MissionMelbourne

We stayed in Southbank and we visited the Botanical gardens, Albert Park, the AND, the MCG for an AFL game, the Aami for a soccer game, the queen vic night market, Lygon Street, St Kilda, Walked the Yarra, just to mention a few places. We went there with the idea that this could be a place to live and we came away amazed by how much the city has to offer, and we left still with things to visit and experience.

Yeah it's Melbourne all day long for us, much more to our liking

We are just ending a 3.5 trip to Australia which consisted of 9 nights of migration research in Melbourne, then up to Brisbane for a few nights then a Road trip down the east coast ending with 5 nights in Sydney. I have to say, Sydney was the worst place we visited in that time. Compared with what we had seen previously, this place was dreadful. Melbourne and Brisbane had a buzz about them, something unique whereas Sydney just felt like any other, big, over priced, commercialised, boring city. I will say that Darling Harbour and the Rocks district of the city are well worth a visit as they do have charm and there is something unique about them. But overall this place is hugely overrated. Even the Opera House is looking shabby up close, missing tiles all over the place. So disappointing.

I think, as humans, we always want what we don't have. In the first instance you didn't have your children with you so you moved back to the UK for them, now you're back in the UK you want Aus, which I can totally understand. It's too strong to ask who's being more selfish as you both have emotional ties to different places. I think you need to have a look at the 20 year plan and see what country will provide you with the best life for the rest of your working age and beyond. You'll be retired for at least 20 years which is a bloody eternity when you'll be at home not doing too much, so, to my mind, you need to look at later life comfort, and decide from that, I really hope it works out for you because from that post I can see you're really going through it.

Yeah that's our kind of thing! We will certainly check that out! Thanks!

Yes I feel the same about the UK and Aus, hopefully afyer our reccie in March we can press on with the move! Thanks for the reply

I was after an honest reply, and I certainly got that!

And that's the sort of reply I was hoping for! Thanks!

Thanks for the pointers! Can't wait to get amongst it now, been waiting for far too long

Just looking at a few threads on here about issues here in the UK such as the NHS funding gap and a housing shortage makes me wonder if Australia has any related or different issues? We hear a lot in the UK that racism is still a challenge in Australia but that's literally all we hear. Any Australians out there know of, or have any issues with things in their country?

Thanks for the tips! Realestate.au is where we've been doing all of our property searches, I Googled "best suburbs to live in melbourne" and Homely ranked them based on reviews so I was using that as a guide. As for the job thing, I plan on doing all my courses here in London, the agency we are thinking of using (down under centre) will sort all that out for us and then put us in contact with companies and potentially get us jobs before we make the move out, but renting for a year is definitely the plan as you never know what's around the corner. Thanks for the response, we will have a good look later when the OH is back from her shift!

Thanks for the reply! Yeah an AFL game is definitely on the cards, I've only even seen highlights here in the UK of the odd major game so it will be good to see it live! I'll Google those places outside of Melbourne, we really enjoy the out of town experiences so I'm sure we will check a few of those out! Thanks!

Wow thanks for that, I think that might be our 9 days gone all in your post which is epic! When my OH gets home from work later we will have a good look through this. Thanks for going to that effort to type all of that, really appriciate it!!

Thanks for the help everyone, from what I can see, there is an expected trend that property is more expensive near the coast so living inland will get us a bit more bang for our buck as well as suiting us better for the whole mountain biking thing. I've seen another area called Kilmore which is north of the city which looks nice and has good prices and is nicely out of the city and a bit more rural which we prefer, we both enjoy the countryside so being between half an hour to an hour out of the city is perfect for us, anyone know of any nice villages and towns that are out of the city a little? Just to give us a half decent start point for when we head over in March, thanks

Hi Dave, my Mrs and I are in Melbourne at the end of march for 9 days on a reccie of the place, I know a potential meet wouldn't help you in the long run (until we make the move at least :laugh:) but it would be decent to have a beer with you when we are there! I'm 28 and shes 24 so the ages would work, I'm not playing lawn bowls just yet!

haha the Mellie thing was cracking me up when I was reading your thread, some people just didn't let it go, I may even adopt it and that will make 2 of us as users of the word!! how did you organise a meet up, on here?

thanks for the reply! yeah it did seem a little out but to be honest, that's what we'd ideally want. I hadn't heard much about it myself it was simply my research on homely.au that led me to look. It seemed to have good quality, well priced properties in the area and its locality to the freeway was also a bit of an attraction, as for budget, as a first Australian property we'd be looking around $400k top end. As for jobs, I'm an electrician and my girlfriend is currently a supervisor in a UK government organisation. thanks again for the reply

hi mate, I've just launched my first enquiries with the downunder centre and they seemed very helpful so I'm glad to read a good review, could you possibly email me the book too? sorry to be cheeky but it will give me something to read as I'm totally in the dark with all this at the moment, my email is marc_drury@hotmail.com many thanks!!

Hi everyone, My name is Marc and my OH is April and we are coming to Melbourne for a reccie around the end of march and it would be great to meet up with another couple that has made the jump. I'm 28 and my OH is 24, I'm an electrician and she works for a government organisation as a supervisor. We are staying in the Southbank area and will be renting a car so if we need to travel out to somewhere a little closer to you that's totally cool! Would be great to have a chat everything Melbourne and it would be brilliant for my Mrs to meet some people and hear first hand accounts as she's not totally sold on the move, thanks very much, feel free to contact me privately, I'll buy the first round of drinks!! Look forward to meeting you!

I posted this in the area so apologies if anyone has read this before Hi All, My girlfriend and I are currently looking at the possibility of making the move to Melbourne, Australia and we have planned a 3 and a half week 'reccie' to have a look around to decide if its something we want to pursue. We are mainly looking at the Melbourne area for its climate, lifestyle, earnings and house prices. Having never been to Melbourne before we have done some research into suburbs where we'd potentially stay and we've done a basic case study on the suburb of Brookfield (rated 4th best suburb on Homely) and a looked at houses within that suburb as a start point for our fact finding mission. In terms of a potential permanent living location we are not too bothered about heading to the beach every day, we favour a mountain bike ride over a beach day so being slightly more inland would be perfect for us. For the 'reccie' we are staying in an apartment in Southbank for around 9 days in March / April and plan to rent a car to have a look around and travel to see a few sights, so bearing in mind our good travel arrangements, is there anything anyone suggests we experience / go to see / do whilst we are in Melbourne to help us make our minds up? As much as we want to do the touristy bits we mainly want to experience the Melbourne a resident would experience and go to some local areas and experience the local life rather than stay downtown drinking in cocktail bars thinking everything is wonderful there. Sorry to be so basic but having never been to the City or its suburbs we really are starting from scratch, thanks very much, we would appreciate any tips or advice at all, positive or negative, thanks again!

Hi All, My girlfriend and I are currently looking at the possibility of making the move to Melbourne, Australia, and we have planned a 3 and a half week trip to Australia to have a look around to decide if its something we want to pursue. We are mainly looking at the Melbourne area for its climate, lifestyle, earnings and house prices. Having never been to Melbourne before we have done a basic case study on the suburb of Brookfield (rated 4th best suburb on Homely) and a looked at houses within that suburb as a start point for our fact finding mission. We are not too bothered about heading to the beach every day, we favour a mountain bike ride over a beach day so being slightly more inland would be perfect for us. We are staying in an apartment in Southbank for around 9 days in March / April and plan to rent a car to have a look around and travel to se a few sights, so bearing in mind our good travel options, is there anything anyone suggests we experience / go to see / do whilst we are in Melbourne to help us make our minds up? As much as we want to do the touristy bits we mainly want to experience the real Melbourne and go to some local areas and experience the local life rather than stay downtown drinking in cocktail bars thinking everything is wonderful there. Sorry to be so basic but having never been to the City or its suburbs we really are starting from scratch, thanks very much, we would appreciate any tips or advice at all, positive or negative, thanks again!