Explore Western Australia

Here is a nice site detailing various travel destinations when visiting Western Australia.

http://www.west-oz.com/Regions/explore.asp

Time to reflect

In the last few weeks, I've done a lot of thinking, planning, talking, and e-mailing in an effort to determine our future regarding Australia. At this point, I feel like we have a pretty good idea of where we stand.

At first, we were definitely planning on going to Sydney, where I would attend university and we would be living with Heather's relatives until getting settled. But those plans fell through for a number of reasons, and it began to look as if going to Australia was going to be a move that would result in bankruptcy (although we were still considering it - for the sake of our future). Then, I attended an education fair at COEX last weekend, with the original idea of submitting my applications for UTS and the University of Sydney. But I decided a couple days before that to not submit any applications this early, so the fair was merely going to be for information purposes.

Once I got there, I immediately went to the booth for Edith Cowan University, which I had never heard of before. After speaking with a couple of people in the know about programs at ECU and about the city of Perth, I suddenly felt like there was another option on the table. I also spoke to people from a number of universities in Brisbane and Melbourne, but the available programs at ECU, both at the Masters and PhD level, seemed most appealing.

I went home and began researching Perth and the state of Western Australia, and also emailing various people. Again, the information coming back really seemed to say that going to Perth would be the best way of realizing our dreams of living in Australia and furthering my education.

The advantages:

• very good educational options for me at Edith Cowan University
• free schooling for the kids in Western Australia (we think this is fully true, although I still need to verify this given our unique circumstances)
• Perth is much cheaper to live in than Sydney
• Perth has a great climate

So, it seems like going to Perth in February 2007 is our destiny. I think things may settle down for a while now, as I don't plan on applying until next spring, and I have contacted the people I need to contact to get the information I need for now. Now is the time to wait and see what develops.

Of course, I still have my vacation to Sydney this December to look forward to. I'll still maybe visit the universities there because you never know when another turn of events might happen to change our minds.

Til next time...

Information and scholarship links to keep in mind

Financing your education in Australia or New Zealand

• information site for Canadian students studying down under

Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan

• scholarship for students from Commonwealth nations

Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarships

• this one is for research students at ECU

Perth's climate

This site gives a quick overview of the climate in Perth, Australia. It looks pretty good to me.

Basically, it's a Mediterranean-style climate, or similar to southern California. That's alright by me.