WTF - to take your stuff or not?

What you want:
To easily settle into your new life in Australia.

What you think:
Not sure whether to take your things with you or not. Some say yes, some say no...

What they DON'T tell you:
Our thought process started with listening to advice from 'others'. Bear in mind that each experience is unique, so you need to make up your own mind based on limited information. We were told that it's better to sell up everything and buy again when we arrived in Australia due to strict quarantine laws, different furniture styles, cheaper prices, etc. We were also told to hang on to everything for exactly the opposite reasons.

In the end, we compromised.

The obvious things that won't go through customs, like feathers, untreated wooden African souvenirs, anything made out of cane or grasses, or mud/clay, we gave away or sold. This included our lawnmower, weed eater and camping gear.

The other limitation was the container size. It's 30 cubic meters, which was 6 meters by 2 meters by 2 meters. Into this must go your whole life's gathering! Quite a challenge.
This had an upside - we finally tossed away all the crap that we clung onto for the last 20 years and moved from storage cupboard to cupboard and house to house and never used/looked at/ even knew existed until we tried to throw it away and couldn't.
I found this a very cleansing process - decluttering your life is amazing and refreshing. Even if you're not moving, I highly recommend it!
This included clothes, shoes, duplicate appliances, old sentimental furniture, papers and other rubbish.

We also decided not to take any vehicles with as the import duties are very high, and cars are about 30% cheaper to buy in Australia - I'll post about this later.

I also left my Jetski for the same reason.

...and yes, we did take our electrical appliances and TVs and hi-fi's etc - the power supply is the same as South Africa, so all it involved was a trip to Bunnings (similar to Makro in South Africa) to buy 25 new plugs and a morning to change them and everything worked just fine.
The only catch is that your TV has to be able to use the PAL B/G format. South Africa uses PAL I, so check this before taking the TV with. Most modern TVs can switch between the formats though.

We ended up taking only our best quality, most useful and most loved stuff and it was a very good decision!

I cannot tell you what a wonderful feeling it was when everything arrived thousands of kilometers away in our new country! It immediately makes your house feel like home, and settles you. And it's not a materialistic view - many things you own have good memories attached to them. We're very glad we decided to ship our stuff.

Another upside - settling into Australia is a lot of work initially - you don't know your way around, or where to find or buy anything. You also don't recognise brands or know what good or poor quality suppliers are, so I imagine having to buy your whole life back quickly would lead to some costly and regrettable decisions.

The next post will discuss relocation companies and our experience with them...