Concerns in moving a large family

[megkal6861]

I am planning on moving my family(with 5-6 children and spouse) to Australia. I am a NZ citizen so my husband will be on a 461 visa. I am looking for some direction on what to expect. Should I ship vs buy as buying 8 beds may be more than shipping and these sorts of things. I have gotten some quotes and a 40 ft container is around 7600USD. I don't imagine I will fill it. Also the area I am considering moving to is Mackay, Queensland. Family in that area. I do not have a degree as I am taking a redundancy from GM. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[comet555]

I would suspect that it's cheaper to ship your belongs rather than buy all new stuff here. You mentioned $7600 USD which is about $10,700 Australian at the moment. When we moved here from Canada we didn't ship anything so we had to buy everything new (except clothes). We spent about $15,000 to furnish our place using relatively inexpensive things. We do have nice living room furniture but the bedrooms and day to day items were fairly cheap. You'd be surprised how quickly things add up.

I would suggest making a list of all the items that you would need to be. You really have to walk room to room and write down all the things you have in it. I really do mean all the little things too. The furniture is obvious, but it's the little things like office supplies, kitchen utensils and toys that really add up. Once you have your list work out how much it would cost to replace all that, I used the IKEA online catalogue as a cheap price guide. I would also work out a list of how much you estimate you would get if you sold all your furniture you have there (you probably won't get as much as you think). Remember to also look at what you have outside (furniture, BBQ, yard equipment).

In your case just furnishing a bedroom (bed $300, mattresses $400, linen $100, dresser $200) would probably cost about $1000 per bedroom if you're not buying expensive stuff.

So unless you've got really crap furniture now and would like to start over than you're probably better off shipping it. We didn't ship because it was way more expensive (from Canada) and we had a lot of crappy things from our university days. If you can't fit everything into a container just sell off/get rid of the items that take up the most space and are not to bad to replace.

As far as Mackay goes I have no idea. I would suggest having a look on this forum to see:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=54

That forum has a lot of people from the UK moving over but there are also people from all over. There's lots of people to get advice from and I know there's a few in mackay who can answer questions.

[possums]

That seems very expensive to ship your belongings over. We paid $2500 for a smaller sized shipping from the West coast of Canada to East coast of Australia which was a shared container. Is there a forum you can join for NZ citizens moving to Australia?

[comet555]

I thought price was relatively reasonable. When we moved from Fort McMurray, Alberta to Australia the movers wanted $15,000 CDN for a 20 foot container. It would have been cheaper if we packed it ourselves and also if they didn't have to transport or container to BC to where the port is. If Possoms was close enough it could have been done really cheap by packing yourselves and bringer it to the port and loading it directly onto the container. Also, shared shipments do tend to be cheaper.

So for a 40 foor container $10,000 AU is a great deal, in my opinion. It's a whole different ball game when you're shipping over the contents of a 3+ bedroom house!

[possums]

I guess that isn't too bad but remember NZ is only a few hours away, Canada is a lot further.

Maybe you can cut the costs by packing it yourself, we did that and saved a lot of money.