Monday 11 August 2008

Shipping your stuff to Oz, International Removals


There's lots of international removal companies out there who will do the removal/shipping of all your stuff to oz, we got 3 quotes, with two of the quotes sending someone out to appraise what size container we would need. For a 40ft shipping container we got quotes ranging from 5 to 7 thousand pounds.

A 20 ft container is also available or you can apparently even share containers if you have less things to ship.

The quote included doing the packing, transfer to the boat, shipping over and delivery at the other end to our house. (It didnt matter that we didnt know where we were going to live in Brisbane, just knowing the city was enough).

Some tips about the packers, do not think of them as intelligent human beings, think of them as packing machines who will pack everything in their way. They need to be supervised or you will find they have packed house plants, and even bins full of rubbish. (just 2 of the things ours managed to pack while our backs were turned).

There's strict quidelines as to what you can bring into Australia, no wicker, no plants, no food, no seeds, The packers will be aware of these guidelines and will ignore them completely.

The packing took about 4 days. (for a 5 bed house). As well as boxing everything all the furniture is wrapped in cardboard coated bubble wrap. It was all loaded onto one lorry then on the last day it was moved across to the container on the back of another lorry. (As seen in pic above)

When your container arrives in Australia it will undergo a customs inspection (costing several hundred pounds, the removal company UK side said this may or may not be required and its down to luck, on the OZ side they told me its always required as theres always a customs check), you will be required to show receipts for anything you have bought in the past 12 months(you will be charged VAT for anything that you declare to be new), you are also required to declare any alcohol so you can be charged.

According to the Australian side removal company the fact that everything had been professionally packed meant the customs inspection would be very quick, the customs officials tend to concentrate on owner packed containers.

Our possessions were put on a lorry on the 2nd May and arrived at our new home 2nd July. with a couple of weeks in Customs (mainly waiting for our destination address to become empty).

Thursday 7 August 2008

Cost of Emigration

We emigrated to Brisbane from Scotland 3 months ago and even though my new employer paid for much of it its still a costly experience.

Heres our costs (in uk pounds), obviously a lot of them are optional :)

1. £6150 to ship our stuff over door to door (40 foot container, they packed)
2. £300 maritime insurance
3. £300 customs inspection fee
4. £4000 flights for 7 (estimate, company paid)
5. £300 2 nights stop over in Singapore (money well spent)
6. £450 7 day people carrier rental.
7. £275 per week 3 bed holiday apartment rental (for 3 months)
8. £13000 Buy a car (we bought a car our first week here)
9. £1000 Buy electrical items we left behind
10.£900 Paying a months mortgage back home before finding someone to rent it
11.£600 Medicals/xrays for 457 visa for 2 adults 5 children
12.£250 Ordering UK passports for all the ones that had expired
13.£250 Buying a big gas barbecue (not optional, you need one!)
14.£500 Buying a big glass patio table that sits 8 (very optional) :)
15.???? Visa application and agency fees if used (company paid ours)

The Company who employed me paid for the flights and the removal costs, and the visa fees. They used an agent who was able to get the visa very quickly so its probably well worth investigating using one, ours handled the whole thing for us even booking the medicals in Scotland for us.

Cost of living in oz (brisbane)

We have been here for 3 months now after emigrating from the UK and are starting to get a good idea of the cost of things.

Overall I'm a bit disappointed at the cost of living everyone tells you how much cheaper it is in Australia, but its not hugely cheaper.

Weekly shopping bill.

Ours is quite similar to the UK, bread is rather expensive, season fruit/veg is slightly cheaper than the uk, supermarkets don't sell Alcohol so theres not the same competition as there is in the UK but you can still pick up some tasty local wine for $6 if you hunt it out.

Transport

Trains are much cheaper, probably half the price, buses are cheap too, petrol is also half the cost of the uk.

Finance.

Mortgage rate is higher 8%+ and the best rate I could get on a car loan was 13.7% which is massive compared to the rates you get in the UK.

Rent.

We are renting a 4 bed house with a pool in a quite expensive area for $550 a week, the house is quite rundown though, theres no rates or water to pay, just electricity and phone.

Phone is $29 a month for line rental so a bit more than the uk.

Internet is expensive, we got a package deal with iinet for I think $69 a month which includes phone rental and 30Gig a month allowance, the allowances in oz are quite stingy and that 30 gig is actually only 10 gig peak time (1 noon until 2:00 am is peak time)


Eating out is a lot cheaper , although a chinese takeaway is about the same as the uk.

Pizza is really cheap, we get 6 large pizza's now and again for $42 (Tuesday night special). Fish and chips for 7 comes to about $45 and comes with more fish than chips (local fresh caught fish, delicious)

Cinema is slightly more than the UK.

foxtel (cable tv) costs about the same as sky did and has a fraction of the number of channels. It comes to about $100 a month with all channels and IQ (this is basically sky+ same remote too)

Electrical, we bought a big American style fridge freezer for $1200 which is about the same as we paid in the uk but we really had to shop around and I think the one in the uk was better (it had ice maker and plumbed in water dispenser)

Mike.