[TheFluff]

I didn't see many of these in my googles. So I figured I'd make one. Hopefully this is ok. I just feel it might help someone

My partner originally came over on a 462 working holiday visa from the USA. After looking into 457, and finding it wasn't feasible for his employer we went down the defacto route.

It was scary, daunting, stressful, overwhelming. We did it ourselves, no agent.

Small things that don't seem to be mentioned.

Registering relationship with the local Births deaths and marriages is a perfectly acceptable means of proof if you cannot meet the 12month living together criteria. It's also just good aditional proof. In Vic I think we paid like $350 or so, including a fancy decorative certificate. There is processing times here, we nearly screwed up, ours didn't arrive until AFTER we had to hit submit, but the receipt that you've applied still counts.

Find a good JP or pharmacist who is accustomed to certifying. You want that to be clear, concise and to the letter
* "I certify this is a true copy of the original"
* Date
* name printed of certifier
*signature of certifier
* position of certifier
* registration number or address of certifier (depending on who's certifying)

I went to a new chemist, their stamp was all shiny and new, I paid $1 a pop, worth it.

Police checks are not fun. They're tedious, make you think way too hard. For an Australian one, you need 10 years of places worked and lived and countries visited. USA is an FBI check by posting in a fingerprint card. Only certain police stations within australia can and will do finger printing for background checks, there's a cost involved and you have to book.

Learn how to print to PDF, and resize your photos. Remember the number of documents is limited, the number of pages in those is not. Condense photos to a smaller size (I recommend fast stone resizer) and then print them into a single PDF document (highlight the JPG files in the folder, right mouse click, print, select pdf)

A trick I used for getting more info in one screen off facebook, hook computer up to wide screen tv, rotato computer screen sideways with ctrl alt left or right and zoom out on the screen and start snapping away with photos. Was great. I categorised our photos into things like "family" "friends" "holiday at xyz" "random ones from visit A to country A" "random ones from visit B to country B"

Check your beneficiaries on your superannuation, change them if neccesary, ask for a confirmation letter.

Word up your mates in advance about the stat decs. Most will be willing though.

Don't forget the form 80 character assessment, it's mandatory for the person from overseas, it's easy to miss.

We finally have a time frame on ours when we log in 20-25months HAHAHAHA. Bridging is auto though, bridging B to leave the country, not so auto. Even more annoying was I had JUST posted paperwork for him to go home for xmas, and the next week, the applying for bridging online button appeared. I despise paperwork.

You WILL get sick of uploading documents, you will yell at the computer because your pdf is 1kb too big for upload. You will cry and wonder is it really bloody worth it. Remember, yes, it is. re trim the photo and go again.

We were long distance for a period, so I exported skype logs, as well as took screen shots of our video chats occasionally. (In case you care between 01/07/2015 and 23/10/2017 we exchanged 23823 messages had 219hours of calls and an average of 49.5 messages per day, that's just skype, not including whatsapp or text.)

 

[TheFluff]

I might have misunderstood the 80. I read it as mandatory. It was easy for us as he had held one job all his life until he moved to Australia.

Yeah I freaked out about the registration as it didn't come in until after, so it was nice to learn it's ok, you don't need the actual certificate.

I didn't pull a thousand page log for skype, I used a program that just condenses the information, time on calls, messages sent, most commonly used words, over a specific date range.

I didn't include whatsapp messages or text messages, they're a bit NSFW due to distance. haha.

 

[TheFluff]

Man, you are making this way to complicated for yourself! ha ha SNIPPING TOOL. SNIPPING TOOL. SNIPPING TOOL. If your computer didn't come with the app downloaded just google those two words I repeated, and get it. It's much easier than what you just wrote. OR if you have a PC, use shift + F12...but snipping tool is much easier. Just select the app, crop what you want from the screen, and save as a photo

Snipping tool was way to hard to try and work with the screen sideways and zoomed out. plus it being zoomed out meant that on the normal computer screen it is smaller, taking a photo of my widescreen tv, even when it's zoomed out it was still larger. If I snipped it woulda taken from the computer screen yeah? not the tv? That's what I thought would happen. (keep in mind I only learnt in the past like 5 years you can hook up a computer via hdmi and watch computer on the tv. I also spent hours yelling at skyperious about my export until I realised it's cause I'd changed his name on skype as a nickname for me)

It has it, it's pinned to my task bar!

 

[TheFluff]

For the certifications, only a Justice of the Peace CANNOT charge, anyone else who can legally certify can choose to if they so wish, most chemists charge a fee but ask you to put it into a charity donation tin of their choosing.

I had to get stuff certified for the defacto application and just feel safer uploading fully certified documents.

My laptop screen is pretty small hence the putting it onto my tv and photographing the entire screen that way.

For the fingerprints. Apparently NSW no longer does fingerprints for ink, however they apparently do have access to the scanning thingy for FBI check. If you need a state check though with fingerprints you can't use the scanner thingy.

We chose to also use Accurate Biometrics for the FBI check as it was quick, well priced and pretty easy to do.
In Victoria you have to make an appointment, there's a number on the vicpol website for it. It's actually easier to get in to a country police station than the CBD head office in Docklands. We had 3 sets done and sent all off because of the state of his fingers from work.

The FD528 fingerprint card which is what needs to be used needs to be signed by the person taking the prints, including them putting down their role. We printed the FD528 out ourselves and he took those with him.

With the defacto, yeah we have proof of that as well, evidence from when I lived with him in the USA for the 3 months prior including evidence I had items posted to their and evidence he owns the property, in Australia; bank account confirmation letter, Beneficiary confirmation letters from our superannuation funds, rental receipts and leases, water bills.

I've obviously missed the medical and police check stuff when going through here but hey it happens. I actually need a police check for a new job anyway so no biggie.