Becoming Australian: A Practical Guide to Migrating

By Chris Burlo

This book will make a wonderful gift for a friend or loved one who is migrating. It is specifically designed to be easily fully read during a flight to your destination.

If you are the one migrating and looking for guidance from an ordinary bloke who has already travelled the migrant's path that you are thinking about embarking upon, then look no further. This book will give you deep insight into everything that lies ahead of you.

The author did not have two dollars to rub together when he took the decision to migrate with his family. The need to migrate surpassed the need to have a comfortable life at the other side, and money was not an issue.

While this story is my story and about migrating to Australia, it will be just as applicable to any migrant who is thinking of migrating to anywhere in the world, not just Australia.

Same shit! Just a different continent!

This book is packed with hundreds of useful money saving hints, hints on how to think, hints on how to assimilate and how to survive and go on to thrive on your journey into the new country.

When it comes to migrating, if you are worried about having enough money to migrate, then forget the whole migration thing because you will never have enough money to migrate.

Migration is for the crazy, courageous, fearless people…the risk takers!

But with a little bit of the guidance provided in this book, your journey will hopefully be made a bit smoother.

Good luck, go for it and don't forget to relish what I call the scary excitement as it unfolds before you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781922405142

Book preview

Chapter 1 – Deciding to Migrate

Strine Quote of the Day – No worries (My pleasure)

To migrate or not to migrate, that is the question. 

Migrating definitely moves you out of your comfort zone, no matter where you migrate to.

After all, why would one want to be moved out of their comfort zone? It just does not make sense, but it usually happens because of big things that happen in your life, and there are usually a few of them that happen first, before you finally make the decision to migrate.

For me it was quite clear. Those things in Johannesburg, South Africa, just weren’t the same as the old days. We seemed to be heading down a very long cul-de-sac with no through road and things would just become more and more difficult, and at some point in the distant future, you would have to come all the way back, whether you liked it or not. The longer you travelled down the cul-de-sac meant the more you would struggle to get back onto your feet when the point came that you finally made the decision to migrate.

Changing towns or cities was not going to help; it was clear that it would have to be a completely new country.

Some would even say that the only difference between being a migrant and a refugee is the timing.

For me, the first of a series of events started one Monday morning on the way to work in Johannesburg, still feeling fairly dusty, after a hectic weekend. I turned into the final street to work, to be confronted with around 10,000 chanting warring Zulus, heading in my general direction armed with tyres, assegais, war shields, knop-kierries and all sorts of handmade weaponry. There is nothing that gets one’s own adrenalin going through the roof more than seeing and feeling the pounding feet of Zulus on the war path heading in your direction.

Like I say, it was Monday morning and I had not had a coffee yet, so the brain was struggling to get into gear. But a vision came into my mind of a butterfly……no, no…. a moth, lying dying in the path of an army of oncoming African ants. 

I did not wait to find out what happened to the moth. 

Bugger the red traffic lights or the local traffic laws, I hit reverse gear at full speed and got the hell out of there. Anyway, I found an alternative route to work, got to work and arrived with my office face on and greeted everyone as though nothing had happened. Pretty strange, really.

Yes, they were very strange times really, and the world’s eyes were focused on a new South Africa moving away from apartheid when the only thing that was certain was uncertainty itself.

Then there was the time when I was in the office and I could hear sporadic automatic gun fire going off somewhere outside the office. I was becoming quite used to it actually, so I paid my client a courtesy call and said it was probably best that he did not come into the city that day for our planned meeting. 

The clashes were happening between the Zulus and ANC at the time, and I was bang centre right in the middle of it.

A week later, the Zulus had surrounded the city of Johannesburg and those working in the city, including yours truly, had to run the gauntlet to get out of the city and get home to one’s family unharmed. 

I still remember making the call to my new wife Sherry to let her know that I was on my way home and that there might be problems on the way, but that I should be home in 45 minutes later that afternoon…..all going well, that is. Anyway, I drove and got home that day, but I was quite prepared to break any traffic rules whatsoever to get through any blockades.

Yes, there was a lot going on and a lot of economic things did not quite stack up as well—because the political uncertainty was not great for economic growth and it seemed like the economic pie was not going to be enough to share around. 

Then there were factors like inflation, where things were going up in price all the time, so long-term, what that meant was that even if you were diligent and saved enough pension, a weakening exchange rate and rife inflation would quickly eat into the value of your pension in no time at all.

Wow, migrating is massive, and very often, potential migrants are faced with situations not unlike ours and that is, if you don’t migrate, then your children might have to migrate and then you never get to see your grandchildren. And then there is the enormous decision to give up everything to start all over again from the bottom. You will spend years as a migrant following that path, trust me.

But really, you are there in your comfort zone, with a steady well-paying job, lovely house, nice car, family and friends, all round feeling quite well off, thank you very much, with these questions running through your head all the time. 

Is migrating the right thing to do? Will I have a job on the other side to go to? Will they recognise my qualifications or my experience? What will we take with us? How much money will we need?

Massive life changing decisions—and from my own experience, I will answer some of those questions for you quickly.

Is migrating the right thing to do? 

Well, generally, people who migrate don’t do as well as those who chose to stay behind, and it is a proven fact that the kids of migrants will generally fair better than the migrating parents.

Will I have a job on the other side?

Unless you are the CEO of a global multinational corporation, probably not. You will be just like the rest of us, mate! And you will be starting from scratch, armed with your dodgy qualifications and foreign work experience. 

Hint – Better be prepared to do anything to earn a crust or you will go backwards at the speed of light.

Will they recognise my experience?

Probably not, but here is another hint – If you are going to migrate, do it sooner rather than later because any extra experience gained in the old country will count for nought when you get here!

Another hint – Leave all your emotional baggage and personal biases behind you and come with the idea that you are coming to learn new things and start afresh.

The most important hint of all – No one over here is interested in your history, who you were or what position you held in the old country. So don’t go on about it, as you will be wasting everybody’s time.

What about my furniture? 

Hint – The first mistake that you will make as a migrant is bringing your furniture with you. It will cost you a fortune to freight and when it gets here, most of it won’t work anyway or it will be damaged. Save yourself a fortune. It will cost you only $5,000 to kit out your first unit.

Should I buy a property as soon as possible, after getting there?

I still have my reservations on this one. Our parents taught us as they were taught by their parents, who grew up in the recession, to be frugal and the wisest thing that you can do is buy a house as young as possible. 

Well, as a migrant, that may not be such a wise thing to do. Rent first, because you can make mistakes when you rent, and you are not pinned down to one locality. If you are renting and you eventually decide the area or city is not for you, you can move easily. When you buy, you might buy in the wrong area and then have to sell up and rebuy again, thus paying agents and legal transfer fees twice.

Hint – Give yourself at least a year before you decide where you are going to buy a property. Remember in the beginning, you are a migrant ….you know nothing, least of all the best place to buy a house!

Nothing like having your first born to accelerate your decision-making process. My first born arrived in the middle of winter; it was bloody freezing. Once I had counted all her toes, fingers, eyes and ears, the immediate thing that popped into my mind was that, yes, with two daughters now, we must definitely migrate now, no questions about it. 

One small problem, however—it was 1992 and the current mortgage rates at the time were 18%, so for a young working couple with children, that meant my entire salary went on paying the mortgage each month and my wife’s wage was used for everything else. Consequently, we had not saved a dollar to pay for the visa application fee, let alone any flight or transferral costs.

Looking back now, at the time, we were probably poorer than refugees. 

Life is funny like that, once you put the idea out there into the universe, things just start to happen for that thought to manifest itself.

So no sooner had I decided that we were going to migrate, my wife was washing her hands and took her engagement ring off and turned around to dry her hands in the towels in the office toilets at the time, looked back for her ring and it was gone.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were covered by insurance and the payout on the ring was $1,300. Roughly the same as the application fee for Australian permanent residency visas at the time. 

Funny how life is. But that is exactly how we managed to get the ball rolling.

So, I got all the migration documents from the Australian Embassy and filled them in. You know when you are paying $1,300 for a non-refundable application fee, you take a long time to carefully and meticulously fill in the application forms, because if your application fee gets rejected, then you pay another $1,300, that is, if you get a second chance to apply.

We applied under the skilled migrant visa and it was all based on getting 134 points. 

Simple really, to be successful, you had to hold a degree, have three or four years post graduate experience and be as young as possible. So there was a very small window of opportunity for us and I wanted to take the opportunity while the going was good.

Basically, you had to tell the Australian government why you would be of value to their country, which is fair enough, so I did a whole page selling myself and a paragraph for my wife, who was a secretary. Secretaries’ roles are the same all over the world and everyone knows what the role is that they play in business, so I thought a paragraph would suffice. 

My wife had different ideas, however, and bit my head off because the application was so lopsided. I gave up trying to explain my logic and the fact that I was the main applicant. 

Anyway, the application took me two weeks to complete, check, recheck to make sure that it was perfect. And eventually, not wanting to rely on the local post at the time, I think that I drove all the way to the Australian embassy to drop it off in person and pay over the $1,300, which was a fortune at the time. 

Chapter 2 – Preparing to Depart

Strine Quote of the Day – Too easy (My pleasure)

Once the application had been lodged, you were issued with a lodgement number, which meant that you were now in the system and there was nothing more or extra that you could do but just wait, anxiously.

Anxious is the appropriate word to use because your whole world became very claustrophobic and you lived, breathed and the only thing that was important in your life was the application to migrate and whether it would be approved or not. Nothing else really mattered…..not a good thing, but that is how it was for me. 

Will we be accepted or not? And even though you may have had enough points just to scrape through, there was no certainty that you would be accepted, however. Anyway, for the next year, that is all you discussed when you had free time. It must have been very painful for friends and family at the time.

The months passed and still you heard nothing, and that is when the doubts really started to creep in.

But by this stage, I had become totally obsessed about getting into Australia, not quite sure how I would have responded literally if my application was rejected. And my heart now goes out to those whose applications do get rejected—it must be awful—let alone the total disappointment of being rejected and to have to then try to start getting your old life restarted again.  

Maybe I must also take this opportunity to apologise to my friends and family, about carrying on about it, but I suppose that is just human nature.

I suppose the point I want to get across is that once you were in that system, your whole world changed. Only one thing mattered. Will our application be approved or not?

Anyway, after about a year of waiting…and waiting….and waiting, suddenly, a letter arrived in the post requesting you to take yourself and your family to the police for a police clearance.

I tell you now your heart starts to race with adrenalin, as they would not be requesting that you get a police clearance if they were not going to accept you. After the initial excitement, then you deal with next bit of angst. Will we have a clear police record? Hmmm, when I think back to my days at university and how I used to carry on in my teenage years, I think it should be clear, but anything could have been possible. And so, the worry continues.

So, you drag your family off to the local police station to apply for a police clearance, and you do the old fingerprint in the ink and roll the finger onto the paper bit. I was amazed there was an art to doing it, so that you did not get any smudged fingerprints.

And then it is back to hurry up and wait and wait and wait. In fact, from memory, you never heard from the police again. Months later, the embassy sent out a request that you take your family to the designated doctor…No, no not any doctor; it had to be a choice of one the embassy’s selection. Makes sense, I guess.

In our case, as usual, life throws a curve. Holy cow, my wife had 100% health records and fit as a fiddle, then suddenly complains of a lump on her breast. 

What the!! What excellent timing, and so the angst and doubt continues. A few weeks later, my wife had the lump removed. It turned out to be nothing, but it sure as hell caused a lot of worry. 

Anyway, then we were able to go for the medical test, and everything was very hush, hush. They don’t tell you the result, so we were still in Limbo. But on the face of it, we were both young and fairly physically healthy, so now I was moving from very iffy to now somewhat cautiously optimistic.

We waited for another six weeks when the letter arrived in the post advising that we had been successful in our application and that we were to forward our passports to the Australian embassy so that they could affix (that was the word they used, I recall) our  permanent residence visas to them.

Wow ……what a life changing moment that was. You just knew that your entire life was about to change quite rapidly because the embassy gave us six months to get to Australia. 

Six months, wow. Will we even manage to sell our house by then, knowing that houses in South Africa could take months, if not years, to sell? 

So, your life moves from the waiting mode, and how long is this going to take? to what the!!! Six months, how am I going to get this all done in that time frame?

The big thing that hits you now is that the idea of migrating to Australia is no longer a dream, but it becomes a reality. And the first thing that hit you is Okay, I feel wealthy now, but once you manage to sell everything of value and give away the rest and then pay off all your debt, you will experience the meaning of de-wealthing, as I like to call it….big time. 

And that is when the pre-migration worries start. Will you have enough money? What can you sell and what furniture should you take with you? That becomes the next challenge after being de-wealthed, You then have to figure out how you are going to fund