Best Time to Move to Australia

I read this in an interesting blog on life in Australia and wanted to share it with the readers and visitors of this blog. Apparently, December or January are not the best of times to move to Australia. 

This is because summer heat in Australia is at the top and because as new migrants you will need to be looking for house, furniture and many other things that you will need to be start your life in Australia, despite airconditioning available almost everywhere, it is certainly not an advisable time of the year for moving to Australia. To make things worse, this time of year is a bit like August in France. It’s the time when lots of people take holidays. You often can’t find people as easily as at other times of the year.

The best time recommended to move to Australia is in April or May. The hottest, wettest, stickiest weather is over by then and the nice weather begins to set in. You will be greeted by blue skies, moderate humidity and daily maximum temperatures somewhere around 25 degrees C. Perfect weather, giving you lots of time to acclimatise before the heat of next summer comes along.

Job Opportunities in Western Australia

Perth and Western Australia in general appears to be attracting an ever higher number of skilled workers in a variety of industries. However, the key recruiters are: Marine Industry, Minerals and Energy, and Biotechnology.

Marine Industry

The biggest marine industry in Australia, the Australian Marine Complex can be found in the southern suburbs of Perth. The AMC is a Centre of Excellence for manufacturing, fabrication, assembly, technology, repair, and maintenance servicing activities in the marine, defense and resource industries.

Inside the AMC, there are many companies lthat are willing to deploy foreign workers. They are looking for people who have metal trades and engineering skills.

One of the companies at AMC is Tenix Defence. Tenix, a shipbuilding company and providers of marine engineering services is in need of engineers, technicians, project managers and controllers and trade qualified boilermakers and welders.

Minerals and Energy

Perth is home to some of the world’s leading mining and resource companies that offer career opportunities for skilled workers. One company is Rio Tinto, a world leader in finding, mining and processing the earth’s mineral resources. The company operates around the world, but is mostly concentrated in Australia.

Occupations that are needed in West Australia are the following: Maintenance planners, Maintenance schedulers, Maintenance system advisors, Maintainers – plant fitters, Maintainers – powerstation fitter, Maintainers – mobile equipment fitters, Maintainers – signals/communications, Maintainers – electrical, Maintainers – boilermaker/welders.

Another company is Woodside Petroleum, a leading oil and gas explorer, developer and producer. Woodside operates the North West Shelf Venture, Australia’s largest resource project. With over 2500 employees, Woodside has openings for: Explorationists, Geophysical interpreters, Reservoir engineers, Development engineers, Petroleum engineers, Completions engineers, Drilling engineers, Subsea engineers, Operations managers, Maintenance and engineering staff.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is an industry sector experiencing rapid growth in Western Australia. Like other industries, Biotechnology depends on skilled personnel to help drive that growth. While the State is fortunate to have considerable skills in this important industry, there are shortages in some occupations.

The occupations are: Experienced quality assurance surveyors (preferably experienced in the medical/pharmaceutical fields), experienced regulatory affairs personnel, experienced senior management (e.g. CEO’s, COO’s and CFO’s) with experience in the biotech field, people with project management experience in the commercialization of new technologies.

British Are Opting for Smaller Cities When Moving to Australia

Immigration stats featuring on an interesting blog show that Western Australia (Perth) is the most popular state for British immigration to Australia, followed by Queensland. The figures for 2005 are as follows:

Western Australia 5100

Queensland 4190

New South Wales 4160

Victoria 2650

South Australia 1725

Tasmania 170

Capital Territory 140

Northern Territory 90It shows that the British are choosing smaller cities for quality of life reasons while few are opting for life in bigger and more hectic cities of Sydney and Melbourne for career and income reasons. Anyone with more interesting information, perhaps more recent stuff in this regard ?

Brits do not Need to Sit Driving Test in Australia

I read it in another very interesting blog that luckily for Brits moving to Australia, they don’t need to sit a driving test as long as they have a valid UK driving license. It’s particularly a sigh of relief for those who have worked really hard to obtain their first UK license.

However, the driving test in Australia is apparently quite easy. Comments and thoughts are encouraged to make this discussion on driving and driving licenses in Australia interesting for the benefit of all those who are planning to migrate to Australia.