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About Us
Welcome to Moving to Melbourne, a service dedicated to helping your move to Melbourne go smoothly and without glitches.
Moving to Melbourne is a registered business.
Our Australian Business Number is: 78 040 896 308
Our Consumer Affairs Victoria Business Number is: B2110474P
OUR STORY
Our names are Robert and Kate, after considering the move to
Australia for approximately 8 years on and off, in 2004 our dream
came true and we received our permanent residency.
Kate had never visited Australia before and Robert had only
visited 10 years earlier for a 6 week holiday. We had so many
questions about everything, where do we live? Do we bring our
furniture? How do we get a bank account? How can we get a
rental? What are the schools like? Do we bring our elderly cat?
Where do we go once we get off the plane? How much is the cost
of living? Believe me the list was endless. It was a very
stressful time especially for our young children who needed us
to be strong for them. We didn’t know anyone in Australia and
arrived with just 5 suitcases with all our worldly goods which
was not bad for the last 30 years of our lives.
When we arrived we went in to a short term rental which proved a
life saver, we had contacted estate agents around Melbourne from
the UK and none were willing to consider us as a tenant until we
were in the country. We were also advised that for each property
that came up for rent there would be a minimum of 7 applications
and because we had no Australian references we would be at the
bottom of the list. So with this in mind we booked in to a short
term rental for 5 weeks the cost was $1500 a week but I would
have paid double this for the peace of mind it provided us. We
even had the option of renting a car from them which cost $500
for the full stay this was great.
The first week our body clocks
were totally thrown out we were waking up at lunch time but then
we were wide awake until about 5am so this first week we didn’t
accomplish much. We had access to the internet which was
wonderful as it meant we could search for properties without
driving around aimlessly. We had no idea where we wanted to live
but knew that most expats fell in love with Berwick and the
Mornington Peninsula, so we based our search around these areas.
We had no luck at all finding properties to rent in Berwick as
they were snapped up immediately, we focussed on the areas
around Cranbourne (a new upcoming area), Narre Warren (home of
the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre) and the surrounding suburbs
we applied for a couple of rentals and got knocked back so we
applied for around 10 rentals which was rather daunting as we
were worried we would end up getting them all, unfortunately we
didn’t get any of these. We were not going to let us stop this
in our search and eventually we were lucky as one of the agents
was an expat and felt sorry for us, she didn’t care about us
having references, we had offered 6 months in advance but were
informed agents cannot accept this. Anyway we got our first
rental property in Australia yippee and it only took us 3 weeks.
The next thing was to purchase a car, we still had to wait for
most of our money to come through from the UK so we purchased a
small run around for $10k. That was easy and we could collect
the car in 3 days.
We had been using our UK Drivers License
since arriving but we needed an Australian one to help us put
everything else in place i.e. banks, tax file number, Medicare.
So off we went to change this over which was great as we didn’t
need to sit a test.
We then needed to purchase furniture for our
rental. In Australia 98% of rentals are unfurnished. Wow it was
so strange starting buying things for your house again things
like coat hangers that most of us have way to many of we had to
go out and purchase, cutlery, plates etc. A lot of people asked
why we didn’t ship our furniture but I think we decided on the
best option, it takes around 12 weeks for your furniture to
arrive and it would have meant buying or renting furniture,
washing machine, fridge freezer until ours arrived so it really
wouldn’t have been cost effective.
So with a rental and a car we now had to consider getting our
life back to normal and organise schools and work, before this
though we opted to drive up to the Gold Coast and have a 5 week
holiday.
On our arrival back to Melbourne we got the children in to
school and Kate started volunteering at a wildlife park where
she soon gained employment as a Wildlife Ranger. She then
moved on to work alongside 40 vets at the largest animal hospital in
the Southern Hemisphere and has been employed with them ever since.
Kate continues her studying in both the Veterinary world and Dog Training and
Behaviour.
After considering our options for a few years we decided that
with the knowledge we had gained during our move to Melbourne we
could help other expats and provide a service for them which
would take a lot of pressure and stress out of the move and make
their arrival in Australia more enjoyable. So we started Moving
to Melbourne, unlike other relocation companies we are there to
help families and provide the personal touch, we even have
clients call us on Christmas Day with problems.
We have found that fellow expats also like to help new arrivals
and they have asked to advertise their rentals on the Moving to
Melbourne website.
You don’t have to be crammed up in a hotel room and pay
extortionate rates for example $476 per night for a king sized
room at the Sofitel Hotel.
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