Advertisement
Published: April 27th 2013
Edit Blog Post
We are rapidly approaching the end of our adventure in Australia. We left Perth on 22nd April and headed East to Sydney with Jetstar on an overnight flight. We are staying in Sydney for 8 days and then on 1st May we fly off to The Cook Islands.
We loved our 6 weeks in Perth .... seeing family and friends... John and Andrea have been so kind in letting us stay with them and have done an awful lot for us. We owe them a massive BIG 'Thank You'!!
Since arriving in Australia one of our priorities apart from embracing the wonderful Auz culture & beach lifestyle has also been to seek work opportunities .... and have a lot of fun on route! Achieving employment in Australia is a difficult process ... complicated by the visa and immigration rules (unlike UK where anybody can turn up and work or claim benefits!)
Annies's vast experience in recruitment in the Far East and at home in the UK made her a strong candidate. However, there was always going to be a lot of leg work involved. Most of the preparation had been done before leaving home - renting out the
house, opening an ANZ bank account, putting our belongings into storage, researching visa's and establishing a system for transferring pound notes into Australian Dollars etc!
When we were staying with Richard & Christine on the Gold Coast we were introduced to a friend of theirs who worked in recruitment. She was able to discuss the '457 visa' process with Annie and was a great help with advice and establishing links into the realms of the Immigation process. (thanks Rich & Christine for the introduction)
We had both got our CV's up to speed whilst travelling to Perth in the campervan and since arriving Annie has been making enquires with recruitment companies with a view to finding an organisation prepared to offer her a the right role and sponsor us in.
Perth is a booming City with a lot of opportunities.... especially in construction, mines, healthcare etc.
I had also tried a few openings but nobody was interested in an old fart, retired cop! How I wish I had re-trained to be a bricklayer or plumber during my last few years!!
But I have every faith in my beautiful and talented wife doing the business for us!
Our preference for location was Perth.... we also love Adelaide but at the end of the day we would consider anywhere rather than Cov!
Her initial contacts with these large companies was hard going - they were slow to get back to her and trying to obtain the names of people responsible for internal recruitment was difficult. She was not applying for any specific jobs but basically making it known that....Annie.Dunne now Carvell was in town!!
By Easter her name was well and truely out there and various meetings were arranged.... And this presented the first problem.... although we'd done a lot of preperation she didn't have any suitable clothes! And she couldn't go to professional meetings with 'Boris' hair and wearing a swim suit!
So, time and money was spent in shopping malls buying suitable interview clothes and eventually new business attire was purchased... She looked a million dollars ... although the cost was just under this amount!
As time went by she was offered second and even third interviews with the same organisations and she obviously couldn't wear the same clothes so we completed second and third visits to the Mall!!
The process included meetings with
Senior personnel & Powerpoint presentations. She took it all in her stride.
One really annoying part of this process was that hotmail suddenly changed to outlook express and any new emails that we sent somehow contained a random holiday photograph of us attached to the top of the email.
How this happened was beyond us... and as much as we loved the pictures of us on the beach or in a bar they were not suuitable to be attached to emails to prospective employers!
We would remove a photo and it would radomly select another photo from our computer and attach itself to emails!
Very frustrating but eventually we managed to stage a sensible photgraph and attached it to email, facebook, linked-in, skype etc.
So, I.T. problems were resolved, and her wardrobe was sorted ....but what about the most important thing .....
Annie's hair (part 3); Our blog would not be complete without a reference to her hair and the fact that she was sporting a bright yellow thatch was never going to compliment the new 'business look'.
The 'beach bum, boris, blonde' with bleached hair was undoubtably going to be an issue.... and without
resorting to sterotyping about blondes and their business abilities, the $10 platinum blonde dye from the local supermarket was never going to wash! (literally!)
Trish had gone back to Ireland by now so it was left to me to apply the magic liquid and hey presto - the new look Annie!!! Complete with 'harvest gold' coloured hair (We had a British Leyland Austin Princess in the 70's which was the same colour!) The photo's are shown below.... of her hair, not the car!
Anyway, the meetings went well and we will have to watch this space to see what happens next but fingers crossed we are successful in our attempt to become real Aussies.
We had been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks in Perth. Hence the lack of photo's on this blog.... Annie had been focussed on work opportunities and I needed to start work on keeping fit! My daughter Charlotte is getting married in September and she needed my waist measurements for a suit hire! OMG! So, the running started and I've got four months to lose the excesses of four months of holidays!!!
We've loved Perth and its been great meeting
old friends like 'Snowy' and Paul Browning from my old days at work... and making new friends, Kevin and Julia from our camping days with whom we shared 9 bottles of wine one pleasant evening!! We could not have done this without John & Andreas kindness giving us the extended time we've needed to achieve our goals.
Bye for now Perth...hopefully we will come back soon & we will be contributing to the local economy in more than a tourist capacity!!! Hello Sydney .... a few more meetings but also back to holiday mode.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0587s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb