Since starting this thread a few months ago I’ve had quite a lot of folk asking about Australia, as a place to visit or emigrate to. I’m not an expert on the subject but I can give you a short version of how it was for me…
Many years ago, back in the 80’s I was driving trucks for my dad, which I liked very much. In fact I liked it so much that I hadn’t had a holiday or day of for about 6 years. My dad was always nagging me to go somewhere and even offered to fully pay for me and my mate to go to Spain club 18 30 for a fortnight, but alas it wasn’t my kind of thing.
I bumped into a bloke I knew from high school who had just came back from Australia on a 1 year working holiday and he told me all about it, and I thought that sounded a lot more like my kind of thing then sitting on a beach. But I had also heard of terrible 3 day queues out side the Australian embassy for a visa, and wasn’t to keen on that as an idea.
I knew where the embassy was in Edinburgh as I live in Scotland and one day I went the long way back through Edinburgh instead of using the new By Pass and was lucky enough to be able to park the wagon and drag with in block from it.
The queue was nonexistent, and other then the staff I was the only person there. I had been forewarned that I should have an up to date bank balance which had to show over 2000 pounds, ( I’m not sure what the limit is now, but there will be one. ) and half a dozen passport size photos as well as my passport. There was forum to fill in, but all basic stuff, name, address, contact number, have you got a police record ( if you have any kind of police record don’t even bother) do you have AIDS or any kind of illness that could cost the Australian government money. Are you under 30 years old.
They took 30 quid for the visa, the whole thing took about 15 minutes and that was it, I had a 1 year working visa (that’s a visa that entitles you to do paid work in Australia) which was active as from that day.
If you don’t get a working visa and get caught working it’s the first flight home for you. You can also get a 6 month working visa, or visa to just visit.
I got a cheap air ticket and Tuesday the following week I was in Adelaide discovering just what 42 degrees c was like.
When I got there I had no plans and all I knew about Australia was Road Trains, Neighbors, Crocodile Dundee, Surfing and it was a big empty
land. Being keen on trucks I went to the docks to take some photos and after a while I spotted on that was an LGHV, it was light bulb moment and I though rather than taking back a stuffed kangaroo and didgeridoo, an Australian truck license would be a better idea. I followed the G88 with flat bed trailer for about 20 minutes and when he had finished the lesson I went over for a chat.
The Australian laws and road rules are based on British ones so for any competent truck driver with a bit of experience it wasn’t a hard thing to achieve. As luck would have it the driving instructor had a brother that lived on a 30 acre property on the outskirts of town and also had a room to let so I moved in there. While I was waiting for my test to come up I painted a truck for him ( I’m a time served mechanic and spray painter )
With in 8 days of arriving in Australia I had my truck license, a place to stay and was offered driving work doing fertilizer round farms on the Ayre peninsular driving a Ford Louisville with a 40 foot flat.
About 6 weeks of that and I was towing 2 and 3 trailers West East and North South and did that for 4 months before gong back to Britain. Not the kind of holiday the Thomas Cook could organize for you, but one that suited my needs exactly.
These kind of circumstances are fairly rare but they are possible. There was obviously a fair bit of luck involved, but I took the chance a came out lucky.
It is as easy as that to get a truck license in Australia, and if you have one you can go looking for a truck driving job.
However I do know some people that it didn’t work out for and went back to Britain very quickly worse for ware
Getting to Australia.
I got on a cheep flight and that worked out fine, a bit rough perhaps with travel time around 35 hours door to door, there was a lot of time sitting about in airport terminals waiting for connections but I was young and daft so there wasn’t a problem. There was a time when there was a visa stipulation the you had to have return ticket , but that wasn’t the case when I was here the first or second time. The Australian government does have a habit of changing the goal posted when it suite them and they do limit the number of visas per year.
A friend’s daughter came to visit me a few years ago and she had traveled with a friend by train to Moscow then got the Trans Siberian Express to Vlad, then the ferry to Japan and flown to Australia from there. Her train ticket allowed her to get of and on the train a few times and she had spent a few days here and there in various Russian cities along the way so that part of the journey took about 3 weeks
There used to be a bus that run form London to Singapore, but that stopped. However the company started up again but is now based in Istanbul and starts the journey from there. I spoke to some German tourists a month ago who had come down on it. When I say bus it actually a 6x6 Merc 24 38 with a passenger carrying ability, there is a thread on here, and if you bung bus to Australia into google you’ll soon find it, they do 3 or 4 runs a year, and various routes are available from 21 to 38 days.
I read on the internet about a guy that bought a 4x4 and drove from Britain out to Singapore following a similar route to the bus. Reading between the lines he was a bit green and had a few customs and visa issues.
Some airlines offer a round the world ticket which is usually a little bit more than an Australian return and is valid for a year and like the train you can get of and stop anywhere along the way for as long as you like, so you can go out via the Middle East, India south east Asia. Australia,
New Zealand,and go back via America.
Weather
Summer in the north ( Darwin )can get up to 49c, out west it’s about the same, down south in Tasmania it can be anything from 4 to 42c and the wind can get up to 179 kph but not all the time.
Winter up north 15 to 30c the same out west. Tasmania -11 to 10c and the wind can get up to 160 kph but not all the time.
a 29 meter high wave was recorded of the west coast of Tasmania last week.
The sun and heat in Australia can kill, not just tourists but locals as well.
Australia is like any other country in the world, some of it is good and some is bad, there are some fantastic people here that would give a stranger the shirt of their back if they thought it would help.
There are also some crooks, con men, hardened criminals, and red neck racists, and it isn’t with out it’s social problems as well as, drugs and violent crime.
Like the rest of the world in the past few years it has go through a rescission, perhaps not as bad as some countries in Europe, but there are areas and industries that were hit hard.
If you are intending to emigrate to Australia I would advise you to come and have a look first.
Hope this is of some help to the folk that have asked.
Enjoy the photos and feel free to join in, add a comment or ask questions.
A bit more added information
Living expenses’
Petrol is $1.60 per liter up to $1.90 in rural areas
$3 loaf of bread
$ 6.50 big Mac
$1 liter of milk
$300 a week for a flat, split that 3 or 4 ways to share
$1.20 1 1/2 liter of Coke
$1.50 Mars Bar.
$1.10 can of beans
$ 5.00 dozen eggs
Pay by the Kilometer for truck drivers, expect $1000 to $1200 a week take home after tax, if you’re on full time in a good area.
If you are looking for cheap transport then a popular way to go is buy a big van, 10 year old Merc Sprinter, Toyota High Ace, etc are plentiful, and one in reasonable mechanical order would be around $4000 to $6000. As long as you don’t buy it from a wind sweeped coastal area there won’t be any rust. You can kit them out for camping for about $300.
When you get to Australia and if you intend to work then head to the Australian Tax Office and get a tax file number, that will allow the ATO to take large amounts of tax from your wage before you even get it.
If you don’t get a Tax File Number and work for cash you can get ripped of as it looks like you are working illegal.
If you get caught doing that, then your on the next flight back to Britain.
Also get a Medi Care card ( health ) you never know and if you don’t it can be to late before you need it and that costs BIG BUCKS.
Jeff…
