We are going to get forwarding tickets rather than return - to Australia. This obviously works out cheaper and suits us.

How about this for complicated. We will go out on the Visitor on 25 June. Hubby will have a forwarding ticket on 27th July to Melbourne (where he will meet someone) and a return ticket from Melbourne to London. On his return to Melbourne late September, we will use our forwarding tickets to go to Melbourne to meet him and have a few days break. Somewhere during this time we should get our PR.

Guess a chat with the travel agents should give an indication of how 'open' a ticket can be. I need to do that too.