About Moving to Melbourne

 

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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