Matt Down Under

Wow, after more than six months of preparations, I finally lodged my visa application today. Incredible how much work was necessary to get to this point, I can understand everyone who simply hires a migration agent to do all the work. When I started to think about applying for a new visa in Australia I was thinking about a second Working Holiday Visa first and it took me countless hours to read all the documentation, information, conditions etc. to figure out if I am eligible for a real skilled working visa and which one I need.

I could have hired a migration agent, too, but I wanted to save the money and do it all myself. After all, it’s definitly feasible to do it all by yourself, but you need to be talented in organisation and patience, need to be willing to read so much information and texts, it’s not funny. In the end, even without a migration agent it probably cost me more than $3.500 to lodge this application, so much money was necessary to do tests, examinations or get documents organised, including certified translations.

I think if my application will be successful I will write it down in detail to give you some insight on what is necessary if someone would like to stay in Australia. Interesting is, I can understand pretty much any detail of this application process and all the documents I needed to provide, there’s nothing where I would say it was completely unnecessary from a governments point of view, it’s just an interesting experience and I can imagine that a lot of people are not capable of managing such an application process.

And I always need to remember it will only be a 3-year visa, and I need to stay in lovely Tasmania, which I’m totally happy with. In 2-3 years I will get the chance to apply for permanent residency, and I really don’t hope I have to go through all this again, but I don’t want to think about it yet. My current application is not even completely finished. What I still need to do now is scanning several documents and attaching it to my online application. Then I will check every couple of days to see if the status of my application has changed and if more documents are required.

Will be interesting to see how long the processing times actually are. It can take up to six months but as I already have all the necessary documents I don’t expect it to take so long. At least I received a Bridging Visa now, which you get from the day of your application lodging. It will be valid until the application was processed, so I don’t need to worry about my current visa anymore, which would have run out in 6 weeks. As soon as my Working Holiday Visa runs out, the Bridging Visa will become effective.

Workaholism

Again there’s also heaps of great news from my sideproject(s). I’m too tired to remember if I mentioned that before (and I had too much champagne earlier tonight…), but I teamed up with two of my work mates and two consulting guys that have an amazing experience in Tasmania’s tourism industry. In the last few months we’ve been busy developing business concepts and I must say I am surprised how great everything seems to work out.

We’ve got some fantastic opportunities and more are coming almost every day, even though we’re still working on all the details and offerings. But tonight we went public and had a small launch party at a nice art gallery in Hobart, with quite a few influential people present to announce to them the launch of one of our new companies and our unique business concept. Feedback was positive and I think I can consider myself lucky to be part of this, it could be a big step forward, career-wise.

But lots of opportunities mean lots of work, right now I can’t wait to get out of here and spend 10 days in the forests, with kangaroos and devils, without computers and electricity. And when I come back I can hopefully provide some more details and maybe some websites, it really has potential to be huge.

By the way I’ve decided not to go to Falls Festival in Marion Bay over New Year. I don’t know yet when I will return from the Overland Track and I’d rather keep the option of extending my stay by 2-3 days instead of hurrying back to Hobart to get ready for camping at the festival. If I will be back early I would prefer spending another couple of days on a camping trip to Bruny Island.

The other day I was thinking about these new job opportunities. Being self-employed surely would have it’s advantages, I could take a week off to go bushwalking whenever I like to. But I can’t afford to have any financial risks right now, so I won’t do that until it’s absolutely secure, I can be lucky to have secure employment without being an Australian resident. But I can see the day coming…