Hi Shannon,

My husband and I are in the same sitation as you as well, we're bored with life in the UK and fell in love with NZ last Oct/Nov 05 when we holiday'd for 3 weeks.

We decided in Nov when we came back from our holiday that we were going to make the move, we expained it to the family after they'd had a few drinkies on New Years Eve and have gone full steam ahead organising it since Jan 06.

We've decided to go for the 23 month working holiday visa which you need a simple medical for, this allows you to work 12 months out of the 23 months which suits us, we're not sure if we want to go for PR straight away as we might find 2yrs is enough for us or we get too homesick. We're going to decide about 12 months into our stay what we're going to do as from what I can gather PR etc takes quite a while to sort out.

I've been in my job in the UK for over 6 yrs and approached them in Feb to see if I could get a career break which means I have the opportunity to take 5yrs off and come back to a job if there's one available. This just gives us a bit more security. Dont know if this is something your work would do for you as well especially after 11yrs service! It's always worth a try.

What I would say is that from the day you decide to go its a long and emotional process, we're trying to sell our house at the moment and our move date lies with when the house sells, so it's basically a waiting game.

I hope all goes well and you make the right decision!

Good luck