One for all those ozzies......

[essexbloke]

After the last few years of wondering, the wife's finally convinced me that there is no real reason to stay in the dull, cold, wet UK, and that we should seriously look into emigration to Oz.....

So them all you antipodean luvvelys, what info can you give me? What info should i know, where can i find out everything i need to know....

What about jobs etc, etc......

all/any helpfull info is appreciated......

[yellafella]

Heyup bud ! Am also in the process of looking into emigrating.
Sick and tired of this country.
The Oz government are presently trying to import loads of us UK males ! ( gotta stir up the gene pool now and again ! )

[Alienist]

Essex,
Mate head south first. The north looks great and is green, lush and excellent to live in, but it's hot and wet and will kill you poor delicate English men I have to say Queensland or Western Australia are the best states, having lived in them all.
There is bugger all snow or ice here and you can ride year round.
If you own a house/flat over there, sell up and you will make a good profit moving here, with the pound worth a tonne of our dollars.
Depending what you do for a crust, work isn't that hard to find down south.
If you want anything more specific just PM me and I'll let you know.
And don't even think of asking me if there are kangaroos or Koalas running rampant everywhere we don't ride them to work or school and no Koalas aren't as cuddly as they first look, just before they claw the hell out of you

[VTRgirl]

And don't even think of asking me if there are kangaroos or Koalas running rampant everywhere we don't ride them to work or school and no Koalas aren't as cuddly as they first look, just before they claw the hell out of you

...But they do make for a wicked kebab on the barbie! Definitely Queensland, Essex. Best weather in the country & unbelievable roads. Steer clear of the big cities, though. Fun to schmooze through the traffic every now & then, but not every day. And too far to get to any of the great roads. I'm in a small city about an hour & a half from Brisbane & there are top rides in every direction.

We're a very friendly bunch over here. Only have to break down & whoever stops to help will probably invite you 'round for a barbie the following weekend. Hardly ever rains (usually at night when it does) and heaps of jobs. If you want to let me know what kind of job you'd be after, I could send you some options out there at the mo'.

I've never been there, but I can't imagine why anyone who truly loves riding would stay living in a country known world-wide for it's dreary, bleak climate. Drought-declared nation's the way to go for any dedicated two-wheeler.

If you want to know any specifics, just say the word.

[yellaterra]

VTRgirl dont tell him about that fisherman (foolish one) that got dragged from his canoe by a crocodile in Queensland last week and eaten.
The crocs been shot so come on over and enjoy some fishing!

[essexbloke]

Ok, me bags are aleardy packed....."stick another shrimp on the barbie"

I work in car/bike insurance, handling injury claims. idealy would stick with that. Many jobs for that sort of thing about? What areas, towns etc. I was told that most of that sort of thing are central to Canberra etc. Is that true?

Wouldnt want to commute more that 1 hour each way to work. Wife is a self employed hairdressor/ qualified teacher of the same. What about work for her? much about?

House here is worth about 350k - 5 bed detached, what do i get for that over there? (swimming pool etc?)

Whats the easiest way to progress best to contact aussie government? do we just fill in the forms and wait? hows it work? cost much to get in?

Cheers all.....

[Sharpe1]

Can I just correct one thing mate, over here we call them prawns, not shrimp. Make sure you have your Ross River virus innoculation and bring plenty of insect repellant , we have mossies that would fly away with small children. Also, if you're out in the bush, watch out for the drop bears!!

[VTRgirl]

Yeah, the sheer size of the seafood delicacies over here precludes them from being called "shrimp".

Sure you'd have no trouble getting work in insurance. There's bucket loads of companies in that line all over the place. I don't know about being central to Canberra as most national businesses would be based in Sydney, with all the big 'uns having at least branches in each capital city.

Mrs Essex shouldn't have any trouble either. Most of us have hair, although unfortunately, the "mullet" seems to be making a comeback. Perhaps she could do something about that...

350k for a house? Depends whether you're talking your pounds or our dollars. Even in dollars, 350k would get you somewhere reasonable anywhere but Sydney. In Sydney, which is by far the worst, you'd be looking at $7-800k at least for a fairly modest house in a modest area. Anywhere else is heaps cheaper. The same house/same area in Brisbane, for example would probably be around $4-500k. The city where I am would have something similar for about $250. I've just bought a 3 bed, 2 bath townhouse for about 200 and I'm about as close to the centre of town as you can get.

Living is buckets cheaper over here, and of course, the petrol is currently hovering around the $1 mark...

I'd suggest logging onto the Aust Gov't site (you can find that... I'm not much of an internetter...) & do a search for immigration. Of course, we might stick you in a detention centre for a year or two in order to break your spirit before we let you loose on society.

Best bet (if you haven't already been here) would be to come over & hoon about a bit & see if you like us. Coming up to Spring here, which'll probably be better than any weather you've ever imagined.

Oh, and we do ask that you English pick up a sense of humour on your way over.

[essexbloke]

Ta muchly for all the info, will now go away and look long & hard into it..... (Found the aussie commission website, very helpful)

Err......sense of humour......... do they sell them in duty free on the way over?

ps, WHAT'S A DROP BEAR?????

[VTRgirl]

Err......sense of humour......... do they sell them in duty free on the way over?

Actually, I'm not sure you'll be able to get one anywhere in the UK. Might just have to wait until you get here. Easy to find around here.

ps, WHAT'S A DROP BEAR?????

Larry shouldn't have mentioned that... I'm sure national security will be onto him already. Just forget you ever heard the term, for your own sake... If you make it over here, strict procedure will be followed regarding d**p b**rs. **VTRgirl looks shiftily from side to side**

[yellafella]

The story of the drop bear goes back far and wide into folklore, way back to the time when great caverns of trees stood up against the sands of time. Way back to the era when grues really did appear on the outer surface of the planet.

It came to pass many centuries ago that certain animal species were destined to become extinct due to their lack of ability to adapt to changing times. The miniature ground bear was one such species.

Previously, they were able to survive in harmony will all other living creatures in the forest, but as time continued, this harmony was disturbed and shaken from the very foundations of its roots. Strange beings, largely unknown in these parts, began to interfere with the general order of things, breaking up natural cycles and patterns that had been successfully in place for eons.

These strange beings were much larger than a miniature ground bear, and as such, with the mystical ability to destroy everything in it's path, these unusual new creatures started to threaten the existence of the miniature ground bear.

Such was the level of disturbance, that the miniature ground bears had to find an alternative living pattern that could cope with moderate levels of interference from the strange, two legged creatures now invading their formerly peaceful domain and who had brought so much eco-destruction with them.

So, the miniature ground bears, for some largely unexplainable reason, took to the trees in an effort to evade the ominous path to extinction, which, as science has recorded, more or less succeeded in saving the species from extinction.

So transformed from their old ways were later generations of these creatures that they are referred to as miniature drop bears, or just drop bears for short.



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Miniature ground bears, whilst distantly related via the twinkle in someone's eye to normal, full size bears, are not really bears at all in the normal sense of the term.
This is most likely so because of their strange living environment.

Why the term drop-bear? Well, if you were able to venture along the north fork of the river to the east bank where the forest of mirrors is located, you would never see a drop-bear, until you turn around to face the other way.

You see, the miniature drop bear has not forgotten the human species for destroying its rich habitat with such a lack of respect for the natural ecosystem that was previously in place there.

Should you be foolish enough to turn around to face the other way, there will more than likely be an overly-angry drop bear waiting to surprise you, much the same as our foresters surprised them when they tried to destroy the forest of mirrors many generations ago.



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As the water slowly erodes the east bank of the north fork of the river, the forest of mirrors also begins to recede. Its purpose is now fading, its natural inhabitants perishing.
The invasion of the strange, two-legged creatures in almost complete. The natural enironment is dying, starved from the lack of harmony that existed eons before. Trees are thinning, the humans are winning.

The former home of the miniature ground bear will one day be no more. Destroyed in the name of progress and advancement by unusual creatures with no respect for those there before their coming.

A barren, deserted wasteland will one day sit where the forest of mirrors once grandly stood.



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So there you go... The story of the drop-bear has about as much truth in it as the water going down your kitchen sink. However, a little deviation from the normal pattern of life make the world a much better place to live.
Oh yes, you may now find that the eye in the back of your head is there for a reason!!

[yellafella]

The Australian Drop Bear is one of Australia's few mammalian predators. Looking remarkably like the Koala, the Drop Bear differs only in that unlike the Koala, it eats meat. Needs meat in fact. As you know, the Koala eats only eucalyptus leaves.

Now the Drop Bear, in terms of time, is a relatively "new" animal, having entered the evolutionary cycle on a trackable basis, within the last 150 or so years. It is believed to have sprung fully grown as it were, from the area around what was once the goldmining town of Ballarat, in Victoria.

How? The question is a difficult one, since there are questions of metabolism and diet involved, but it is a question which is possible to answer, if one is prepared to listen carefully.

Back in the days of the Australian gold rush, around the middle of the 1800s, Koala's were a fair bit more common than they are now. The value of their fur had not yet been realised and an efficient way of catching them had not been devised. In those pioneering days, it was not uncommon to have Koalas enter the camp at night, if one was camping "out bush" as it were.

The discovery of gold in Australia was responsible for quite a lot of movement to and from the country, as was the case during the gold discoveries in Canada, the USA and South Africa. Consequently, Australia began to see visitors from various other cultures and societies. Representatives from one of these societies, the chinese, brought with them an ancient recipe for a paste which would be spread sparingly on damper or bread when it was available. This paste, made almost entirely from a beef extract and salt was in fact the precursor to what is now known as Vegemite.

The mix of Chinese and European cultures back then was not as readily accepted as it is today, with the somewhat inevetible result that lone chinese men on the goldfields would spend a lot of their time by themselves, rather than in the company of humans. Naturally enough, they began to make friends with the ample Australian wildlife which surrounded them in the goldfields of Victoria. Including, for good or for ill, the Koala.

As mentioned before, the Koala exists almost entirely on eucalyptus leaves. It drinks no water at all, in fact a drink of water may kill it. In this case however, it is believed a lonely chinese miner inadvertantly fed a Koala some bread with this paste on it.

The mix of protein and residual animal fat in the paste turned out to have deleterious effects upon the metabolism of the Koala, making it faster and forcing the body of the Koala to require reasonably frequent injections of protien and animal fat. Naturally enough, the Koala (or what should be known now as the Drop Bear)could find no vegemite freely available in the Australian bush and was forced to obtain its requirement of protein by hunting animals moving through the bush.

The hunting method of the Drop Bear is remarkably similar to that of the Trap Door Spider, except in reverse. While the spider hides under a trapdoor under the ground, the Drop Bear, as its name would suggest, drops down upon its unsuspecting prey from a height. Given the Koala's already generous claws, which are useful for climbing trees, the Drop Bear developed a fine set of teeth suitable for its newly found carnivore status. Using these natural weapons, the Drop Bear is almost unstoppable by the time it has come into contact with its prey.

The Australian Drop Bear can be found wherever Koalas can be found and is truly a rare and amazing creature.

[BigD]

whats up yellafella, you found the 'cut and paste' features and thought you'd try em out? You seem have enjoyed yourself this afternoon whilst everyone else was out playing

[BigD]

You seem have enjoyed yourself this afternoon whilst everyone else was out playing

....take that last bit back, just read your post on North Yorks run

[essexbloke]

Err...right......ok............so there we have it...........

the story of the Drop Bear is basically a pile of Shite........or is it?

Who knows........ i'm completly confused now!!! (ok so there's no change)

I'm off now to go play in the road!!! it makes more sense than above!!