Ok, it appears as though the medicals/police checks does need to be clarified a bit.
Once your visa is granted they give you a validation date where you must enter the country even if it's just for a visit. The validation date is based on when you did your medicals & police checks. Generally the date is one year, but that's only if you did medicals/police checks at the
last minute and then had the visa grant. Since most people don't do it at the last minute you have a shorter time period.
In your case you did your medicals/police checks about 6 months ago. So even if your visa is granted right now you will still have at most 6 months to enter Australia. The longer it takes for your visa to be granted the less time you'll have to validate.
For example if you did your medicals/police checks on May 1st, 2008 then you have to validate your visa by the end of April. It wouldn't matter when your visa was granted. This is why it's really important to give yourself enough time and not do the medicals/police checks too early.
So if they don't grant your visa until say. next February then you'd still only have until the end of April to validate. That just means a quick trip over for them to stamp your passport, you don't have to actually move by them. Once you've validated you have about 4-5 years to make the move over. It's 5 years from the date your visa was granted I think.
Getting immigration to extend the validation date is almost impossible, only in extreme circumstances will they consider changing the date. So you're pretty much stuck with it. The only thing you could do is notify immigration that you want to redo your medicals and police checks so that you can have more time to validate, this can only be done BEFORE your visa is granted. Once you've notified them you can redo them and send them off again. Then once your visa is granted they will base their validation date on the new medicals/police checks. You just have to make sure to tell immigration so they don't grant your visa before you give them the new information.
So using your example. if you got your visa on month 11, you'd have until month 12 to validate. Which means only 1 month to make a trip over. It's not 1 year from acceptance, it's 1 year from medicals or police checks, whichever was done earliest.
As for your question about work I don't know what the situation is like for welders, you'd have to check the job websites.
http://www.seek.com.au
That's a pretty good one.
I agree, not much point looking while you're in Canada. You'll only find the employers who are desperate enough to look overseas, so you probably don't want to work for them, or move to where they are.
We tried looking for work but couldn't find anyone to even look at him even though his job was in high demand. Once we arrived though he had no problems finding work.