Emigrating to Australia, touch down
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon at Kingsford Smith Sydney International on 11th March 2017, when Boeing 737-800 Qantas - The Spirit of Australia - QF164 3hr 40mins flight from Wellington New Zealand touched down via terminal 1, and we were onboard. I had been to Australia before in the previous year for a Job interview, but this was the first time my family was coming here. We had finally hit our milestone, to emigrate to Australia.
Because we arrived as a family, leaving the airport with our luggage was tricky. Uber was having it tough with regulators in the Australian market at the time. Ubers weren’t permitted to be at the arrivals section but at pick-up points that were quite a distance to walk to with kids. So we only had metered Taxis (or Cab as it’s known in other countries) to work with and even them recommended that we instead grab a minibus taxi given it was 4 (2 adults and 2 very young kids) of us with quite some luggage, that came at a slightly higher rate than an ordinary taxi, of about $7 per kilometre, and we were checking in about
Checking in
We got to the apartment building after business hours, thankfully we had been emailed the passcode to the apartment key box so that we could self-check-in ourselves. And so, we checked in at out furnished and serviced temporary apartments called AEA Sydney Airport Serviced on Botany road in Mascot suburb, just a stone throw from the airport. Apparently, AEA is supposed to stand for Australia Executive Apartments, but personally, I didn’t see anything executive about them. Anyhow, they were not a bad idea to stay at while we figured out where we will be living for the longer term. We had booked for 21 nights at a cost of A$215 per night and it was a 2 bedroomed apartment.
Oh no, we have no food!
We’ve checked in, rested and started settling the kids in, then around 7PM, we realised that the kids were getting hungry, would soon need to go to bed, and we had not bought any food yet. We quickly needed to plan. Thankfully, summer had just ended but long days were still in place, with the sun setting around 8PM. But where would we get food? I had not checked my Uber app since our arrival, and after the airport experience, I wasn’t even sure which locations Uber was allowed and which one’s it wasn’t, so I just went online and downloaded an app for one of the metered taxi companies and made a booking which unfortunately wasn’t a real-time one like Uber but scheduled.
The Taxi arrived about 20-30mins later, and then we discovered that we needed a baby car seat for each child, as is required by Australian law whenever you are driving with minors in the vehicle. Anyway, we managed to get to the nearest Woolworths supermarket that was still open after 8PM in a Suburb called Wolli Creek, about 7km away. We didn’t know our compass, but we just decided to put our trust in the Taxi driver, after all, Australia is a safe and family-friendly place to live in, right? As we entered Woolworths, due to the makeup of the majority of shoppers, it felt like we were in Asia, great multi-cultural integration. They even had an international food section which was pretty cool. While in the supermarket, my wife suggested that we might as well buy as much food and groceries as possible to last us at least a week, while we were still learning our way around Sydney and I think that was a great idea. We ended up spending about A$300 on the food and groceries that night and got back by Taxi again to our apartment just after 10PM to prepare dinner. The kids were exhausted!
Crazy scary first night
The first night of our stay was tricky, although we had no jet lag really since we had only flown from New Zealand, not much of a time difference between the two countries, the fact that we were just next to the airport meant that planes flew over us during landing and take-off, and the jet engine noise was just crazy, waking us up from our sleep scared and sweaty in a hot summer type weather in the middle of the night. We emigrated to Australia in March, so it was still summer in Australia.
Fire at the apartments?
Since our apartments were fully furnished and serviced and we could cook for ourselves, we just needed to make sure that while cooking, we opened the windows, otherwise the fire alarm would be set-off and since it was directly connected to fire emergency response, it would trigger a call for their help, and if it’s found to be a false alarm, occupants that triggered it would be liable for a A$1,000 fine. During our stay, the alarm was set off once, thankfully we weren’t the ones that set it off, but the firefighters came very quickly and even inspected every apartment just make sure there was no real fire, which I thought was really good.
The 21 days staying at the temporary apartments went by quickly, but we did not wait until it had elapsed to start house hunting, we started right after the first weekend of our arrival, and so was the start of even more interesting experiences about our migration to Australia, which I’m looking forward to sharing in my coming posts.
Lessons Learned from first day in Australia
Prepare a flexible budget and expect unexpected small expenses that could potentially quickly crop up. If you can buy food you can cook for yourself, do it and save some money for unforeseeable expenses.
If you have a family and need to move around, ensure you have a baby car seat for each child or request for one at the point of making the taxi booking. However, very few taxis have baby car seats.
Research the area where you will be staying ahead of time. Know where the grocery stores or supermarkets are and how to move around.
Don’t assume that Uber is always available everywhere.
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