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Hello all,

My name is Ryan and I am an American Expat, currently living in Bahrain.  I am active on the Manama forum of expat-blog and decided to come over to your side of the internet to see if someone could help me with some piece of mind.

I am a science teacher.  I have a BS in Physics and Physics Education with a Masters from Johns Hopkins in Earth and Space Science and Secondary Science Education.  I have 12 years experience, 10 teaching AP curriculum and will have 2 years teaching IB when I complete my contract here.

I have to report in November of this year my plans for the following year - so in 7 months I have to stay or resign from this job almost a full year before I stop working it.    I would like to explore moving to the Canberra or surrounding area in or around July or August 2016.

I have looked at visa information and timelines and skilled worker this and that, but my main question to start - since I am still a long way away from needing to apply for a visa - was about how livable would Canberra be for a single teacher and is there a job demand at all for someone with what I have to offer?

I have looked up the pay scales, but there is no explanation of the increments so I am trying to accurately place where I would fall on the scale, and what roundabout pay it would be.  I don't need a 3 bedroom house or anything fancy, but I left the USA because I was tired of working at bars and restaurants after work just to make enough money to get by.  I do not want to go back to that, especially not voluntarily if I can help it.

I would cherish any help about the process etc.  For my own reasons I would like to be local to the Canberra area, so anything pertaining to teaching, expat-ing, or general salary-to-cost-of-living-for-a-teacher-ing would be very, very appreciated.  I had a search around the site and I didn't find what I was looking for - noticing the rarity of forum posts here.  Fingers crossed someone logs in!

Thank you!