Settling In Adelaide, Australia

Our dear friend William Lee moved to Adelaide, Australia recently and he has kindly wrote us an article about his experiences there. Here's his story:-

Settling in Adelaide, Australia

I finally returned to the Australian city of Adelaide where I studied between 1988 and 1994. A lot of people asked me why Adelaide, it's a small country town. I am from a small city and town like Kuching and Sibu and have not lived in big city life. Adelaide size is just fine for me. It's also known as 20 minutes city as you could go to any location in the city within 20 minutes. I like Adelaide because of its well planned streets, convenient public transportation system, good schools and universities for my kids and most importantly we are treated equally and fairly. Adelaide has a population of one million and enjoy Mediterranean climate.

I have temptation to migrate back to Australia since 2000 but the idea never put into action mainly due to my commitment to my family and also discouragement from my previous bosses. They had migrated to Australia before and could not settled in and therefore advised me not to go. According to one of my boss, life in Australia is very tough and he had to work as general worker. Around 2005, John Wong had a chat with me concerning his intention to migrate to Sydney. I told him that if I ever go back to Australia, I still will stay in Adelaide. However still no action taken. It was until end of 2005, I visited the South Australian Government Immigration booth during South Australia expo at Crown Plaza Hotel, Kuching. I was told that the state government is encouraging migration.

I went back at that night, browsed SA immigration website and fill out a on-line application form. After two weeks, I received a nomination letter from the SA Government. I then proceed to apply to DIMA and managed to get permanent resident visas by early 2006. Getting the visas and the final move to settle in Adelaide is a distance away. There are lots of planning like selling my property, car, searching for job and obtaining Australian professional engineer qualification. By September 2006, I have solved most of the problems and I quit my job and landed in Adelaide in October 2006.

I have to bring my whole family for the initial landing and we have to land before the dateline otherwise our visas are void. The state Government arranged for airport pick up and arranged a house for us at the beautiful suburb of Golden Grove.

My daughter in front of 5, Jupiter Street, Golden Grove

Golden Grove neighborhood

I spent the first two weeks bring my family for Adelaide city tour. We did not have a car at that moment and we traveled by public bus to all destinations. My children who had never catch a bus before enjoyed most of the trip. The bus here is punctual within 1 minutes of the schedule. If the trip is well planned, there is no problem. We visited a strawberry farm, Zoo, botanic garden, Glenelg beach and the busy shopping mall.

Waiting for bus

Strawberry farm

Rundle Mall

My wife and children returned to Kuching leaving me looking for jobs in Adelaide. I managed to get an Electrical Engineer job after my second interview starting one week later. I canceled my subsequent job interviews.

Since my family had left, I rent a room within walking distance to my office. I walked to work for almost a month until I get my Toyota Camry Vienta. It's a 2000 used car costing $8000.

Toyota Camry Vienta V6 3000cc

Initially working in Australia is not easy. Australia and Malaysia have the same system and standard inherited from the British. The only different is that there is strong enforcement of the standard in Australia regardless of who you are. The design work here has to meet higher standard than Malaysia and there are more regulations and laws governing the job. I was told by my management that I will be continued after my three months probation on this Thursday. With a permanent position, I could proceed with bank loan application to purchase a house.

My plan is to relocate my family to Australia before June this year. I thank God guidance during this time as he has blessed me making my planning possible. Our new church pastor is Pastor Ling Tiong Ting. I don't know if any of you could recall him. He is in the same year as us at Sacred Heart but in the art stream. If anybody interested to migrate over, I might be ever to offer some help. You can contact me on leechuching@gmail.com.