The Preparation - Taking the 1st step, booking that flight.

For anyone looking for a few tips, hints and some real help on their move to Melbourne this could be it, for others hopefully it'll be a good read. Although this is about our move so specifically from Christchurch, New Zealand to Melbourne, I'm sure there is some sound advice you can glean from this! Plus it feels good to write about it! We got a great deal of help and information from http://movetoaustralia.net/, the information is more specific for New Zealanders, but it is clear, concise, practical and well-organised.

This is more anecdotal in large, but helpful I promise. Even if you do nothing more than read it and NOT do some of the things we did, it'll be helpful. There is a lot of information, facts and figures out there;and some of them, especially government websites, are quite difficult to muddle through or understand. There are a lot of fantastic sites out there to help too, as mentioned before, and also for those moving from the UK there is http://www.moving-to-melbourne.co.uk/ which offers some very practical help.

So where to begin for us? A long time before we actually set sail that's for sure! In 2007 we decided we needed to make a change, and that Melbourne was going to be our next step,  however we had just booked a trip back to South Africa, with a week stopover in Oman, and then got engaged to so we couldn't leave in the July of 2008 as planned. Instead we got married in October 2008, and after our honeymoon set about planning the next step. The 1st stop was the Internet where we searched forever for information and came across the 1st website I mentioned. Next, I started checking out flight deals. One morning there was a particularly good special for us to leave in January '09 and I promptly booked a ticket.

We had been researching and savings for this, but something needed to happen. The last thing I wanted to be was one of those people who others would say - "I'll believe it when I see it" about. I wanted us to take the leap, and booking a 1-way ticket to Melbourne was how we were going to!

Marty had just been there for work, and had set up a bank account for us. This is really easy by the way as you'll only need:

• ID (Passport is best)
• An address - we actually used our New Zealand 1 and we had 3 months to get back there and change it to a Australian one. Perfect.

When you're searching for the best air deals from NZ to Oz check out http://www.houseoftravel.co.nz/ because they offer the best range of airlines to compare to. In Australia I love http://www.webjet.com/. And know to get packing, this all happened in November, and we had roughly 2 months to go.