What happens during the waiting game: http://goo.gl/Y5cqma
Usually the first notification you will have your Australian visa application has been assigned to a Department of Immigration case officer is an email directly from the case officer.
The Department of Immigration case officer will review your application forms and the evidence you have gathered and assess your eligibility for the visa subclass against the Australian Migration Law, Regulations and Policy.
The Department of Immigration case officer will either grant the visa application or request further information to support the application so they are satisfied it meets Migration Law, Regulations and Policy. For example, if you have applied for a partner visa, spouse visa, de facto visa or prospective marriage visa the case officer may request you to provide more evidence of your relationship to be satisfied your relationship meets the "genuine and continuing" relationship criteria.
Further requests for other types of visas may include health or character checks or clarification on any points the case officer is not sure about or information they may have doubts about in terms of genuineness for example.
If your case officer requests further information they will usually give you a deadline to provide the additional evidence and/or information within 28 days. You should try to do everything in your power to meet this deadline. It is in your best interests to meet the deadline for three reasons, 1) the sooner you get your documents back the sooner the case officer can make a decision on your case and 2) if you miss the deadline the case officer may decide your application without the requested documents which is likely to lead to a visa refusal and 3) the case officer is working on other cases in their caseload and will work on the cases as the documents arrive in date order.
It is usually possible to get a further extension if totally necessary, this should be avoided but we have never had an extension request denied. If you do have an extension request denied, you should request the case officer speak to their team leader, manager, principal migration officer or senior migration officer or put you in touch with them. We would do the same if we were denied the first request for an extension as we would consider this unfair and unreasonable decision making.
You need to allow the case officer time to process your case once they have been allocated the file. They will normally grant it as soon as they can, however, keep in mind the service standard for that type of visa at the Departmental Officer where you have lodged your Australian visa application.
The time taken to process visa applications varies around the world, depending what country the Australian Embassy is located. There are local factors to take into account including the number of staff versus the number of applications lodged, the local public holidays, any sick or personal leave your case officer may take and their working arrangements, for example, some case officers do not work full time and are only in the office part time.
We do not recommend you contact the Department of Immigration with enquiries as this delays the process as they take a lot of time to respond to all of the enquiries in their inbox. The more time they take to do this, takes them away from their more important work of processing applications.
If you believe the case officer is taking far too long to respond, has not acknowledge your response or provsion of information or documents or your application has gone beyond the advertised processing times, then we suggest to contact the case officer with a copy to the Australian Embassy general email address for the relevant visa section.
Remember, until you have that grant notifcation you cannot make any major plans such a flight bookings, quitting jobs or selling houses.