freebo

Nope, nothing yet. I called & asked the council but they said normal wait was anything from 2-6 months. We did our test around May too.

Just down to personal preference really, many parts of Bris feel old fashioned to me, which I understand many people like. GC is a modern city on the beach, Brisbane is an older city on a river. Where I live I'm surrounded by large waterfont and golf course properties, shops, marina's, nice restaurants etc etc and I'm 10 mins from the nearest beach, when I choose to visit. I don't much care about classical "culture" but we have the blues & jazz fests, & lots of other events year round. Plenty of sporing facilities and many more coming when we host the Commonwealth Games, local AFL and NRL teams (not doing well, granted), a racetrack etc etc. Honestly, if I had to live in Brisbane I'd rather move to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, even Perth but this is the best city in Aus for me, I've loved it since I first arrived in 1989, suburban Brisbane just does nothing for me, I tried it once, lived in Kangaroo Point for a year, it was OK & handy for the CBD but really, I like the GC so much more. Its horses for courses, good job we don't all like the same things...

Gold Coast city goes all of the way to Logan where it has a boundary with Brisbane city, so the suburbs to the north are actually part of the GC. If by Gold Coast you mean Surfers (which is a common misconception) I don't go there more than once a month and that's usually passing through, but I much prefer my part of the Gold Coast to anywhere I've seen in Brisbane, and I've seen a lot of it, in fact if I didn't have to work in Brisbane I would probably never go there.

We did a round trip to Longreach a few months ago, which is kind of the edge of the outback, long drives most days, especially the last one when we did Charleville back to Gold Coast, overall it was about 2,800 km's in a week (some crazy guys at work actually suggested driving to Uluru & back in 10 days, about 8,000kms :eek:) Anyway, things we found helpful. Audiobooks, just to break up the journey. In country areas avoid dawn & dusk, too many bouncing creatures on the road, saw a heap of dead roo's by the roadside - you really don't want to hit one in a hire car (or any car really). Petrol, no need for a jerry but don't even think about stretching a tankful, do some planning around distance to next town and we also tended to fill up every time we saw a servo and where less than half full, similar strategy for toilet breaks, in reverse... Be really careful passing Road Trains, they are bigger and quite a lot faster than you'd think. If you're in any way fussy choose your accommodation carefully, some country motels are very basic, and often that's all there is. You probably won't be going anywhere quite that remote on your trip but some may apply anyway and sounds like you're not planning to go too far each day which is a good thing - easy to spend the entire day on the road if you're not realistic with planning (I know a guy who often does Melbourne to Gold Coast in a single 24 hour DAY :SLEEP:)

Depends if you have kids and want to do the Theme Parks etc, there is also the hinterland and also Brisbane and Sunshine coast are both within easy reach of the Gold Coast, you could easily spend 2 weeks doing all of these, one week may not be enough. Despite some folk disparaging it GC is the most popular place in Australia for Australians to go on holiday. In terms of your trip, we have done it in two separate journeys, i.e. Melb-Syd and Syd-Gold Coast. For the Melbourne bit I remember Lakes Entrance being nice and also Bega/Tahra/Narooma. Between Syd and GC we only stayed in Port McQuarie which is a nice little seaside town one night and did the whole trip in a long days drive on the way back, I did think Coffs was nothing special (apart from the Big Banana of course!)

They've been dealt a terrible hand but they do have a small amount of blame for this one, flying 1,000 feet over the exclusion zone (to save fuel??) when many other airlines are avoiding the area. No, I wouldn't fly with them, and the prevailing sentiment here means PC is correct, they'll likely go bust because of this, unless they are owned by or will be bailed out by their govt.

I've lived on the GC for 10 years and haven't seen any crime, so that's 16 years between us. As you say, there's crime everywhere, the news seems to focus on the Gold Coast but when I lived in Sydney there seemed to be a murder in the "inner West" every other week. If anyone has the stat's for number of crimes per 100,000 residents for various towns I'd love to see them. So, no, in my opinion such a place does not exist, nowhere is totally safe, you might find somewhere with, say 8 robberies per 100,000 people rather than 10 but would that really make you feel much better? You live somewhere, you like it and have seen no problems, do you really want to uproot yourself just because of what you hear on the news, which is overblown anyway as far as I can see? One suggestion is to look at the gated communities around Hope Island & Helensvale, we live in one and security cruises past every half hour or so, we do it because we like the area (and have to commute to Brisbane), not for the security but I quite like that aspect too now. Anyway - just did a quick google and crime rates on the GC are way down since the bikie crackdown - http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/no-we-run-this-town-police-statistics-show-bikie-crackdown-is-working/story-fnj94idh-1226781158035 - but of course we didn't hear so much about that on the news! A bit more research http://www.police.qld.gov.au/ lets you view crime stats per suburb, for the GC Surfers & Southport are highish but the rest of the suburbs don't seem to have a huge amount of crime, no more so than similar areas of, say Brisbane.

Raby bay might be a similar commute but Bribie would be further. Anyway, enough of this property porn (the brissy river one was nice for an older place though, but again a long way from the beach :smile:). I'm off to fire up the buggy (its electric) and on to the pub then a meal at the local (excellent) Italian restaurant! :cool:

Water, jetty, open preserve outlook, they probably all exist in Brissy but not at the price, also it was gated which I think isn't as common there. Regardless as I said each to their own, I'd prefer to be down here but anyone considering it needs to be aware the commute is painful.

Sure, and the home I used was just picked at mid level from realestate, we sold our place last year (pics below) and we're in the process of building on the golf course at S Cove. I know that new homes can be found in Brissy too, but round here its easy to find them in easy reach of water, shops, restaurants and bars etc etc, on a weekend sometimes the car doesn't move, we walk or golf buggie everywhere. I definitely prefer a modern home though and each to their own. Bet you'd be cold in a QLDer at the moment? its bad enough in the newish place we're in at the moment! Our old place, which tbh I'm not sure I could have got in Brisbane, definately there's no-where like where we're living now in Bris:

We love it, but of course its not the cheapest place. Depends what you're after really, is there anything specific you need to know? We like the peace, security, resident kangaroo's, living here is like being on holiday and we all get around on golf buggies (handy for going to the village for drinks & dinner).

Although there is a beach 10 mins away at Paradise Point we hardly ever go to the beach during the week. I should emphasise though, even though I love the Gold Coast I'm personally not particularly a beachy person, we have a pool & we use that more often than travelling to the beach, although its fabulous when we do and usually we go to Main Beach, sometimes Broadbeach, Miami or Currumbin, they're all stunning, largely empty, spotless and visually amazing with the high-rises in the backdrop. When I've talked about distance to beaches etc its been in response to posters who obviously place importance on that, not because its the main thing for me. So, what is the reason I do the commute rather than live in Brisbane? Gold Coast (rather than Surfers Paradise which as you know is just a small suburb) and Brisbane are very different places. Brisbane is a huge, sprawling city with miles upon miles of residential neighbourhoods and a relatively small city centre on the river. Nothing wrong with that, but it has an older, more historic feel about it, lots of people love the victorian architecture and Queenslander style homes but to be honest they don't do much for me and this is probably a key difference, so an aspirational type of home in a Brisbane suburb is probably something like this: Gold Coast on the other hand is a new, modern city built against the pacific ocean no history beyond the 50's, no really old buildings but the city is a forrest of highrises, skyscrapers with an ocean backdrop. When I visit the surf its either on our boat or to have coffee or breakfast in a surf club overlooking the ocean. More to follow - laptop battery running out! This would be a typicalish aspirational N Gold coast house (don't know how to make it bigger). The houses would be similar in price depending on exact suburb, the gold coast one could be on water for a bit more, some prefer one, some the other. So, for us its the lifestyle, the area, the water etc etc. I don't mind Brisbane but if I didn't worth there would rarely feel the need to visit. I fully take the point that if all you care about is beach you'd drive less to visit on a weekend but for us its about a lot more than that, as I said I think you're either a Gold Coast person or a Brisbane one, I'm definitely Gold Coast and luckily after all of these years have a job where I should be able to work some of the time from home, because be under no illuision, the commute is a major pain by road or public transport and its a major sacrifice to live in what I consider to be the best city in Australia.

We live in Sanctuary Cove next to Hope Island, average commute takes about an hour into the city but this can vary. Key is to be near the freeway and at the North end of the GC (which is not on the beach but close by). I've written a lot about the commute - can't recommend it, we choose to do it but that's our choice. Seems to me there are Brisbane folk and GC folk, some prefer one, some the other. Me, I just love the Gold Coast, always have, spent nearly 10 years living there and to me its just one of the best cities on Earth, I mean how can you get past this:

No, seriously it wouldn't. The Southbank beach is a couple of hundred meters of sand on a man made lake in a park in Brisbane. Gold Coast and Sunny Coast beaches streach for tens od miles, are usually deserted, have pacific surf and compare with anywhere in the world. I'm not knocking Brisbane but I drive 2 hours a day so I can live on the Gold Coast.

Hi, We just had our citizenship approved and we'll be doing our ceremony on the Gold Coast, has anyone done theirs recently & roughly how long was the wait? Cheers,

We used Alan Colette's company, Go Matilda & would highly recommend them.

Yep, sounds about right to me, did you expect everyone to love you and thank you for being an American? Don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed visiting the states a number of times but its far from perfect, for the reasons you list above among others. I also find it amusing/galling when Americans automatically assume the USA is the greatest nation on earth, usually when they haven't visited any or many of the others, although I do understand that this is indoctrination. On a recent business trip to San Francisco I was shocked at the level of abject poverty and desperation of its massive homeless population, I saw elderly people hardly clothed shivering in freezing temperatures begging on the streets of the financial district while high paid bank workers brushed by. Meanwhile the financial elite enjoy obscene incomes and the corporations and the military industrial complex have the government in their pocket. So, welcome to Australia, open your eyes and you just might see a freer, better educated, wealthier, healthier, happier more equal and safer society than the one you're used to, if you're lucky we might even give you a visa but we will always give you a fair go.

The ones at Kingfisher Boulevard, Hope Island look smaller than 70sq/m from the outside, and you could reach out of the window & touch next door.

I've loaned mine to a few people and everyone who's read it has stopped, but, I've loaned it to twice as many who "never got round" to reading it, you have to want to stop and many people are afraid to amazingly, I was too but life without cigs is so much better and I don't miss them at all, just wish I had done it sooner.

Its not just migrants willing to accept lower pay, its that migrant quota's need to be (and will be) reduced when unemployment increases. This has always happened in the past, and will happen again IMHO. Australian skilled migration has been labour market targeted for a long time and for good reason, wish we could have said the same in the UK. The downside of the current policy is someone can come in PR with a particular skill, then never work in that field in Australia, I remember this was true of hairdressers, they let huge numbers of them in but still had a shortage, because those that came in found higher paid work in non-hairdressing occupations. A scheme was proposed to not grant PR on entry at all, give everyone TR until they've been here, and worked in their chosen skill, for 3-4 years.

Next Feb it will be 10 years since I stopped, from 20+ a day for 15 years, never touched them or wanted to from day 1. All I did to stop was read a book "Allen Carr's Easyway to stop smoking". I don't have any connection with the book or get anything from them, other than the fact that it saved me thousands and probably extended my life, so I like to spread the word. I've got nothing against smokers and don't mind being in their company (although being around cigs now gives me a sore throat), but I wouldn't want anyone I loved to smoke.

100% Agree, gold isn't really a commodity in the classic sense, it is money.

Broadbeach would be too far for me. We bought a house in Hope Island and drive every day, didn't like the train to be honest, leave at 7, at my desk around 8, head home at 4, get home at 5 I'm just outside the CBD (north) so parking is $8 per day or free with a small walk. Early bird parking in the city seems about $10 and I spend about $100 pw on fuel. Agree with KOG, love living on the Gold coast, have a lovely waterfront house in a secure resort not far from beaches, boating and the broadwater, just wish I could work here too & not travel to bris.

If you haven't done so already apply for jobs in Brisbane. Unemployment is much higher on the GC, I've lived there for a while and would love to have a job on the coast but the only one I've had a hint of was $50k less than I make in Brisbane, downside is the commute. I'm a specialised IT guy and no work for me on the coast, except maybe at council one day but my wife also landed a good job in Brisbane within a couple of weeks of us arriving. The downside is the commute, but that's another story.

We moved Sydney to Gold Coast and its been great, looking like a long hot summer coming too.