We love Bundy and Bargara - happy to answer any qs you have.
Bundy is a small regional city which has all the retail you'd expect - big box electrical and hardware shops etc. Two indoor shopping centres. Unlike a lot of Aus places it has also retained a nice main street (Bourbong Street) with lots of planting and small shops. lot more local shops and less chains than a UK high street. Entertainment there's a multiple- screen cinema, theatre and a good little regional art gallery as well as parks etc, and a couple of specialist museums - Hinkler hall of aviation and the sugar museum. Quite a good range of cafes and bars and restaurants but no real high end ones. The most exclusive one is probably Spinnakers on the river but it's really only a surf and turf type place. Having said that there's good Thai, Italian and a really nice seafood place - Grunskes by the river.
Night life is surprisingly good with a few good bars and quite a few having live music and / or djs on Friday and Saturday night. Our favourites are the Customs bar and the club hotel. A number of Aussie and international acts include Bundy on their tours. We've recently seen The Potbelleez ( who opened Sydney NYE celebrations in 2012) Birds of Tokyo (Aussie indie chart band) in Bundy and comedy - Ross Noble from the UK. For a city fix - Brisbane is easy to get to and has great museums, restaurants, nightlife etc
I'm from Cornwall originally but lived in the Midlands for a long time so the opportunity to live by the ocean was hard to resist. Bargara is a great small town, great beaches, a few restaurants and bars, two supermarkets and a few small shops, baker, butcher newsagent etc. It's an easy 15 - 20 minute commute to Bundy and there's a few routes in. A lot of imports to Bundy Aus and overseas live at Bargara so the demographic is changing as it was traditionally more of retirement place. We've just Moved into a house we've had built after renting for two years so that's been great.
We've made lots of friends, ex Brits and Australian and have found people to be very welcoming here. It is a different culture though and you need to be prepared to embrace that. A lot of people who it doesn't work for seem to be expecting UK in the sun. Aussies work hard - the work ethic is probably stronger than the uk - but play hard too.
We do have rain and once you're acclimatised you'll notice the seasonal temp differences. We don't tend to swim May to October. But to be fair even in middle of winter the ocean isn't too different to the UK in summer. We've been finding it cold recently with nights dipping down below 10 degrees but middle of day it still gets up to early 20s. Looking forward to spring and summer though
Lots of schooling / child care options. Private schooling less elite and cheaper than the uk so more people use it. There are also some good state schools and a couple who's reputation isn't so good - just like anywhere.