Hi Charlotte,
Firstly good luck with everything, you've been to Australia before which is great, we had not before we started visa process in 2012 which now feels a lifetime away, it was my decision to emigrate always had a fascination for Australia and have not been disappointed, after 2 long years of the process using a migration agent well worth every penny could not have done it without them, we arrived in adelaide with a 17 and 13 year old difficult ages to to move to other side of the world!!! We also did not know anyone here but had been to Perth where we had friends and had loved it there, but hubby's job came off skills list and did not come back on and was high in SA, so decided to try here and totally love it here, my hubby and 13 year old son have never ever had a days homesickness, my 17 year old daughter was heartbroken at leaving her bf at the time behind which really upset me and my first month here but once she got over that she has not looked back and would not go back to UK now if you paid her!!!!
We started off in Somerton Park a beautiful place to live but broke lease after 5 months after buying our first home, hubby went job hunting soon after we had arrived in April 2014, it was Easter so we had a 2 week holiday first, drove to Melbourne to collect our 2 dogs then on a Wednesday after doing his white card training for building site management and by the Friday night had 5 jobs offers!!!
i started job hunting once the kids had settled into school and did some temping work until I found a job I really liked which was 3 months in, both kids got part time jobs too and study, we bought our dogs over with us which also helped us settle, there is a fb page you can join before you get here where you meet people, we have made so many friends here and our social life is better here than it was in UK, weather is so accurate you can actually plan to do a lot more here and I find it's easier and cheaper too as you can have a BBQ on beach with friends and take your own food and drinks which keeps costs down.
it has been best thing we have ever done, please feel free to pm me for more information of if we can help at all. I also see you are from derby not too far from Birmingham where we used to live. Lol.
Whereabouts are you looking to settle?
Living the Dream, Bal xxx