colinmacl

I know you do and i have been explaining how it works. I am an electrician and i obviously work with apprentices. The pre apprenticeship is a course designed for school leavers who want to be apprentices in the electrical industry. If you want to be a sparky you need a job and you are trained through the job as i explained before. You cannot go to TAFE for 4 years and then become qualified as you must have on the job training too and complete an apprenticeship. You get sent to TAFE as part of your job.

Ok i shall explain slowly. You go to TAFE to do the pre apprenticeship course which you would book all by yourself by calling the TAFE( i believe you pay for it although i may be wrong). Then when you complete the course you apply to an electrical contacting company that is looking to hire an apprentice. If you get a job then as part of your training you will attend TAFE either 1 day a week( day release) or for a couple of weeks at a time (block release) for the duration of your 4 year apprenticeship. Speak to these people a lot of the apprentices in WA are government sponsored through NECA and hired out to companies. http://www.egt.net.au/

A pre apprenticeship course is what a lot of wannabe sparky apprentices do before they get a job. Most employers here prefer to take someone on who has done this course first.

I am one of the first batch of sparks on the new system and will be sitting my aussie trade test soon lol!. I had run my own company in the UK employing 12 staff and am very well qualified and struggled to get a job here when i arrived due to the licensing system. They say it can take up to a year but the logbook is time based and has took me around 7-8 months to complete and i avg around 50 odd hours a week. Then you have to book in the test and wait for your license after you pass. You will also have to do a comms test which gives you a comms license to get your A grade too. So basically it will take me almost a year so if i worked 38 hrs a week it would have been longer! You will also have to do homework that has to be submitted and passed at 100%

Surely you realised what a 457 Visa is before you came out here? You don't get security because its a work permit for temporary stay. I see people complaining about them all the time and complaining that they sold their house and cant afford to go home etc etc. If you plan to emigrate get PR simple! If you accept a job on a 457 it should be looked on as a 2 year contract that may end early or if it goes well may lead to PR. I think a lot of people come out here on these visas and think they are here for life.

Hate to be a killjoy but a 457 is a temporary sponsored visa. If your employer no longer wants you you have 28 days to leave the country or find another sponsor. If you have 2 dogs this could be very difficult. I have seen a number of people on this forum losing their sponsor and panicking to find another or sending everything back home The union had a protest march the other day about these visas and i think they will clamp down on them too and i doubt a plasterer would get sponsored from the UK. The jobs that generally get sponsored from overseas are mining specific ie previous experience or dishwashers and waiters in restaurants!

I am an electrician so its different but you wont be able to do anything from the UK. We have to do a years gap training , homework, 2 week college course and a trade test so you will probably be similar. Try contacting energy safety or an RTO where they train Air con engineers and they should be able to help.

Pretty much everywhere has good transport links, the bus takes you to the train station and is usually there when you get off the train or within 10 mins. It really depends where you are going to work but i stayed in Mindarie when i arrived and knew straight away i could not live that far out, the freeways are packed at rush hour and going to secret harbour or butler from the cbd can take over an hr easily. Even worse if you are travelling south to north or vice versa so as i say depends on what you do for work. As for being next to the beach well you are always a short drive from it anyway. Look at the map and look at the areas, some reasonable areas in the north within 20k of the CBD are padbury, craige, kingsley, greenwood, South you have bull creek, willetton , canning vale, etc. I cant tell you where to live only you know the answer to that but i think people always say butler and secret harbour because people mention them on here all the time!

Why does everyone want to go to butler or secret harbour? There are about 50 suburbs way more appealing than either. Neither have much in them and are both at the edges of Perth's suburbs so what is the appeal?

Armadale near Perth? Its away out south east about 50km from the cbd. I wont tell you anything bad about it but i have never heard anything good.... If you want to know what an area is like go visit it, drive around, go to the shopping centre supermarkets, tavern see what the locals are like and then see what you think yourself because 1 mans slum is anothers paradise!

Providing the rules don't change before you get here your husband will have the easy route as he is coming on your visa. He can apply to TRA once he resides in Australia( takes up to 3 months i am told)Then he does a 1 week nobody can fail course and gets his license. All the other fun stuff is only if you are the main applicant for PR ( yup weird eh?). But i have been told its changing and everyone will be doing gap training soon. So best to ask before you come to Oz.

Buying a house on interest only is the same as renting as you are not paying the mortgage off but you do also have the maintenance costs etc to deal with and the full risk if the value depreciates. Although you could make money as some did if they sold before the crash. Just look at what happened to everyone in the UK and US to see why. Just like the countries i just mentioned the property market here cant possibly keep rising faster than people's salary. You could look at Japan for another long term example of what happens when property prices go too high. I don't think the banks even give those types of mortgages anymore.

Have a look on the electricians thread on poms in oz, you will get a lot of useful info there but basically what you have to do now is apply for your electrical permit to work then enrol with a college that energy safety tell you to and pay $2000. Attend a 2 week course then fill out a logbook for up to a year and you will be sent a lot of homework to do and send back to the college as well. Then when that is complete you then go and sit the same trade test as the aussie apprentices to get your full license. I wouldn't bother emailing companies until you get here as there are plenty of people here already looking for work and companies wont be interested in you until you are here. It can be hard to secure a job as well especially with the fact you do not have a full license. I have been here almost 5 months now and have just secured a new job with better pay and better work for after the year. It is not easy for us at first that's for sure. Oh and forget tradies down under its a scam and you wont be anywhere further forward and be £3000 worse off.

The taxman must be generous if he gives them a rebate of 83K a year! 5 x 52 = 260

I am guessing Maths is not your strong point is it? 2.5 = 34K. I would say its more like 2 to 1 unless you like to drink in pubs a lot lol! And a lot depends on wether you are PR or sponsored as you pay more tax on a sponsored visa plus you can't claim family tax assistance

Transco is for electrical line workers which is different to being a spark and if they hired people from the UK they would be 457 visas and so can do the 2 week course. I have cent CV's to all the big electrical contractors, most never reply or tell me that they are not interested in gap trainers. What you have to remember is there are a lot of guys here on WHV already working as TA's I think most of the big jobs here are union jobs so i have joined the union to see if that helps. I wouldn't believe everything you hear at expos about how you will come here and be a millionare lol. You are right about who you know but networking is not easy when you work overtime so you can get a decent wage and have young kids to deal with. I cant tell you what to do its your life. Apart from the work situation the weather here is great and its a nice clean city. I don't regret coming here but the license situation makes life difficult for the first year at least.

I have been here for nearly 4 months and i am an electrician who done vetasses. I was in the first gap training class as well as i missed the license changes from the 2 week course by 11 days!!!!!!!!!! I have managed to get a job but the pay is so so and i am really struggling to get shortlisted for jobs as i don't have a license. We really are at a disadvantage as young lads on WHV can get a license after 2 weeks and are happy to work for less pay!! We are also behind young aussies just finished their apprenticeships. I have found it to be very frustrating that despite being 35 and having a lot of experience( i had my own company with 12 employees) i am bottom of the pile here. I also find it a bit degrading to go to college and be taught about basic power calcs and how to wire 1 way and 2 way switches. You will also be sent out homework to do from the college. I cant see everyone getting a job as with the amount of sparks coming to Perth and waiting a year for a license there will not be enough jobs for all the gap trainers. On a more positive note i do see a lot of jobs advertised and the standard of work here is criminal(think 1950s UK) so when we get licenses it should be easier to secure a good job but it is not easy when you arrive. I have applied for over 100 jobs and had 2 interviews and most don't even get back to you. And don't even ask about agencies.

Bensdad pretty much summed up what i would have said. I am an electrician who arrived over 2 months ago. I had my own company in the UK employing 12 men and i am very experienced in my industry. I arrived here and have to do a years gap training then sit a trade test at the end of it. Found work very hard to get although i have a job now and have to start right at the bottom again. And what he says about seek and agencies is spot on!! I think we are lured here to keep the economy going by bringing over our life savings to spend in the shops, car dealers etc and to buy or rent property! Don't get me wrong i am glad i came and the lifestyle is great but its been a lot harder than i ever imagined it would be and it will be for at least a year or two

The construction industry is not what any of us migrants expect here!

I have found it hard so far, i had my own business with a number of employees for 15 years. Now i am here and am basically a 4th yr apprentice (i am an electrician) So doing a not so great job for less money than i would like and have to do a trade test in a year lol! But i am sure once the years up it will be fine.

I currently earn less money than i did in the UK but i didn't move here to earn more money but to have a better life and i felt this is a better place for my children to grow up than the UK which probably has something to do with why i don't have unrealistic expectations of living in a beachside mansion on arrival.

I would say 2x1. Yes its expensive when u change your money at the poor exchange rate. Some things are way cheaper like dominos pizza and petrol which cost the the same in dollars as pounds for example. Public transport is cheap too. Food is slightly more expensive but it depends on what you buy really. As for housing that depends on where you lived in the UK as anyone with half a brain knows there is a huge price variation depending on where you live and seeing as Perth is effectively a capital city housing will cost at the higher end of that scale. If you go by what you read on some of these posts you will be living on a tent on the beach unable to feed yourself unless you earn over 300K a year

3x1?? can you tell me what costs that ratio apart from drinks in a bar? I have been here for 2 months and am yet to find things costing 3x1 and also on your formula that house you want for 350k would cost 116k in the UK........ Depending on where you live in the UK that wouldn't buy a studio flat. I am from Edinburgh and your other figure( going by exchange rate) of 220K wouldn't buy a detached house there nor quite a few other UK cities as well. If you are going to quote scaremongering figures you should back them up.

Thanks for the information. I never realised that people who do apprenticeships are not very academic. Much better to go to go to university do a useless course and work in macdonalds. Some trade apprenticeships actually require better grades and mathematical and science knowledge than some university courses nowadays!

I just replied to you on another forum. How long have you been here and where about's are you?