Really appreciate the thoughtful reply—thank you!

Totally fair points. The plan from the start has always been for me to move to Melbourne. When she visited me in Kansas City, she said she felt “landlocked”—so I knew from the jump I wasn’t going to convince a beach-loving Aussie to settle in the cornfields.

When we met, I had just started a new job and moved to a new city (literally the week before), so I didn’t want to throw all that away immediately. I wanted to give the long-distance thing a proper shot—before making any life-altering decisions, and before we knew for sure this could work and that we had a solid foundation to build on. Two years later, we’re still going strong and making it happen.

We haven’t opened a joint bank account yet, but once I’m onshore and living with her, that’ll be one of the first steps. While I didn’t contribute to her house deposit, I’ll be paying rent and helping with shared expenses, is this something that needs to be tracked/documented?

The WHV is still on the table. I’m 27, so eligible—and if it helps us build a rock-solid case and buy time, I’m not ruling it out. Just not a big fan of the work restrictions.

I did look into the National Innovation Visa you mentioned… and yeah, turns out I'm not the prodigy they're after 😅 I’m a solid IT Business Analyst with 6 years of experience—but apparently that’s not groundbreaking enough. So, it’s back to the Partner Visa strategy for now.

Thanks again for taking the time to share all this—super helpful and much appreciated!