Since I've been here in Australia I've had so many people ask me what you need to do to move to Australia and be able to work there. So I thought I'd put together a simple guide/list of what to do or things I did or things I would do differently.
1. Getting your Visa!
So the first port of call is to get your visa, its obviously important to do this before anything else... without the visa the rest is pointless. The working holiday visa is the visa I got. It allows you to work anywhere in Australia, but you can only work with each employer for up to 6 months, and the visa is 12 months. This is extendable for up to 2 years, but that requires you to do 3 months 'farm' work before the end of your 12 months. The visa is super easy to get too, it takes 15 minutes to complete the application online, costs $140 and my visa approval came through within 12 hours. I've heard that it can take up to 14 days, in rare cases though. When applying for the visa they do state that your required to have $5000 AUS in your bank account, I didn't and they didn't check... I've never actually heard of a case of them checking.
The site:
http://www.immi.gov.au/e_visa/working-holiday.htm - click on the first link in the table (first working holiday visa)
2. Where?
Next you need to decide exactly where in Australia you want to go. Australia is the worlds largest island, so it varies a lot from places to place. Obviously the further north you go the hotter it is and also they have more rain during the summer. Whether you want to be in the city or if the outback is more your thing. The type of work you want to do will also need to be considered. I was originally heading to Perth, its a big busy city, wages are much higher there (around $25 and hour to work on a bar), although its more expensive to live there, in the end I decided against it. I heard the backpacker area was super grotty, it was impossible to get around Perth without a car and just wasn't that chilled out there. A friend of mine recommended Cairns to me, she said it was super chilled out, beautiful, cheap to live, lots of work and although it is a city it still has that small town vibe about it. She was right, I love it here.
So do your research first, ask friends who have already travelled around... if they are your friends then you'll probably have similar opinions on places. Also use the ye old faithful lonely planet guide too, I've always found the info on there pretty consistent.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/australia
3. Flights
Now its time to book your flight. Always shop around for flights, there are so many comparisons sites out there. I find a lot of people I know have used sta travel to book their flights and pretty much always they realized that they paid well over the odds. My all time favorite is www.lastminute.com, I pretty much book 95% of my flights through there. I like the fact that you can select flexible flight dates, so it shows you the cheapest combination of flights over a 7 day period. It also searches pretty much all the airline companies too, you seem to get a discount with booking through lastminute too as I can never find flights as cheap directly with the airline itself.
Remember to check flight time and stops too as the cheapest flight isn't always the best option, I've been lumbered with 12 hour waiting times between connections in the past just to save an extra thirty quid. Hardly worth it. You might also find that its more cost effective to book a return flight, even though you have no idea when your returning. 90% of the time return flights are cheaper and you can change the return date usually for as little as $50. I've done it on more 3 occasions when traveling in America.
4. Travel Insurance
A lot of people choose to travel without insurance, in my book its a big no no. Firstly I just like knowing that I have it there to fall back on if anything goes wrong. Also its good to cover the cost of your flights and initial bookings, you never know what might happen between the time you book your flight and you actually leaving. I have to admit I do get sick quite a lot, this winter I spent over $700 on medical bills in just 3 weeks and thanks to my insurance I managed to get most of that back. You'll be surprised how quickly medical bills can add up when your outside the UK and the protection of the NHS. For example a 20 minute ride in an air ambulance can set you can up to $12,000 and in some cases they'll refuse you treatment without insurance.
There are heaps of travel insurance companies out there, all offering different things. Be sure to find out that insurance you select covers you for a working holiday. A lot people again use sta travel to book insurance with, but again I still think you pay well over the odds... when I looked on their site to find a comparison again my first quote is almost double.
I've always used www.aceinsure.com, they have always given the best price. They cover you for working holidays and winter sports and give full medical cover too. They don't cover valuables such as laptops and anything over the value of £250 but if somethings worth that much I'd suggest having insured separately anyway. The other great thing about Ace Insure is that you can extend your insurance while your on your trip for up to another 6 months, or if in the sad case you decide to come home early you can be refunded the difference.
5. Accommodation
Its definitely worth sorting out a place to stay for at least the first 2 or 3 nights, this gives you chance to get to know a place and figure out the next step and at least if you only book a few nights, if you hate where you've flown into you can move onto some place new without loosing out. The great thing about Australia is that there are Hostels EVERYWHERE. The hostels here also range in price and quality for there is something for every expectation and budget. Moving into a hostel is also a great way of meeting new people too. There are so many ways to book hostels and find the, www.hostelworld.com is a good one.
If you plan on staying in a place and working for a while then share houses are definitely the way to go. They usually work out cheaper than a hostel in the long run and you live with people that are doing the same thing as you. www.cairns-sharehouse.com.au and www.redkeyhostel.com.au are both great share houses. Also another fab thing about share houses is that your only usually required to give 2 weeks notice. There are cheaper and more permanent rentals around but you'd have to go to a realtor and sign a 3-6 month lease term... but they are usually much cheaper, so if you plan on staying in a spot for a while its sometimes worth doing. Bare in mind you do need a steady job to be able to sign on a leased room though.
6. Banking
It makes life so much easier setting up a bank account before you leave home. Its one less thing to do when you arrive. I'd leave 2-3 weeks before you fly to apply for a bank account, it takes 15 minutes to do online and they generally call you back within 3-5 days, discuss what you've applied for, verify you exists and then email you all your account info and then all you have to do when you arrive is pick up your card from a selected branch, it takes up to 2 weeks for your card to arrive at the branch. Piece of cake. Also setting up an account in advance means you can wire your funds to an Australia account before you arrive and not have to worry about carrying around too much cash or travelers cheques.
The common wealth bank offers the best services and accounts that are free, also super easy to set up.
http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/international/moving-to-australia/
www.westpac.com.au is another good one too.
7. Work/Jobs
I found it was much easier to sort a job out once I was here, especially if your only looking to do hospitality or tourism work. Just walk around and hand your CV into all the places you fancy working (be sure to print off heaps of CV's before you come out here, I've spent a small fortune on printing CV's), its also good to have a picture of yourself on your CV too. You can look at the local newspaper too, there are heaps of job listings in the paper that can't be found on the internet.
If your planning to do something a little more specific like farm work or a mining work there is plenty of opportunity to organize that before you arrive, www.gumtree.com.au has hundreds of farm listings daily or http://www.jobs4travellers.com.au/ has too.
If you wanted to work in hospitality and tourism but at a major world renowned resorts its definitely better to do that well in advance. All this can be done on their websites. Heres a few pretty nice resorts on the great barrier reef:
http://www.hayman.com.au/career-opportunities/
http://www.hamiltonisland.com.au/careers-jobs/
http://www.lizardisland.com.au/
www.seek.com.au is just a standard job site, but if your planning on being in the more metropolitan areas lots of hospitably jobs pop up on here.
I'd recommend doing your RSA (responsible service of Alcohol) certificate, even if you don't plan on serving food and drinks you can always fall back on it if needs be. There are heaps of hospitality jobs. It takes up to 4 hours so I'd do it at home while you having nothing exciting and new to do. There are loads of sites you can do your RSA on, this is the one I used... http://www.aveling.com.au/hospitality-courses/responsible-service-of-alcohol-rsa-course-wa.htm, Remember though your RSA is only specific to a state.
You also need to get a tax file number, which is kind of like the English national Insurance number. If you don't then it means your set to get taxed 49% of your wages. Employers allow you 4 weeks to get your tax file number. You can't really apply for your tax file number until your in Australia as you need an Australian address to have it posted too. It takes just 5 minutes to do it on this site, https://iar.ato.gov.au/iarweb/default.aspx?pid=4&sid=1&outcome=1 or you can call.
8. Getting here/everything else
Make sure you pack light, most of what you bring you probably won't use so just bring bare essentials. Remember you have to travel and move around with it too, I've been carting around a snowboard bag - absolute nightmare! I would recommend bringing as many of your toiletries and make up from home as possible, that stuff here will cost you a small fortune. Especially sunscreen. Print all your travel docs off, return flights if you have them, insurance, accommodation and what not... I got quizzed in Immigration for well over and hour this year in the US for something that could have all be solved if I had just printed off my documents.
Also ensure you have enough money to last you long enough to find a job, remember when you arrive somewhere new you always want to live it up for a week or two and do all the touristy stuff too so have enough cash to do all that too. Around $2K would probably be enough if your planning on starting work fairly immediately (within 2-3 weeks).
So thats a basic guide to getting yourself kind of set up here. Everything else falls into place and makes more sense when you arrive here!
