1st Post ...... Job offer in Melbourne

Well we have finally made the decision to accept the job with SMS, it is a too good to be true offer and a fantastic opportunity for us all. We have started telling people we are moving to Melbourne, which is really strange, we have had mixed responses but the majority are really pleased for us and appreciate that we could not turn this down. Sam and Moo (Mollie) are really excited, Tom (16) has mixed emotions, he really wants to go but is upset at leaving his dad, family and friends. The job start date is February / March 2008. We are hoping that we will all fly out together, with a nice stop off somewhere hot and sunny but it depends on the sale of the house.

The contract is on its way back to SMS, once received they will begin the process to apply for a 457 (temporary business) visa, they use their immigration agents, E&Y who will arrange lodgement of the application. The 457 visa is a 2 step process, E&Y will liaise with SMS to finalise the nomination application with them regarding the position to be filled as soon as they receive the signed contract back. E&Y will then liaise with us, we will receive a 457 Visa Questionnaire which is used to capture the required personal information. The Questionnaire also contains a list of the supporting documents that we will need to provide and also where we need to go for our medicals, hope they won’t hold our weight and alcohol consumption against us. Once they receive all the information needed from us, E&Y will lodge the visa application. It is expected that the visa finalisation process will take approximately 3-4 weeks from the time that our visa application is lodged with the Department of Immigration.

We need to open an Oz bank account and are currently researching the options, it looks like they like to charge you for every direct debit, every withdrawal, in fact anything you do with your own money, so we are looking for the cheapest and best option, Bank West and ANZ are coming up as 2 to investigate further.

From a UK perspective we have decided to sell our house, we did look into renting it, but the horror stories from the estate agents were dreadful, they really put us off, so we need to put it on the market and soon, but we need to tidy it before we can do that, then keep it tidy which is something we really do seem to struggle with.

Tom and Moo both have less than 2 years left on their passports, although we don’t need new ones for them, apparently it is easier just to renew from here so we are going to do that now – job for this week.

We also need to de-clutter and get rid of anything we don’t need and haven’t used for some time, that isn’t going to be easy as we like to keep hold of things just in case – just like half the clothes in Tracy’s wardrobe that are in size 8, well you never know she might squeeze back into them one day!! Yeh right - She can live in hope.