It took us a big bag of patience, a good dose of organisation, some help from the family in Cape Town, some multiple visits to the police and the immigration department (especially for medical visits), and off course some $$ but today we are happy to have passed all these administrative hurdles. We are officially Permanent Residents in Australia.
We can go in and out the country, we have a wider choice of eventual jobs (even with governmental agencies), we can claim the social benefits (mainly medical insurance), we can pay less if we decide to study again, and we might still discover more advantages of being a resident.
See ya, mate!