Centrelink - the beginning

So... the company I worked for went into liquidation, without the funds to pay out employees - either the last month's pay or any entitlements. It turns out the directors had two choices -
liquidation:
they stop trading, lose all their investment, lose all their entitlements, creditors lose their money but employees' entitlements are covered by a government scheme (eventually), or
memorandum of understanding (or something like that):
they continue trading, creditors get one or two cents in the dollar for their debts, BUT all employee entitlements are lost
So it turns out that liquidation was the better thing for all employees, which is a (very) small consolation.

Anyway, this means that for the first time in my life, I needed to get 'the dole' - which turns out to be called Newstart Allowance in its current incarnation.

So Dave and I head to our local Centrelink on the Wednesday (company closed down on a Tuesday)... I have no paperwork or anything at that time - only the comments from the liquidator the day before that we would get a Certificate of Separation and that starting the process earlier rather than later would be good.

If there was one funny moment in this whole process, this was it: the look on the kind Centrelink guy's face when he asked me for my name and date of birth and I didn't come up on their system. So he asked me again, put it in again, then turned to me and said 'You haven't been here before'.... Yep - that's the way it is. I'm 44 years old and never been to Centrelink (in any of its incarnations) - he was totally shocked! :-)

So then we explained the situation, I cried quietly in the corner and we were on the system.