In June 2019 I submitted my application for the Australian Partnership Visa and in February 2021 I received notification of approval! Its been a process and I am here to share the ins and outs in the hope of providing some helpful tips for anyone else applying for the Aussie Partner Visa.

My boyfriend Lucas is Australian and I am British so, despite having just become a resident of New Zealand, the visa process was about to begin again for real in order to live and work in Australia together. I have shared a lot about my New Zealand visa process here on the blog and as I know it has been helpful to many I am writing this about my experience with the Australian visa in the hope it will also help others taking this journey.

Disclaimer: This is just my experience that I am sharing and shouldn’t be taken as a granted – its only my experience and you may need different advice depending on your circumstance. Make sure you do your full research on the Australian Immigration Website.

For all my Moving to New Zealand posts and Visa story please click here.

Our story:

Lucas and I met in 2013 when I was living on a working holiday visa in Melbourne for 1 year. I left Aus to go home to study and we parted ways as friends. In 2015 Lucas came to travel Europe and visited me in London, it all got a bit more serious and we decided to begin a relationship. We needed to choose somewhere to live and decided to move to New Zealand together to test our relationship as well as to have an adventure. It was easy to get visas in NZ for me and Lucas didn’t need one, so off we went. (You can see everything about my New Zealand Visa Journey here)

After 3 years of happily living in New Zealand and almost buying a house in early 2019 but having a horrible time with it and giving up (see my post on Buying a house in Wellington, why its not for me!) we decided it was time to abort ship to go and live in Melbourne where his family was and we felt our immediate future was. SO, it was time to start applying for an Aussie visa for me.

Which visa?

Working holiday visa was not an option for me as I have already used it in my previous time there and so the most appropriate seemed to be the Australian Partnership Visa. I may have just overlooked it but there didn’t seem to be a partnership WORK only visa similar to the one here in NZ so it was a case of going full blown permanent straight away. Anyway this was our long term plan so we thought we might as well get it out of the way.

Note that Aussie partner visas start with a temporary subclass visa and then after two years, you are eligible for a perm. (note that the two years starts from the day of application rather than the day of granting – different to NZ!)

We made the decision to move to Australia about a year before we were actually going to do it this. All the Partnership visas that I looked at had about at 14 – 19 month wait time. This meant that if I got my visa application in, I could hopefully have it granted just in time to make the move. So for this reason, I applied for the Subclass 309 Partnership Visa which is granted when you are outside of Australia (and is the visa which will eventually turn into the Partner (subclass 100) Visa.

My other option was to wait and apply for the Subclass 820 and 801 Visas once we had made the move to Aus, but this would have meant more time waiting once we were there and we had the time to wait as we were not moving for a while. This meant sucking up an immediate expense but seemed like the right thing to do to just get the application in and hope that it came in time for our move.

Check which visa is right for you – do all your research before you decide!

How I applied for the Australian Partnership Visa

Before I actually started the application I spent some time looking through what would be needed on the Australian Immigration website and making a list of all the documents that would be required. I then set up some folders on my desktop and began compiling a files with all the required documents. I labelled everything according to what type of document they were as when uploading documents on the immigration site they are filtered into type of documents and both you and your partner have your own section.

I began making word documents of lists of all my previous jobs, addresses, and trips abroad including the dates for each as this information would be required in Form 80 which needs to be filled out and uploaded.

I printed off the Form 80 application and started to fill it out early. This was something I did gradually. I started by reading the whole thing to understand the scope of what was needed in there like family full names, birthdates and places of birth etc.

I sent the Form 80 Application to my two Australian character references. These were required to be accompanied with their certified copied passport so I knew this might take a wee while, so I gave them lots of time to do it.

I did all these things ahead of time so that I would have all the documents ready to upload at the same time.

In hindsight – because the wait time for processing the visa is so out of control long, I would have signed up and started the account and paid immediately and then just begun uploading as I went along. The wait time when I applied was between 14 and 19 months when applying from overseas which is so ridiculously insane and means that you have more than enough time to upload docs and get everything together after lodging the visa. To be clear, I started gathering my docs in April and then lodged and uploaded them in June. What I should have done, was lodge in April and then upload gradually so that my processing time would start from April rather than June. I was nervous about doing this in case someone looked at it right away but lets face it – this isn’t gonna happen!

Filling in the online form for the Australian Partnership Visa

This application was predominately done online through my Australian Immigration account so it is a good idea to get this set up and have a pole around as soon as you can to get an understanding of the site.

A lot of the information required in the online form is also stuff that goes in the physical form (Form 80) you need to fill out. So, make sure you have lists of old jobs and addresses so that you can fill these out on both.
Other than this it is pretty straight forward, but I went through the whole thing to check what was needed way ahead of time and kept going back to it to ensure I had everything correct.

Uploading:

For those interested in exactly what documents I upload, I had four main files of documents on my drive:

•   Character (Police Certificates + Character form 888s)
•   Identity (Birth Certificates + Passport + Identity Docs)
•   Relationship (Evidence of Living Together + Ongoing Relationship)
•   Forms (My Form 80 + Partner Form 40SP)

I know most people will probably be interested in what went in the Relationship section as this is all the photos and proof of our being together which can be really hard to understand, so to give you an idea, here are the screenshots of my folders:

(note: I added categories in the file name as per the categories on the document uploader online so that it would be easy to upload them in the right category once I got to uploading)

Proof of Living together:

Proof of Ongoing Relationship:

Getting my Biometrics

After about a week after I lodged my application, I got a notification saying that I needed to go for my biometrics to be taken. Biometrics is a non-intrusive process that captures a facial image with a digital camera and a 10-digit fingerprint scan with a digital finger scanner. I made an appointment with the place that does this in Wellington (checking this system) and showed up and they did it for me – they also sent these back to Aussie Immigration for me, so there was nothing for me to really worry about there

The only issue with this – is that there was a glitch in the immigration website that meant the alert to get this done stayed there even when I had already done it. So, in order to make sure I rang aussie immi to ensure they had it and they confirmed.

Police Certificates and Medical Exam.

I read somewhere that Police certificates and medical examinations had to be recent within the past 12 months in order to count towards the Australian Partnership Visa application. With such long wait times for this visa, I decided not to upload them right away and to wait 6 months in order to upload them. Interestingly, around the 6-month mark, immigration sent me a request asking me to upload them. I applied in June and they asked just before Christmas in December.

I guess I will never know that if I had uploaded them at the start then my application would have been assessed a lot quicker and I might have had it earlier – it’s really hard to say. But I was going to Melbourne for Christmas and it was a lot quicker to have the visa medical done there than in NZ so I booked in over there and went to the Bupa visa medical center in Melbourne Docklands – this was a whole other experience but that is a story for another day!

At this time I also sent off my applications for my police certificates from the UK and from Australia – there was a month time limit for uploading the police certificates once they had been requested and some of mine wouldn’t be back in time which freaked me out a bit at first. Helpfully, the document uploader on the application site has an option for uploading proof of intent to obtain within the time limit, so I uploaded my receipts for application for the police certs and then when the real ones came, I uploaded them too.

I wish there had been someone to communicate with throughout this to let me know whether I was doing it in the most efficient way – as I really had no idea!

What next:

So, I had now uploaded all my docs to the site including the ones requested after the initial upload – paid the massive fee ($7700) and now just needed to wait!

Waiting was so long, there is little to no contact from them and no one you can call or talk to in the Aus immigration office to get any indication of what was happening. This was very frustrating and an entirely different experience from my application in New Zealand where there was a case officer, I could talk to about what was happening at any time and who was so helpful in updating me. I did try and call a couple of times to get an update to no avail.

AND THEN 20 MONTHS LATER….I GOT IT!

After a painful 20 month wait and a pandemic, I finally received a response from Aussie immigration on 3 Feb 2021 by email to let me know that my Partner (Provisional) (subclass 309): had been approved! And then the next day on 4 Feb I received an email to say that my Partner (subclass 100) visa had also been approved which is the permenant one.

Now, this is super exciting, but since applying mine and Lucas’s plans had changed dramatically. As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, we abandoned our plans to immediately move to Aus and we have hunkered down in New Zealand since (including buying a house). This was lucky as it took so long for the visa to come through that our October 2020 date for moving wouldnt have really worked out anyway.

But now we are settled here and I also have a visa which cost me almost $9000 dollars. The visa activates when I fly into Australia, and I am meant to fly there within the year in order to do that. In theory this would be fine I could just go and activate it and then come back to New Zealand but it also has travel conditions which may cause problems. There is also added drama of the lockdowns and border closures! I need to do a bit more research into what is the best approach for me now.that I have the visa but may not want to live there for at least a few years. If I had to go through this process ever again I would be devestated!

But thats where we are for now, and I am wishing you luck with your Australian Partnership Visa application if you are going through it right now. Fingers crossed and hopefully my story helps you a bit!

Good luck!