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Basically this is for people who live there or have visited Australia. I'm about to be moving there hopefully, or there for a extended stay. But have no clue what its like over there. So if anyone would want to tell me about it that would be awesome. If it works out I would be going to Melbourne. Main questions are the price of living, jobs there, and just general ideas of the place. Thanks to anyone who helps. Hope i asked this right, kinda out of it.

sry for the late reply, didnt see this topic till now *_*

i lived in australia for my internship, for about 5-6 months.
am about to go to bed, but bumping this so i see it again tomorrow and write
down some of my experiences there.

<3

Was hoping you would be one of the ones to see thia, since i remembered you stayed there for a bit.

Australia compared to the Netherlands.

- Living
Australia is, in a lot of ways, a cheaper place to live than the Netherlands.
Especially things like electronic devices and fast food <.< The price of the
electronic devices is easy to explain; Australia is a lot closer to Asia than
the Netherlands is. Houses aren't really expensive either in the Melbourne
area, but i should add that the houses aren't that great either. The house
i've lived in for half a year was built with wood, single glass, etc. Sure,
Australia is hot in the summers, but in the winters, when it's freezing a bit,
you'll freeze your ass off. Insulation isn't that good. One of the best things
was (cause its something we don't have here in NL) the 24/7 supermarkets. Back
in the NL we have to rush out of work to get to the supermarkets before 6, to
do our shoppings. In Australia, we would go to the store at like 10pm to get
a pizza or something to drink :]

- Working
Working experience: all good. I worked (did an internship) at a firm called
Air Aroma, they do development, design, assembly and sales of scent diffuser
devices. Anyway, just great experience to work there. Here in NL people tend
to just critisize people on what they're doing, in Austalia people gave good
comments and tips to do something better next time. I felt more like being
part of a team during my stay in Australia. Payment, i cant really tell cause
i did an internship so didnt get paid per hour. They do tend to have a long
lunch together.

will write more if you want to, like more details, but gotta go back to class
now ;]

More details the better really, wanted a first hand experience. Just want to know a lot before I make a huge move, going from the United States to Australia is a heck of a move IMO. So yeah feel free to give more details but its entirely up to you if you want to. Greatly appreciate your info.

Going out
Australia has good night life. we've been to a couple of clubs in Melbourne
and we've visited some pubs on our holiday trip up north. The dress code in
Australia is awesome. Here in NL, almost every girl wears jeans or skate
pants, most of the girls wearing skirts look like sluts (with all due respect,
but thats just the fact here in NL, most skirt wearing girls want to give
people that impression.). In Australia, a lot of the girls wear dresses. Not
the slutty-looking dresses, not the snobby looking dresses, but something in
between. Its like, they can wear them at any occasion, they look very elegant,
more like a mixture between women and girls. Very nice tbh, i liked what i saw.
Like in every country, the pubs are nice if you like to hang out in pubs. Some
of the pubs in the city have dancefloors, and they more like a miniclub. In the
smaller towns, you still find the real pubs, with livebands and music you want
to drink to rather than dance to. If you go there and will go out much, know
that a lot of ozzy girls use their beauty to get things done. It happened to a
friend of mine. He was standing at the bar, some girl was dancing on top of it.
She walks up to him, he's all like damn she's hot. She asks him to buy her a
drink, she gets her drink, she walks away to the next victim <.< anyways, could
have been my friend's stupidity as well hehe. but ozzy girls do seem to like to
mess with your heart and mind ;]

will write up more when i think of more :]

Yeah i heard about the clubbing there being fun. Know a few girls there so will probably be going with them and haha, bar girls. I'm too stubborn to be swayed by cheap flirts. But keep it coming

Handy stuffs

VOIPbuster - This program uses the same principal as Skype, and
you can call to almost any country for free (not mobile phones,
just phones at home, u know.) Something like this is a must in
Australia because calling from there and to there costs a lot
of money.

Mobile phone - Me and my friend just bought a sim because we had
simlock-free phones with us. A nice thing was that with the network
provider we chose there, we were allowed to choose one bonus thing,
like a discount on something. We chose for the text message option.
That meant, every text we sent to eachother would cost us 0.01AUD.
Yesh, 1 Australian Dollarcent.

Creditcard - For me this was a must. You can get a bank account in
Australia as well, my German housemate did that, but i brought my
creditcard which helped me out in a lot of situations. Problem is,
most bank passes from the Netherlands can take out money, but you
can't go into a shop and pay for your shopping with the pass. We
usually had like 300-400 AUD in our wallets, but well, in some cases
even that's not enough and then you're damn glad to have a creditcard
that works anywhere.

Insurance - Check that part out. I got 2 links on that, don't know
exactly where they link you to, but i had them in my file with info.
I'd send you that file, but it's in Dutch so i'm just bombing you
with information in this topic.
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/wcms/ ... scover.htm
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/wcms/ ... er-faq.htm

Jobs/Companies
http://www.industrysearch.com.au - Search for companies
http://www.designawards.com.au - Search for companies
http://www.whitepages.com.au - Search for companies
http://www.yellowpages.com.au - Search for companies
http://www.seek.com.au - Search for a job
http://mycareer.com.au - Search for a job
http://www.logisticsrecruitment.com.au/live_jobs
http://www.idq.com.au - Lots of stuff + links
http://www.core77.com/resource/firmnames/australia.html - Lots of companies
http://www.coroflot.com - Search all


Housing
http://www.realestate.com.au
http://www.domain.com.au

Cars
http://www.carsales.com.au
http://www.drive.com.au
http://search.carsguide.news.com.au

Public Transport
http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/tran ... rt_map.php

Wow thanks for the info dude. This will help a lot. I'll be checking out all this links in a minute haha. Really appreciate it.

I Live In Melbourne....it sucks

Gold Coast is sooo much better (QLD)
Its always hot there

I cant say much, im still going to school.. in sydney.

Been there too, spent like a week in Cairns. The weather there was truly
beautiful. Only thing that might be difficult in Cairns would be to find
a good job. At least, i think that's difficult, because what i saw there
was that most of Cairns inhabitants work in the tourist industry. So that's
working in hotels/pubs/clubs/at sea/etc. Not saying that would be a bad thing,
thats just what i noticed during my stay there, it seemed like the cities in
the south were more industry-oriented, while the cities up northeast were
more tourist-oriented. The weather in Melbourne was great compared to NL. A
lot more sunshine, just the last month it started to get really cold during
the nights (i do blame the house's insulation for me being cold tho), and it
started to rain a lot. Lucky for us, that was the time we drove up the east
coast to Cairns, so the bad weather didnt really bother us. It was nice, when
we flew back from Cairns to Melbourne, to have the rainy weather because that
made the fact that we were about to go "home" a bit more bearable ;]

Think at first ill prob just go there for a few weeks and check it out before i make any perm decision.

Err, depends where you are going to stay, but Melbourne weather is so unpredictable sometimes. Last week we had a couple of pretty cold days. I think cin pretty much summed up everything lol. So yeah, i think you will enjoy it here. gl.

Thanks . Thanks to everyone here who gave advice, really appreciate it.

I don't know about Melbourne.. but on the Central Coast, it's been raining constantly for the past 3 months... and this weather will continue for another whole year. Apparently we're still in drought too... despite tonnes of floodings and storms recently. Other then that Australia has bushfires everyday, crowded beaches, never snows and has a recent outbreak of Ross River fever.... meh.

Res my old topic here for a question, anyone living in Melbourne know any good stores like retail, to work in? Planning on moving soon i just need some heads up on more basic jobs without a high need of education atm, til i finish with school. Also anyone know what a basic apartment type home would cost, nothing fancy just basic stuff, average would be good. All i can think to ask atm, thanks for any help.

Well, I'm Australian, I live in THE best State - Queensland, depends on what you're into as to where you would prefer to stay.

Beaches - Gold Coast
Nightlife - Sydney / Melbourne / Brisbane
Relaxed Lifestyle - Gold Coast / Brisbane
Crowded - Sydney / Melbourne.

Melbourne has a reputation for rainy, dull, Grey, disgusting, and no so enlightening days.


False; Hottest places - Cairns, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Western Queensland, Central NSW, Northern Territory, W.A.

All the rest has pretty much 'odd' weather.

Prices: The Gold Coast is extremely expensive, as it's one of the most visited by tourist areas. Brisbane is a larger city you're going to have to put up with the prices. Sydney is expensive, Melbourne is too.

USA is a lot cheaper than AUS, fyi.

Just use http://www.google.com/images and look for
Gold Coast
Brisbane
Sydney
Melbourne
Adelaide
Perth
Canberra

They're some of the major, more well-known towns in Australia. Just have a sticky-beak.

MMmmm no!
lol.
I live in Vic and we havent had rainy / gloomy days in WEEKS/ months.
It's been mid 20's (celcius) for the last month or so. Really nice...
But YES it DOES get a bit gloomy in winter.

Melbourne is DEFINATELY the place to be in my opinion.

But as Snoopy said I really think it's where you're from.

Any type of scene your into is down here. PM me if you want more info =)

Europeans would most likely rather live in Adelaide / Sydney / Melbourne.

Americans would probably prefer the tropics / sub-tropics such as Gold Coast, Cairns, Brisbane etc.

I've a friend from Melbourne who said majority of his memories were of Rainy, dull and gloomy days.

The past few months doesn't change years of bad weather.

Wikipedia to the rescue!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia

hope this helps

If you want me to go that far.

We've been in drought for years and its getting worse

Its not BAD it just doesnt rain a hell of a lot...

http://www.bom.gov.au

Check

Well ive already made up my mind on Melbourne, things there. But far as the price, its actually cheaper than where i am now. Big tourist city here so everything is jacked. But was just wondering if anyone knew any jobs like that.

is this topic about kangaroo's?

Would you fly east or west if you are traveling from the U.S.A to Australia ?

West, most flights ive seen stop in LA or SF.

Ah, okay.

Cause I was curious to see the distance from those 2 countries .. and well the sites I used went:

[USA] ---EAST---> [AUSTRALIA] Seemed kinda a waste of time to go 'the long way' around.

i live in aussie wht part u movin 2?
i live in Vic

Drop me a line if you wantttt

I'm in Melbourne