The Australian Partner Visa process is intense and probably one of the best tests that your relationship will face! We’ve shared various articles over the last few years about our experience going through the process. We recently answered the most popular questions we have received in our Australian Partner Visa Application FAQ’s article and today we’re sharing the details of what we included in the Australian Partner Visa Social Aspects of Relationship section.
Joint statement of the social aspects of our relationship
We started our statement by introducing our social lives. We spend almost all our time outside of work together and enjoy socialising with friends and family. When I first arrived in England, Dan and our housemates had a surprise Australian themed BBQ and since then we often socialised with Dan’s friends (who very quickly became my friends as well) at BBQ’s, the pub, camping trips and other social events.
As a couple, we were invited to weddings, engagement parties, birthday parties, work social events and Simone’s brothers wedding in Australia which we were attending a few weeks after we submitted the visa. We explained that Dan was really looking forward to properly seeing Port Macquarie (where I grew up) and meeting the rest of my family and friends.
I met Dan’s family in person very early after arriving in the UK and got along well with them. We speak to the weekly and often visit his mum on weekends. We spent my first Christmas away from home with my family and was welcomed into Dan’s family for this special day. We also skyped my family in Australia and spoke to them on Christmas Day which was great. We speak to my family and friends weekly via Skype, Facebook messages and calling.
My parents came to visit for three weeks and the four of us travelled to Ireland together for a long weekend, we also visited Brighton and Leeds Castle and we also helped them to plan their trip in the months leading up to their arrival as they also visited Paris, Scotland and London. It was really good for us to spend time with them and they really liked Dan and all got on well. We spent a lot of time talking about our future plans and they told us how happy they were to see us both so happy together and how supportive they were of our relationship.
I also had a number of friends come to visit as well as my brother and his girlfriend. We wrote about how they all stayed with us in our shared home and what we did during their visits.
We wrote about how we enjoy health and fitness and cooking good meal and exercising. We enjoy hiking and our favourite hikes to date had been to Mt Snowdon in Wales and the Walk of the Gods on the Amalfi Coast. We wrote about how we would go to the gym together and that we were supportive of each other’s health and fitness goals.
We then spoke about how we both share a love of travel and that most of our spare money after bills goes towards travelling. Together at this point we had travelled to Morocco, Belgium, Italy, France, Wales, Ireland and a lot of England. We wrote about the blog and how we share the responsibilities of this and how we enjoy it.
We finished our statement by saying that we support each other socially at all times and enjoy spending time with friends and family as well as spending the majority of our time together!
Evidence to support the Social aspects of the relationship
At the end of the statement, we wrote another heading titled ‘Evidence to support the Social aspects of the relationship’ where we listed in dot point form all the documents that we had uploaded which supported this section of the visa application.
- Social invitations (joint invites to weddings, birthday parties and Simone’s brothers wedding in Australia in September 2015).
- Statutory declarations (888’s) from Australian citizens supporting the nature of the relationship.
- Additional statements from family and friends that are non-Australian citizens supporting the nature of the relationship.
- Cards to us from others and a painting from Dan’s niece.
- Facebook screenshots showing when we first started our relationship, mutual friends, joint travel, anniversary posts etc.
- Screenshots from our Travel blog.
- Early evidence from our relationship which includes of shared hotel booking in Lima (Peru), Simone’s UK visa application process, a copy of Simone’s certified UK Visa which shows the date I arrived in Australia and a copy of my flights from Australia to England in May 2015.
- Evidence of joint gym membership.
- Our oyster travel cards for travel in London.
- Document with photos from significant events together and photos with friends and family.
- Evidence of joint travel (including flight and train tickets to Brussels, Paris, Italy, Morocco and Sydney. We also included bookings for hotels and campsites on the Isle of Wight and in Cornwall, Sydney and Gold Coast, as well as tickets for the London New Years Eve fireworks.
We then ended the document with both our signatures, names and the date.
Hopefully this may help you when applying for and completing the Australian Partner Visa Social Aspects of Relationship section. We provided as much personal information about our lives and the intricacies of the financial aspects of our relationship.
Please feel free to leave us a comment if this helps you out or you have any questions. You can also read our other articles on the Australian Partner Visa Process:
- Australian Partner Visa Application FAQ’s
- How our Australian Partner Visa was Granted in Six Months
- Australian Partner Visa: What we included as Evidence of the Financial Aspects of our Relationship
DISCLAIMER: We are by no means migration agents or legal professionals, just two people who have been through the process and wanting to share our experience to hopefully help others in this article about the Australian Partner Visa Social Aspects of Relationship section.
Please don’t rely on our information alone, we don’t hold any responsibility if it is not factually correct (as it is just based on our own personal experience), or if dates, prices or requirements change.
