To anyone who has tried to bring a loved one into Australia (ie: a resident of another country), my sympathies are with you. The process of writing up a visa application to the Australian Immigration is tortuous and doubly so if you choose to do it yourself, without an agent.

Ann has been arduously plowing through her own visa application document online, something which I have had to assist her with from time to time. To a non-native speaker of English, the wordscape of these forms is harrowing. Questions are often repetitive and so framed that even an English native might squint in confusion. This is no criticism of the the document design. Governments of all stripes are universally careful about who should enter and stay and fraud needs to exposed. So rigour is to be expected.

Supplementary materials are an addition to the online application and are an essential support. But I can't begin to tell you how difficult and trans-national the collection of this data is. We are about half-way through the process and I find my head spinning each time I consult the appendix of required documents. It's spinning now as I contemplate photos and testimonials and certified this and that.

But is has to be done.