Yeah I have struggled to find information on doing it through a third country especially Vietnam!! I would love to hear when you hear back from IMMI.
We submitted everything including medicals and PC on the 13th of July but have not heard from a case officer or anything yet!! Keep me updated with how you get on!!! Good luck!

We've decided to go to australia next month we hope, my husband will use a ETA while he waits for his visa to be approved. Meaning he will have to go offshore every 3 months and visit new zealand i guess. We made this decision very carefully as my mom (some of you may know from previous posts) has cancer and needs our support asap as she is having chemo injections.... my husband did call immigration and they told him it was fine for him to visit australia while he waits out the visa approval.... they told him to use a ETA or whatever to get in. he will most likely have a return ticket to either the US or buy a ticket to new zealand with a 3 month timeframe to get offshore to obey the rules on the ETA.

Sorry to hear about your mum's illness, sharyny. It is good that you are in a position to go to Aus while you wait for the visa! It is hard to be waiting offshore away from family but would be much worse in your situation. I hope she has a speedy recovery and that your partner gets his visa soon :)

thankyou Jmac01 :)

Another offshore 309 here~

Applied from USA
Currently in OZ on 12 month, ME ETA

Submitted the application____________ April 20, 2014
Received request for police/medicals____ June 12, 2014
Submitted all police checks_____________ July 31, 2014
Submitted medicals_____________________ August 12, 2014
C.O. assigned____________________________ Nada :D

Welcome to the waiting room H.Protagonist :) Although, you applied before me so you've been waiting longer!
I'm impressed you've already had a request for police and medicals. We've heard nothing yet! I assumed that it was the CO who requested them, so it's interesting that you've been asked for them but not had a CO assigned! Best of luck... hope your visa comes through soon :)

Hey, Jmac~

Thanks for the welcome. I haven't been waiting tooooo long, but the request for more info was certainly heartening even though a C.O. hasn't yet been assigned. The request for more information letter I got also specifically noted that my application had not been allocated yet, though, so who knows what's going on. :)

I am hopeful that it means I passed initial clicks and it will be processed quickly. I just applied and was granted (almost instantly) a 600 extension on my tourist VISA, so fingers and toes crossed that that speed indicates something bigger in the VISA world like, "This one's good to go! Grant away!"

We'll see how it pans out after I give them the heads up on my new stay situation AND let them know I'm heading to NZ for a trip in a week. Maybe the VISA gods will shine upon me twice and they'll just grant it while I'm there? Wishing you the best of luck as well! Perhaps we'll have an avalanche of grants as Immigration tries to clean their plates before Christmas. :D

I would read about your visa here: Maritime Crew visa (subclass 988). It only allows you to work as crew on a ship. "Offshore" means OUTSIDE Australia (i.e., at sea, on a ship). Can't help on the work or salary. It definitely doesn't allow studying.

As College girl has said you can only work on a ship off shore , you would have a basically no prospect of easily changing to a "work " visa. To do that you would need a whole new skilled visa application.

Haha we are hoping they will say that about us too!
We've been in and out of Australia together about 6 times in the past year, so we are hoping that might help show we are genuine and they will give us a speedy grant!! Of course, it probably doesn't work like that, but we can hope.

No updates from us still, only that we can't upload any documents to our online application at the moment, and we need to upload our NOIM!