Are you finally set on taking a gap year in Australia? Australia has agreements with several countries for their Working Holiday Visa and great news! Singapore is one of them!

So what can you do with an Australian Working Holiday Visa (Sub Class 462)?

1. Travel in Australia for up to a year without having to leave the country
2. Enter and exit Australia for as many times as you want within the 1 year period
3. Be eligible to work part time (up to 6 months for each employer) in Australia to fund your travels
4. Take up an internship in Australia
5. Study part time for up to 4 months!
6. Have the time of your life 😉

Interested? Read on!

Before WHV Application (Preparation for Application)

Go to the VFS website here and read up about the requirements. (It’s the official agency to apply for your Australian WHV visa)

Here’s what you need (or rather, what we needed for our application) ; don’t worry. We will guide you 🙂

• Photocopy of Passport
• Photocopy of IC
• Photocopy of Birth Cert
• Passport Photo
• Past 3 months bank account statement
• O Level Transcript (to show that you have a certain level of English proficiency)
• A Level/Poly Transcript
• University Transcript (if you are still schooling)
• Student Status Letter (proof that you are a student); requirements might be different if you are already working!
• Completed Form 1208
• AUD450 application fee (check the website for the actual SGD amount
  • Only by cash or cheque
• S$170++ for the compulsory medical checkup
• Have min AUD5000 to prove that you can survive there (and extra for flights there and back)

 

Step 1: 

Make sure you have min AUD5000 (or equivalent) in your bank account (for 3 months, since they want to see your bank statement for the past 3 months). (AKA earn enough money)

If you haven’t bought your flight yet (and you shouldn’t), make sure you have another extra AUD1000 (or equivalent) to be safe, since they need you to show that you have enough money to fly out of Australia.

• You also need to set aside money for the health checkup (~S$170) and the visa fee (~S$533).

Overview of costs:

1. Australian embassy (VFS)
   • S$533
2. Health checkup
   • S$170
3. Min bank account
   • AUD 5000 ~ S$5000
4. Flight price
   • ~S$1000

Total: ~ >S$6703 (to be safe)

Step 2: 

Start to fill up Form 1208 to get the ball rolling 🙂 You can find it on this website.

Step 3:

Collate the documents required for the visa application. Full list of required documents can be found here.

Step 4:

You can either do your health checkup first, or your visa application first; although they stated that it’ll be faster to do the health checkup first, we got our visa relatively fast too by doing our visa application first! (2 weeks)

Go to this website by VFS Global to schedule your appointment for the visa application. You will need to create an account to book the appointment.

Step 5:

After your appointment, you will receive an email regarding the confirmation of your application, along with an attached document stating that you are required to go for the health checkup. There are a few clinics that offer health checkups for the Australia WHV. The list can be found here under “Panel Physician”.

Take note of the HAT ID found in the attached document as the clinic requires the ID before you are able to book your health checkup.

We went to the SATA CommHealth Clinic in Ang Mo Kio for our health checkup. It would be easier if you dropped them a call to book your appointment 🙂

The health checkup took us around an hour (we went on weekday) to complete. Just take note, the checkup might take longer if you are there on a weekend! The clinic will directly send your information to the embassy, so after that, you just have to wait for the green light! 😉

(VFS might call you for more information regarding certain stuff, so just answer them and be truthful about it! There have been cases where people were rejected from the visa for lying 😦 )

 

AAAAND, that’s it! 🙂 Hope this has helped you in your visa application process and all the best for your application! 😉

Sidenote: We’ll be in Aussie from Feb 2019! Let us know if you’ll be there and we could meet! 😉