hi, as a family we are in the process of applying for a visa for whyalla in south australia. what we are really wanting to know now is the cost of living there compared with the uk. we'd like to know things like how much rates would be, house ins and car tax etc. if anyone can help or pass on a web address that may be useful it would be great. cheers ! also would like to know if they have child benifit over there like they do here in the uk

Just a bit spooky that you've got the same name and initial as my wife's father, but there ya go.
We've been here just over a month now and so far all i can say is that if you have a trade, which i expect you must have if you're coming on a visa, you should be ok. I counted 88 pages of jobs in Saturdays paper. As for the cost of living it all depends on the lifestyle you want. It's definitely not cheap if you want to live the good life but you can be comfortable quite easily. rates on a million dollar house = uk£500; insurance = circa Uk£350; car insurance = uk£200 on $50k 4wd. I can send the kids to a private school here but i could only dream of it in Uk. Some things dearer, some things cheaper, so there's plenty of scope for keeping to a budget. The big issue is getting the right exchange rate. We got canned moving it at the wrong time and lost the equivalent of our 3 cars. But you can't worry about it. You only live once eh!