burgermeister

Have sent you a PM re Adelaide Utd ticket. May also be able to help if you are still looking for a rental in Gawler East.

I have one General Admission ticket available for tomorrow's A-League Grand Final at Adelaide Oval. Face value $59. As far as I know GA area is sold out with the only available tickets being a few in the higher priced reserved seat areas. If interested PM me. Come on you Reds.

Got tickets for Culture Club. We're also thinking about going to the Totally 80s show in July. Would also recommend local covers band New Romantics. They do all 80s stuff with a mixture of Aussie, UK, American etc bands. Seen them several times.

We've got tickets to both Simply Red and Bryan Adams as well. Liked the venue when we saw Lionel Richie there before. Went to a decent gig at Arkabar last Saturday night, New Romantics, who did mainly 80s stuff. Going to Flaming Sambucas Abba show at Highbury Hotel next Saturday. Love a good cheesy night and loved this show last time.

Just found out last night 2 of the guys I play football with are also going next week, one with wife, one with sister, so that's 6 people I know going as well as all those on PIA. If anyone wants to say hi I'll be wearing an "I scored in the 80s" T shirt. (80s cheese-head and proud of it).

A group of us who play football together (over 35s), several of whom are members of this forum, are going ice skating at the Thebarton rink on Saturday, June 6 (evening session) as part of our social calendar. Don't know how many are going yet as partners and families are also coming along. If anyone fancies meeting some more Adelaide Poms the session details are on ice arena dot com dot au. There is a café at the rink but no bar. Me and my wife are looking forward to it as we met on ice at Lee Valley Ice Centre in East London and will be celebrating our 23rd anniversary in a couple of weeks.

Just come back from a short break to Brisbane to see Spandau Ballet. Next gig up is Bad Manners at The Gov on June 3. Have a few mates from football going.

We saw Go West and Tony Hadley there too. Great night. PS Love the motto, sums up our route to Oz perfectly.

Glad so many saw the post and are keen and getting tickets early. Feeling a bit outnumbered with all the girlies going. My wife has already booked the day off to avoid getting home late from work. She also thinks it's amusing that it looks like I'll be one of few blokes there and has just told me her sister is now going as well. I don't care I'll be singing my heart out to 'We close our eyes', 'Wouldn't it be good', 'Died in your arms' and 'Wherever I lay my hat'. Woo Hoo!!

Any 80s UK pop fans may be interested to know Paul Young, Nik Kershaw, Go West and The Cutting Crew will be at The Gov on Sept 16. Tickets went on sale today.

Great to read the updates. Ours is a fairly long story,and not still not quite settled yet, but hopefully it's a useful one forsomeone. We came over for holidays in 2000 and 2001, did the tourist bit in otherparts of Oz but stayed with friends in Adelaide both times to see what reallife was like. After that, and some frustrating times in the UK, we decided we wanted toemigrate. We attended a migration fair at Sandown Park and found neither of usqualified under skilled migration. So when I had the chance to take voluntaryredundancy in 2002 I did so to give us some financial back up. The plan was tocome over and start a small business with the lump sum. Migrationrules/categories changed in 2003 and blew our plan. We then looked at NewZealand with an eye on still coming to Oz in the future. NZ was a no go for usas well and we gave up the whole idea for a couple of years. My sister in law and family then decided to move over and with my brother inlaw's qualifications and experience in IT they did not have a problem gettingPR. After a few teething probs they settled well and it got us back on theemigration trail. We went to another migration fair and but after speaking to a few agentsdecided it just wasn't going to happen. Then a guy from the WA state governmentsaw us sitting on the floor looking totally peed off. After a short chat hesuggested our only option was to come over and study as international studentsand then see what we could do from there. At first I laughed at the idea ofgoing back into full time education at 40 years old as I hadn't been too keenon school first time round. But in the end we decided to give it a go. Wedon't have kids so it was just us to think about if things didn't work out. Ifwe had kids I don't think we'd have gone for it. I was interested in journalism and had done a bit of voluntary writing for mylocal for football club and newspaper. I did a home study course and got accepted into UniSA for a 3 year journodegree. We sold our place in Kent (completion eventually went through the daywe flew out here to start our new life), and shipped all our stuff overincluding a beloved retired greyhound. As an international student and spouse we were only allowed to work part timefor the 3 years which made finances tight. I was allowed to work full timeduring breaks and did all the hours I could get over the summer break. After some tough early weeks at Uni, when I thought it was all a big mistake,we both got settled in. Perhaps foolishly we started to plan ahead too farahead and bought a block of land north of Gawler with the idea of building ourlittle dream house once we got settled after my degree. I did unexpectedly wellas a student and got my degree. However, in 2010, six months before I was due to finish uni, migration had amajor overhaul and journo was taken off the skills list. The only way we couldstay and work towards PR was for me to get a job sponsored by a company in aregional area, within six months. I applied for journo jobs in small townsin four states and was fortunate to find one in Victoria who wanted a newjourno with a few more years life experience. We moved to northern Victoria attwo weeks notice. While working there we got PR (going to NZ for week to get it stamped) andthen citizenship in December in 2013. The draw of family and friends back in Adelaide resulted in us moving back herelast May. My wife got a job straight away after sending enquiries to severalpossible employers. It took me four months to get a job and I'm now in acompletely different field to journalism. We're trying to get our house built but are having a nightmare with the builderto the point we are now looking a going with a different one. Hopefully by theend of this year we will have our house built, or if not will have sold theblock and bought a house instead. Despite the trials and frustrations over the years neither of us regret movingto Oz and are glad we made the move. We're not really risk takers so it'ssurprising we ever made the move to start with. We feel our life is betterhere than in the UK and the only thing we miss is family and a few long termfriends. We were lucky to know some people here and that has really helped andwe're very grateful for their support which has made things easier.

We are in the process at the moment of trying to build and personally would never do it again. We bought the land 5 years ago then had to put things on hold due to having to move interstate for 3 years to get our PR after visa rule changes. We looked at lots of show homes and designs from different builders and then came up with our own design which included some features of 3 or 4 builders designs and some specifics we wanted. From speaking to different builders and a couple of people we know in the business it seems every builder has their own process and we've heard good and bad stories about several of the major ones. Too keep this post from being an essay I'll just say the process our chosen builder uses has our put the whole build in jeopardy and on the limit of our budget. We were asked to go through the selections process before they gave us the engineering report, soil test result and subsequent footings cost. As someone previously mentioned footings costs can be a major issue, increasingly so. Our builder gave an allowance of 25000 which from our previous enquiries seemed reasonable. The report received 10 days ago is now quoting 44000. There is also another 10000 we had not expected. We did not upgrade too much in the selections but had we known the huge increase in footings cost we would have saved some by keeping virtually all our selections within standard, probably gone for concrete drive instead of paved, and colorbond roof instead of tiled. Now if we want to change selections or anything else the builder and suppliers will both charge us 500 for every change. These charges could add up to as much as we would save. To get the energy rating approval we have had to upgrade most of the windows to DG. We did not mind that but the builders are again charging us 500 for changing something which we believe they should have been able to advise us on up front. Our in laws had problems with their land (big slope) but once they sat down with a good builder (not cheap but good) they had less grief with the build. I imagine house and land packages would probably be a lot less hassle, but our dream was to have the house we really wanted (just average size here), which was something we could not have afforded in the UK but could over here. Rant over, sorry if I've put anyone off building.

One for any 'mature' sporting types. This year's SA Masters Games is being held in Clare (2 hrs drive North of Adelaide CBD) at the end of March. More than 20 sports, some individual and some team, with the only restriction to enter being a minimum age. The age limit is different depending on which sport and the individual ones have age brackets. I've never taken part before but have heard several good reports about the friendly nature of events and social side. My wife is planning to do swimming and I'm looking at either futsal (if I can find a team), table tennis, or athletics. For those who haven't been there Clare and the Clare Valley is a nice area http://www.claremastersgames.com.au/ . This year's National Masters Games is being held in Adelaide in October so we're hoping to do the state one as a warm up and if we enjoy it then enter the national games.

Spoke to supervisor and they've just filled 12 posts in the past week or so with a group of young guys from a football club. Will keep an ear open in case more positions turn up. When I applied it was advertised on Indeed.com. I applied for exactly 50 jobs before I got this one. Supervisor said it's ok for me to give you his email address to send him your cv so will pm you (probably tomorrow). When I was looking for journalism work 4 years ago (as a mature aged student just finishing uni) I looked up a list of suitable organisations throughout SA and sent emails to the editors outlining my interest with a brief background, cv and portfolio of work. I also applied for about 25 jobs in 4 different states as getting a regional job (sponsored) was the only way for us to stay in Oz. Got a job in Victoria within 10 weeks (as the editor was looking for someone a bit older). But within another few weeks I had calls from 2 in SA who had kept my enquiry emails. My wife did the same when we were planning to move back to SA, just looked up vet practices in the area and sent emails to practice managers. She got a call a few days before we moved, from one who needed someone quickly, had an interview the day after we got back and started the following week. Job market is tough all round here at the moment I think, and frustrating as we're unlikely to have much of a contacts network, but personally I believe perseverance pays off in the end. Good luck.

We moved back to Adelaide 7 months ago after having to move to country Victoria for a couple of years to secure our PR through sponsored employment. My wife sent out emails and letters to potential employers in her field about 3 months before our return and through that secured a full time job the week we got back to Adelaide. I was out of work for 4 months (longest I've ever been in that situation) despite applying for jobs in my recent field (journalism) and previous roles in admin, customer service and data entry as well as numerous others fields I thought I could try my hand at. Eventually got a group interview for multiple positions as water meter reader. Never thought I'd end up doing something that different. It's casual but virtually full time and they need people who are reliable and trustworthy. It's quite hard work in some respects and can be frustrating to start with and you need to be pretty fit as there's a lot of walking and scrambling under bushes sometimes. Think a few people have left recently so will ask about vacancies.