Hi
I have recently moved to South Australia and my Mum who is 80 this year would like to visit (<3 month) does anyone know what visa she can come on or whether she needs a medical?

Also, although fit and healthy she is nervous of travelling all the way from the UK on her own, are there any sites or services so people can meet up and travel together?

Thanks in Advance
Sonia

quote:

Originally posted by Bangalorebabe:
Hi
I have recently moved to South Australia and my Mum who is 80 this year would like to visit (<3 month) does anyone know what visa she can come on or whether she needs a medical?

Also, although fit and healthy she is nervous of travelling all the way from the UK on her own, are there any sites or services so people can meet up and travel together?

Thanks in Advance
Sonia

Hi Sonia

I am especially hopeless at Maths so I never understand what the "<" and ">" symbols mean. Given your Mum's age, though, she does not need to rush back to the UK for her job so I assume that she wants to be able to spend more than 3 months in Oz? If yes, then the answer is a subclass 676 long-stay Tourist visa:

http://www.immi.gov.au/visitors/tourist/676/

She would have to visit a Panel Doctor to get the PD to complete the Aged Visitors Health Check form:

http://www.uk.embassy.gov.au/lhlh/health.html

The Aussie Government is slightly suspicious of very elderly Tourists. They have had long experience of old dears who have managed to struggle their way out to Oz but once they are in Oz, they have become too sick & decrepit to be able to leave at the end of the period of stay permitted by their Tourist visas.

In a crude effort to deal with this problem, what often happens is that one applies for a stay of 12 months on a sc 676. DIAC grant the sc 676 visa but they permit the visa holder to spend only 6 months in Oz at a stretch. However, they also make the visa valid for multiple entry to Australia.

If this happens to you then the drill is as follows: Mum spends about 5.5 months in Oz. At the end of that time, you take her out of Oz to Bali, Singapore or wherever for 7-10 days, on a package holiday that has been purchased in Oz and includes return flights to and from Adelaide. When Mum returns to Adelaide after her short holiday outside Oz, DIAC will permit her to remain in Oz for another 6 months.

My own mother obtained a Contributory Parent visa in 2006, so she is now a Permanent Resident of Oz and no longer needs to travel by air unless she alone chooses to do so. She's British and she was 84 by the time that her CPV was granted. Before that, we spent 12 years with Mum shuttling back & forth between me in the UK and my younger sister in Perth, WA.

It was OK to start with - whilst Mum was still in her early 70s. Once she turned 75, DIAC began to worry and Mum visited loads of tourist resorts in the Far East as a result! She's been to Thailand, Bali, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Malaysia, Singapore etc!

With the actual travelling between the UK and Australia, we have particular problems with my mother because she broke her back a few years ago, as a result of which she now depends on a Zimmer frame to hobble a few yards but most of the time she needs a wheelchair instead.

We found that the ONLY airline which is any good with an elderly, disabled passenger is Singapore Airlines. They spotted the niche in the market and decided to exploit it, whilst all their competitors decided that it wasn't worth bothering to try.

BA & Qantas told us, "If Mrs X cannot manage without more help than we normally provide then she'll just have to have her own carer travelling with her." Singapore Airlines told us, "Of course we can look after her! We can do that by ourselves and we promise you that we'll look after her as carefully as we would look after our own Granny."

Singapore Airlines have never, ever broken that promise with my mother. There is nothing that their own staff don't do whilst Mum is in the air or changing planes in Singapore. Their own staff are better at the job than my sister or I would be because they know their way around, plus they are all First Aid trained etc. (Plus their staff don't give Mum the chance to start whingeing, "I can't!" They just tell her, "Right, Mrs X. We are going to help you to do XYZ," which is actually a much better approach.)

Mum told me about one trip where she spent about 3 hours on the ground in Singapore changing planes. Singapore Airlines assigned an Indian lady to look after Mum at Changi. The Indian lady discovered that Mum had a clean set of clothes in her hand luggage so the Indian lady took her off to the showers, got her a shower chair and stayed in the shower cubicle with her, making sure that Mum could not injure herself or anything. Mum said she felt so much better just to feel fresh and clean after the long flight from London. You wouldn't get BA or Qantas bothering to go the extra mile in that way but of course we were all tremendously grateful to Singapore Airlines for taking the trouble and we will always be 100% loyal to them when any of us need to travel by air for any reason. It is so EASY to secure customer-loyalty that you wonder why the others prefer customer-hostility instead.

The other thing is to look at the map, Sonia! The most direct route from London to Perth is via Singapore and Singapore Airlines pay enough to ensure that they will be given convenient take off and landing slots, convenient piers for embarkation and disembarkation in London and Perth instead of the piers a mile away at the far end of the row of piers etc. Singapore Airlines have priority with everything at Changi Airport, obviously.

Some elderly friends of mine have moved to Adelaide. They reckon that a flight from London to Hong Kong to Adelaide doesn't take any longer than any other route and they say that the service from Cathay Pacific is also superb. Nobody in my own family has ever used Cathay and Hong Kong is not "on the way" between London and Perth but for Adelaide it might well also be worth considering Cathay for your Mum?

The thing to do is to phone both airlines and find out how much extra help they would be willing to provide with your mother. Singapore Airlines have something called their "Meet & Assist" service, which is free, first rate and well worth using with my own mother. Cathay might well offer something comparable but you need to speak to someone at Cathay to get the low down.

I hear you about the question of whether there is any sort of "social circle" for old dears who are travelling between the UK and Oz. As far as I know, there isn't such a thing. Also, my sister and I both reckon that it is better to get a really good airline and then leave it to the airline's own staff to take care of the passenger.

I don't want my mother to witness some other old dear having a fainting fit, especially not if she has met the other old dear! It might put Ideas into Mum's own head and we can all live without that!

Singapore Airlines have the common-sense to separate all the old dears traveling alone on their flights. They put them all in aisle seats in different rows, saying tactfully that this will enable the old dear to stretch out across 4 seats for a kip etc. I'm sure that, privately, they think, "We don't want you lot winding each other up, now do we?"

Cheers

Gill

As your mother is quite old she must have a general check up before she leaves for Australia. And I too think that Singapore Airlines will be one of the good option for you mother.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Alan Collett,