards

Tim

Hi Tim,

Depending on the age of the tv you may need a set top box to get it to work properly (as we did). If you do a search on the forum you should find the other posts about getting tv's to work here.

Regards,
Karen