Just a quick intro about myself and my family we are Mark and Debbie and 3 kids Amy 9,Lathan 2.4 and Ellen-Mae 9 months.
We received our stni visa grant letter last week and are still in a state of shock as we didn't expect this to happen before June/July we only did our meds in March!
Anyway we have been talking to our settlement officer in the ACT goverment and they have been really helpful with the rental questions,Job info etc but we really are interested in finding out about all the usual things cost of living, work,schools,getting to know people in fact anything really it sounds a great place with a real balance but I know it gets a bad press from some other quarters so lets have the truth now!
Look foward to making new friends and being a Canberran I think thats the right?
Yup, you are half way there already! Canberran indeed!!!
How can we help? I am happy to give you the low down on schools but not on a public forum
Where do you think you will be living? The best site for ACT real estate is actually allhomes.com.au & allclassifieds.com.au it has a much larger range than realestate.com.au and it has a rental section as well. I guess it all depends what you want with respect to housing as to where you will want to live. Pretty much everything here is new (but not in a Milton Keynesish way thank goodness) with everything being built post 1900. We have some rapidly increasing outer suburbs with Tuggeranong blossoming in the 90s and Gungahlin in the 00s. I am an inner northern girl - I live in Ainslie which was once a real working class suburb but being within 4 km of town it is now being gentrified and medium density-ized but we live in a grotty little 3 bed weatherboard with granny flat on a quarter acre. For the cost of our house you could get a 4 bed two bath with rumpus room on a tiddly block out in Gungahlin. Also, how long do you want to be travelling to work each day, how reliant will you be on public transport (this is pretty much a car type town), whereabouts will you be working???? Best idea is to log on to Google Earth and see what it looks like from space. The inner areas are the ones with more trees!
It only gets bad press because of the bl**dy politicians who come here irregularly and so all the bad national news is prefaced with "Canberra said...." etc. It is full of grey faced public servants (sort of true) but for every grey faced shiny bum there is a vibrant private sector individual making up for them (joke!). No, the major industry is the public service. Rumour has it that the PS is going to be slashed and burned in the budget next week so the price of homes may dip for a while which could be a good thing for you!
We are about 90 mins from the coast if you keep to the limit and about 3 hours to Sydney. We can get to the ski fields in a couple of hours and you can see the bush from wherever you are in Canberra. It is developing quite a nice little cafe culture so you can get a half decent latte almost anywhere. It is based on 5 town centres, three of which are on lakes but each suburb has its own little shopping centre - some are more vibrant than others though I must admit (Ainslie is good). Basically it is more like a big sophisticated country town than a city and for all that the Sydney/Melbourne folk say it lacks soul, I think it is beginning to develop more of a community soul than the bigger cities. Lots of things to do for kids, good sporting facilities and kids groups of all descriptions.
Many thanks for the reply and I have already seen much of your work so to speak in making the incommers feel welcome the" Guru of Canberra" one might say and most welcome by all!
We are very much driven by schools as are many like ourselves so I will work out from there all other issues on location etc and i am happy to use public transport(don't laugh)cause a feel the green urge and after years of driving in London would welcome any other mode of transport but please do comment on what appears to be a fairly extensive and cheap bus service in ACT.
In the same breath we would also like to walk to school and be able to send all 3 to the same place(we don't want much as you can see)but I have looked at Amaroo with the above in mind looked an impressive campus and excellent facilities but again would welcome your comments(privately in you prefer).
It all seems well thought out even if some say it lacks a bit of soul we feel it is a great place to start our new life in AUS-its the people who make the place not the place if you follow my meaning!
Really, schools are going to be the least of your problems! Schools are much of a muchness but I will pm you with ones to avoid!!!! You have to live in your home 24/7 so better get that right or you will be unhappy. Amaroo is one of the newest suburbs - if you have a look on Google earth you will see big houses on small blocks without too much vegetation. It is about 18 km from Civic and even though we now have a super new "Gungahlin Drive Extension" which takes some of the pressure off, it takes about 20 - 30 minutes to drive into town. There is a good public transport network with buses going every half hour (to high density places) or less frequently to other places. They have tried to economize so if you are going from A to B you could go via woop woop and timbuctu in the process so you probably wouldnt want to be in a hurry on the bus unless you are going between interchanges. Canberra is a good cycling city - not great hills (although there is a bit of a rise on the way out to Gungahlin!) but you would have to be a bit dedicated to bike in from Amaroo (my DH used to cycle 20km each way every day in the opposite direction but he is a bit of a nut!). We have a super bike path network including an on street network. Taking the bus is a bit cheaper than parking your car in Civic - you can park your car for $10 per day on the rooftop of the shopping centre (cheaper in other places if you can find a space!). If you get a bus ticket you can get a 10 ride ticket for $22 (monthly tickets are proportionately cheaper of course but never buy one)
We have a thriving Catholic system alongside the government school system - by the time kids hit High School, parents are voting with their feet and almost 50% send their kids to private schools. The primaries are OK. You may have preferences for the type of school you want - we have one lot of schools of older design where you have classrooms with walls and doors but we also have a number (all of them in Tuggeranong for example) which are built in open space design - pods of 4 teaching areas which are with movable walls if there are walls at all. So you can have up to 120 kids in quite a small space with their 4 teachers. The ambient noise level can be quite high and if you have children who need few distractions they can be challenging. I think Amaroo has a cross between the two but it is a long time since I have been out there. Amaroo is a k -10 school and is getting to be one of the bigger schools so if your kids are used to small schools that could be a bit of culture shock. Gold Ck school, also in that area is a k -10 but the 6 - 10 is on a different campus across the oval. Gold Ck also shares a primary site with a Catholic school and you have hundreds of kids seething around at play times. You know your kids best though and know what will appeal to them/shock them.
Do you know where you will be working? That could have a bearing on where you look for houses. If you are going to be working down in Tuggeranong you dont want to be living in Amaroo (not unless you are a masochist anyway!) and the converse is true if you are going to be working in Belconnen. I must admit to a very soft spot for the inner north - I walk the 2 miles into work most days (OK, so I do catch the bus home which is cheating a bit!) - but some of Ainslie is lovely and Hackett is one of the hidden gem type suburbs that no one ever talks about (the local PS, in Watson, is excellent). There are some nice places in Watson too. Not big and flashy but solid with nice gardens. Alternatively, places like Yarralumla (by the lake), Campbell and Reid are nice established areas and not too mediumdensity-ized. They are more $$$ though. Whatever you go for, just try and avoid battleaxe blocks - they tend to have a higher burglary rate (blocks that sit behind other homes and dont have a street frontage).
I know several of the folk who have come here recently have settled out in Gungahlin and seem to be quite happy out there.
So, when will you be coming? Just ask because we are heading into winter and since Anzac Day we have had a really cold snap so you will be wanting to bring your winter woolies. It warms up in about mid September and we will be back in shorts and t shirts about then!
I have been checking out Mollymock and Ulladulla on google earth as they appear closet as the crow flies form Canberra and they look pretty damm good to me!I also know that Batemans Bay is a very popular haunt with Canberrans have you ever been to any of those beaches?
I assume were you are you will go to some closer to Sydney, but as you say that must be hundreds all down NSW-I been told you can even take your car onto the beaches as some are so vast I don't think we could do that on our nearest beach in the height of an Essex short summer that we be classed as mass murder!
