[willsken]

Ok, I am a teacher and I am going to see out the school year (2005/6) at least. So the earliest we want to move will be August. As the flights are expensive then we may wait till Christmas (day!!!) if I get my way. My boss is happy for me to stay as long as I like, so this is flexible.

Now, the questions I have are when to sell my house (so many people seem to be having problems in this area :no ) and when to ship my stuff (struggle here or in NZ). I would like to put my house on the market in April and then if we are lucky enough to sell quickly rent in the UK. I am also buying quite a lot of new things and I would like to keep all my old stuff so I can ship early and have my stuff arrive almost as we do. (But then, will I end up with a load of stuff in the UK I want to take, but my crate has already left, so tough I can't???? :roll )

Also, when do I ship the dog. I don't want her to stay in the UK without us for too long.

I know there are no right or wrong answers to any of these questions, but I would love to hear other peoples stories on the way they timed their move and what the pitfalls were and what were the good points. I would also like to hear from people in the UK and how they plan to time their move. :yes

Oh and I still can’t decide whether to take my little MX5 with me. (Any one taken a car and regretted the expense?)

I am just about ready to send of the paperwork (just waiting for the teacher registration docs) so I should have PR by then (I hope. In fact I’ll hope and pray just in case! And touch wood….) There seems to be so many hard decisions to make, my head is spining :wah

[Charlosparky]

Hi

Like you say there are no right or wrong answers, but here's our plan (subject to change without notice and moods can swing up or down depending on no rational reason at all- as i explained to the wife and kids :laugh )

We are hoping to hit NZ around August 2006, i need to sit a nightschool course for my trade in NZ and the exams are in Nov so Aug is good. Also our kids can finish the school year here and we can go in the UK summer hols. We sold our dog last month :wah EOI went in in Oct 05, Our ITA goes in in Jan, the house on sale in Feb,hoping for PR around May. We are keeping our caravan on Dads drive for accommodation once the house sells around July with luck, dad can sell it once we go. Check out TradeMe.co.nz as MX-5's or anything Japanese with wheels on is easy to find in NZ (my bro-in-law is an NZ panelbeater and swears by the NZ used jap car market :nice1 )and will save you shipping and having it steam cleaned. The only other thought we had was that if we land in NZ winter the weather can only improve as the months pass.

I'm sure there are many variations to our plan out there!

[Questor]

Well we're hoping to go over in July /Aug too - altho it all depends on the house sale, which could screw up my NZ registration as a pharmacist, cos in order to register over there - I have to get a letter of good standing sent from the UK society to the NZ one, but that is only valid for 6 months, so I need to time it so that i can get over there in time for it to still be valid, but everything is sorted over here.
Unfortunately I need the letter to be sent before I send in the ITA so it could be VERY tight!
Hopefully I'll have a job offer before I send in the ITA so it might speed things up somewhat, but we'll have to wait and see!

[Smiler]

Hi Nicola
I guess everyone does what is right for them and there is no right or wrong. Go with your gut instinct and what you are comfortable with.

My two penn'orth, oops sorry two cents worth.

I didn't want to bring our car, a 4 year old 306 gti6, but OH did and it has been nothing but problems.:wah :wah We researched it very thoroughly but probs with that and the bikes have all been caused by shippers. Our loss assessor thought the car had come on a ro-ro ferry not in a container. I won't bore you as I've written it all up in another thread but it ( to me) really isn't worth it. Huge expense that we will now have to claim for. As we don't need 2 cars we still have a hire one until ours is on the road.

Charlosparky is right with all the jap imports etc, trdae me and dealers. Some forumites have got good deals, Kim and Elaine have just bought jap imports, if I am correct. Diny got a jap one too, I'm sure.
We have just done with out our stuff for 8 weeks+ here, I wasn't really desparate to get it at first, but when it arrived it was like xmas. The feeling of loss when everything was packed in the container in the UK was something I wouldn't have wanted to stay with for long. I guess if you have any leftover stuff you could always send it via excess baggage type firm.

It is really hard, I don't know the answers but do your prep as much as you can so when you are ready for the next stage, go for it. I hope that makes sense but if not pm me.

D x

[GeorgeM]

We arrived as a family in August '02 - the timing was specifically to allow all members of the family apart from myself to finish school 'properly' (i.e. at the end of the academic year) (OH is a teacher so this affected her too). In terms of helping the departure I think that this was a good thing as many others were leaving at the same time so saying goodbye was a common theme not something that existed just for our kids. It ended up with the children getting a very short summer holiday, however, as within days of arriving, and before they would have been back to school in the UK, they were begging to be allowed to start school in NZ so that they could make some friends. (I also think that they must have been a bit nervous about how it was all going to be, so wanted to get it over with).

The bit about the weather only getting better is a bit of a double edged sword. We arrived via a week in LA/Vegas and went from temperatures in the 30s to an arrival temperature in Chch of 3 degrees. And one of the drizzliest spells that I have experienced since I got here - four or five days of cold, grey drizzle in a row. Having left a very good (and continuing) British summer behind this certainly didn't do anything to help us settle in! From this point of view I think that just after Christmas would be a good time to arrive - still a month before schools start, but probably 3 months of decent weather left before autumn starts. For many people the outdoor life epitomises NZ, and being able to participate in it from the very beginning would be positive.