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Last week, on St George’s Day, it was our 3rd wedding anniversary. We take turns each year is organising something to do for the event - for our 1st anniversary we went to a really nice Japanese restaurant in Melbourne during a brief trip to Australia, and last year we made a trip to Brussels in Belgium.  This year it was my turn again to organise something.

Finding a good curry in Australia is not an easy thing - good Indian restaurants are few and far between.  I think the only decent one I’ve had was 2 years ago in Glebe (Sydney). So the first thing we did over the weekend was try out the local Indian restaurant on Friday night.  It was ok - not bad, but not fantastic.  Good enough to consider going back, but probably not have their rather fatty chicken in a curry again.

Then on Saturday morning we headed out and drove for a couple of hours to Ballarat.  Known from the goldrush days, in Ballarat they have a mock goldrush township called Sovereign Hill.  I’d booked a package that included an overnight stay, day entry to Sovereign Hill (both days), and dinner followed by their ”Blood on the Southern Cross” sound & light show.  We had a good time there, and of course took a number of photos!

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We’re definitely heading to Australia. Dawn finished her job on Wednesday, and her UK visa expired yesterday - so to make sure she didn’t “overstay” we had a short trip over to France.

It’s been a long while since I’ve been on a ferry across the English Channel, and it proved to be a cheap option to head down to Dover and cross over to Calais. We headed over yesterday, stayed the night, and this morning came back to the UK. The immigration officer asked a couple of questions and wanted to see our onward tickets to Australia, then granted entry to Dawn - the first time she’s been in the UK as a tourist!

It was a bit choppy coming back across the channel which slowed down the ferry, which in turn meant that we had to pay extra for parking at Dover docks - we were over the 24 hour mark by 6 minutes when we got to the car park pay terminal, this 6 minutes costing an extra £5 parking fee!!

We’ve both wanted to have stopovers when travelling between the UK and Australia, so this time we’re making a bit of a trip out of it. It’s going to take 1½ weeks to reach Australia after leaving the UK, and then a further week until we reach our new home - Melbourne! Unfortunately we won’t be going via the Trans-Mongolian railway (Moscow-Beijing) which we had hoped to do, but we will be going on the Indian Pacific once we’ve got to Australia.

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Two years ago Dawn & I went to Croydon to apply for her UK Spouse Visa.  A 2-year temporary residency visa was issued which allowed her to live and work in the UK.  Today we went back to the Home Office in Croydon for Dawn to apply for her permanent residency.  Unfortunately we were turned away at the initial validation stage this morning at Croydon.

Part of the application included us providing at least 20 letters or other documents as evidence that Dawn & I are still living together as a couple and have done so during the past two years.  We included about 23 pieces of evidence of this kind, yet the person at the validating stage said we needed more for 2005 (from July onwards, as her previous visa is dated 28 June).  2006 & 2007 were fine, but we needed some more for 2005.  So it seems that Dawn is unable to obtain permanent residency at this stage because of a lack of documents from 2 years ago!  Even though the last 18 months is fine and clearly indicates that we are still living together as a couple!

At this stage the only choices are apply for a further temporary residency period or go to Australia.  We’ve decided that the 2nd option is the best thing to do - it’s lucky I got my Australian Spouse Visa in 2005!  Dawn’s visa expires on 28 June, and so she cannot work in the UK after that day.  This is even more annoying, as the evidence for her citizenship application, which would have followed that for permanent residency, was fine - there was less to include in that.

We’re not sure exactly what we’re doing as we only got turned away this morning, but it seems we can’t be in the UK for much longer at all.  It seems a fortunate thing that we planned to move closer to Dawn’s work and had put in our notice on this flat - we need to be out by 25 June!

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We had a little adventure today. After about 6 weeks of frantic study of the 5 chapters from the ‘Life in the UK’ book it was time to finally do the test.

Last night we stayed at a nice little hotel near the test centre at High Wycombe, and had a fabulous buffet breakfast for an extra £5 each. Very impressed with the quality of the hotel - so not the usual budget accom. But I digress.

This morning I nervously went into the test centre only to be told my name wasn’t on the list. But after some frantic praying (on my behalf) the man managed to find a free place for me and put me in (whew!). So I went through the practice questions and got 4 out of 4. Time for the real thing.

24 questions and 45 minutes to complete. I think I took about 7 minutes to do the test and recheck my answers. Well the upshot is that after all this I have passed! First hurdle over.

Now we just have to get the rest of our paperwork in order and head on over to the Home Office in Croydon in a week and ask very nicely for them to grant me permanent residency. Stay tuned…

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