NicF

My OH has tablets he takes regularly. At Chemist warehouse and our local discount chemist (can’t remember the name) they cost $6.50, but I have paid $15 and $19 for them in other chemists. Drug prices definitely vary from chemist to chemist and can be quite large differences, even buying the generic brands.

There are lots of school in Adelaide that offer the middle years IB (up to year 10) but I'm pretty sure that the only state school that offers the IB in years 11 and 12 is Glenunga. My OH spoken to them about our eldest going there to do year 11 and 12 and they were open to applications even though we are not in the zone but he would have had to be getting A grades in all subjects for them to consider taking him. As friendship groups are really important to my eldest we decided not to pursue this any further.

Rentals tend to be done by open inspection so you don't need to book, you just turn up at the allotted time. The estate agent will probably want to take a name and number from you so they can follow up at a later date. It's been over 5 years since we rented a house and my OH did most of it so I'm not entirely sure what was needed.

I think often people refer to anywhere hilly to the east as being the hills (Adelaide is pretty flat elsewhere) but there is actually an Adelaide Hills council. You could possibly look at which areas that covers. If you look on google maps at places like Teringie, Aldgate, Blackwood, Belair, Montecute and Eden Hills would all be considered to be in the Hills. As would towns like Handorf and Stirling.

I can recommend Woolworths for house insurance. They were cheap for us and when we made a claim for being flooded with sewage they were excellent. Avoid the Commonwealth Bank like the plague. At the time of our claim we were with Woolworths for buildings and Commonwealth for contents. Commonwealth were awful. At first they tried to tell us we weren't covered for the flood (we were) then they took forever to do anything without being chased several times. For Internet if you can't get an ADSL connection (they are rare as hen's teeth where we are in Rostrevor but you might be on a different exchange) have a look at Nuskope or Uniti.

It doesn't really matter which bank you start with as you can always change to a different one later. We started with ANZ but switch to Commonwealth as we got a mortgage with them. Other people start with NAB or Westpac. Just pick one to open an account with and then once you are here and settled you can look in to it more. There are lots of smaller places that you might find meet your needs more once you are here but the big four are good for opening an account before you get here.

I think this has been asked before and didn't get many responses. Not many of us on here are well off enough to be able to send our kids to the top private schools so don't have a lor of experiences. There are a lot of private schools here and the very best charge a lot more than the others so generally the more expensive a private school is the better the results they are likely to get. Really though what school is best for your daughter will depend a lot on what her strengths and weaknesses are and what you are looking for in a school, eg academic results, religion, single sex or coed etc.

Prices still seem to be going up, but who knows what will happen over the next few months.

We used Harrow removals and were very happy with them. It was 3 years ago now though and I can’t remember how much they charged.

This made me smile. My mother in law is always complaining about the mess the Jacarandas make and she doesn't really have any around her house. Apparently they used to have one in their garden when my OH was growing up and I don't think she's ever got over having to clean up the mess from it.

My OH does this (he's from Adelaide) and it used to drive me nuts in the UK. I think it's because if a road goes from 2 lanes to 1 lane generally it's the left hand lane that ends and you have to merge to the right and given how rubbish drivers are at letting you in people tend to stick in the right hand lane.

It doesn't matter whether you keep your money in the UK or move it here, the tax treatment is the same. If you are a permanent resident you have to declare your world wide income and will be taxed on it accordingly. I believe if you are a temporary resident you don't get taxed on world wide income, but I'm not sure if that applies to all temporary visas and if provisional visas count as temporary or not. Worth getting advice if you fall in to the non permanent visa category. The only other potential tax implications are on any foreign exchange gains you may make if you leave the money in the UK for a period of time then bring it over. Unless you have a rather large amount of money say in the UK this is not likely to be a factor. If you already have a UK bank account before moving you can keep it when you move to Australia. If you are looking at opening an account in the UK from Australia I believe this is almost impossible now. Might be worth having a look on our sister site Poms in Oz as I'm sure the same question has been asked on there before (probably several times as well).

Congratulations. I keep thinking I should really get my Australian citizenship but just never seem to get round to it. My OH was in the UK 12 years before he got UK citizenship. We've been here 5.5 years so I've got a way to go before he can start giving me a hard time about not having got it yet. Given that there will probably be changes introduce to citizenship eligibility next July I should probably get round to it sooner rather than later.

Haven't used any of those - they were significantly more expensive than the local only outfits when I did the online estimate thing that most of them seemed to have. It's been over 3 years since we moved but we used Harrow removals who were excellent.

Yes. All citizenship applications from April 20th were put on hold while some legislation to change the requirements went through parliament. This legislation was defeated just a short while ago and at that point DBIP started processing applications again. Given that there would be around 6 months worth of applications submitted and not processed the waiting times have blown out significantly.