Sydney............ What a disappointment!!

[Guest263228]

2 hours ago, path2aus said:

When I visited NY with my wife from Chicago, I loved the place. It was fun, we enjoyed our time there. So when I got a job there both were excited, but once we landed there within few days we felt that we wanted to get out. Not sure why. I guess it is kind of an acquired taste to live in such big cities. I lived in San Francisco too, beautiful place. It was expensive but a great place to live if you had the money. NY is nothing like that. If you like big cities, you should probably look at SF, fantastic city with great weather.

No Frisco's days of being a desired location has long vanished in my opinion. HQ to some of the big corporates (we all know who) have tarnished the place IMO. Full of over paid hipsters and the dislocating of the artists and muso's and alternatives due to the prohibitive cost of living has sent al the col kids packing.

At least the States has choice. Austin (TX) although I'm hearing may have past its desirable times? Seattle , Portland (perhaps increasingly old hat?) Actually heard Des Moines was becoming a 'cool' place? I'm sure there are others.  

[Guest263228]

2 hours ago, path2aus said:

I have not visited Perth or Brisbane yet. At this point I find we are okay to start here. The opportunities in terms of work is surely a problem but I have found a decent length contract to start things off. You are right that the contrast between NY and Adelaide is like chalk and cheese. That's what excites me here. I feel that Melbourne is a good compromise between Sydney and Adelaide. It is neither too expense nor is it boring. Lets see what the future holds, my daughter is just 8 months now, so we still have some time to decide where we want to live.

I agree. Melbourne would be a good place to start. I like the place. Preferred to Sydney until a recent few visits to the later now edging towards preferring Sydney, apart from the cost. I suppose having a few good friends there helps as well.

[path2aus]

13 hours ago, Pura Vida said:

No Frisco's days of being a desired location has long vanished in my opinion. HQ to some of the big corporates (we all know who) have tarnished the place IMO. Full of over paid hipsters and the dislocating of the artists and muso's and alternatives due to the prohibitive cost of living has sent al the col kids packing.

At least the States has choice. Austin (TX) although I'm hearing may have past its desirable times? Seattle , Portland (perhaps increasingly old hat?) Actually heard Des Moines was becoming a 'cool' place? I'm sure there are others.  

My memory of Frisco is from 2007, I left that place at that time. I loved every minute of working in the financial district. Probably things have changed now. There are lots of second tier cities in states which are becoming more desirable as the main cities have become so crowded. I never got a chance to visit Seattle, always wanted to go there. I have heard good things about Portland, but have never lived there either.

[MARYROSE02]

One of my brothers moved to the US after 15 years here, working in Silicon Valley, DC and Denver. He's a triple citizen now too. I've not been to the US for 21 years. I remember the first time I went, actually to Canada then the US, in 1976, flying into Toronto and everything just seemed so vast, everything so big.  The next time I went, this time from OZ, and things did not seem so vast and big but England seemed small. I remember the shock of seeing not one, but two double decker buses passing each other one a lane which seemed no wider than a pavement.

Let's go to San Francisco where the flowers grow so very high.....a whole generation with a new explanation, people in motion.......save up all your bread and fly to San Francisco, USA....all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey, if I didn't tell her I could be in LA

I went to Carlsbad once between Los Angeles and San Diego and thought "I'd like to live here." But coastal NSW is not that different, to me at least, than southern California.

https://visitcarlsbad.com/

[markb28]

I moved to Oz in October 2012 and lived in Syd for 3 years before moving to Melbourne.  Big pros and cons for both places but Melbourne just feels like a much more real place, the people, lifestyle and culture suits me much better and along with slightly crappy weather has a lot of the good stuff from my hometown (London) but still having the beaches within an hours drive, great wineries and even snow if you want it. I feel much more part of the community here in Brunswick which has loads going on.

It doesn't have Sydney's harbour (never tire of that) or decent city beaches, however I've got out to good suburban beaches in the same time it takes to find a park in Bondi/Palm Beach. I lived in Newtown when in Sydney which was great but again real estate prices were crazy and west Connex shortly to ruin the local vibes. Unfortunately to get the best of Sydney, location is everything as its hard to get around and even the dullest suburbs are way in excess of $1 million for a simple 2 bed townhouse. I know at lot of people talking about being priced out and willing a crash on. Also the gentrification is turning swathes of Sydney into very dull zones of rich foreign students (Alexandria) or former nightlife areas being destroyed (Kings Cross) by state government/police interference.

The VIC state government are just so much more progressive than in NSW, easier to get around, better highways and public transport ,all night trams at weekend free trams in the CBD zone all day, Drinks/meal at 3am - not a problem, a vibrant CBD at weekends - check,  Better food here (like massively). 

For balance, in Melbourne there is a lot of annoying construction everywhere, variable weather, numbers on public transport rising and a worse job market than Sydney.

For now its more affordable to buy a house, and for those with a smaller budget easily attainable within an hours commute. First home buyer stamp duty abolished from July.  I made the decision to buy a house here within 6 months - finally shaking off the UK/Oz dilemmas which were always there in Sydney.

I stayed in Manly a few weeks ago as a tourist, its great to go back but I don't think I'd consider living in Sydney again, my partner feels the same and she grew up there. 

 

 

 

  

 

[MARYROSE02]

Reading all these positive reviews of Melbourne doesn't so much make me want to live there as spend some time there, but the same is true of all the state capital cities. If I was giving advice to anybody trying to choose where to live I'd say, assuming you have the time, money and job skills spend a few weeks in all of them and see if one "emerges" to grab you.

I loved Perth from the moment i arrived but after a month I gave up on getting a job and went to Adelaide which I did not like at first sight, and it was the same with Sydney, but Sydney I where I have stayed ever since, bar 12 years back in England.

On ANZAC Day I was walking down Crown Street, Surry HIlls, and some young people stopped me on the corner of Foveaux Street. "Where should we go - the Clock or the Dolphin?" and I replied, "The Trinity.". I mentioned it was my birthday and one of them, young Pommie guy, gave me $10 and said "Buy yourself a pint in the Trinity. It's my local too."

I mention that little anecdote because, in answer to the question, "Where shall I go, Melbourne or Sydney?" and I might answer "Perth." Why Perth? Because it's got all the benefits of Sydney with none of the drawbacks - so, plenty of ocean surf beaches, sunshine, less crowded, cheaper to buy a home, and closer to Europe. Of course, I've not been there for 20 years and it might be that If I did go there, I'd come straight back to Sydney. And neither can I compare Perth to Melbourne.

For me, Sydney is my home. I'm not interested in comparing it to anywhere else because it's not relevant. I've got family here for one thing and moving far away from them is no longer an option. I've got friends here too. The Trinity I mentioned above is my local.

The NSW government has started to relax the lockout laws which may have been an over-reaction but there were two horrible killings in Kings Cross. I don't like the lockout laws. 500 metres from my home I can drink all night. 1,000 metres and I can play the pokies all night but the bar is closed from 0130 to 0500. You can now buy take away alcohol up to 11pm now instead of 10pm.

What are the opening hours in the UK now? Do the pubs still close at 11pm, 1030 on Sundays? I've not been back for 8 years but the last time I was there, even in London, 11pm, Saturday, that's it. When I was a young bloke in Southampton the pubs opened and closed twice a day with different opening and closing times. Mind you, when I first came to Sydney most of the pubs closed all day Sunday. What is it about Britain and its former colonies that makes them full of control freak wowsers* when it comes to fun?

* What a brilliant word that is!

wowser

In Australia, it is a derogatory word denoting a person who saps all the fun out of any given situation. Derived from the temperance movement in Australia and New Zealand at the turn of the C20th, when it was hurled as an accusation towards conservative teetotallers who were too prim and proper to relax and socialise, it has become a more generic term that can be assigned to any straight bore lacking a sense of humour, especially petty bureaucrats and Aussies politicians.(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wowser)

[ScottieGirl]

2 hours ago, MARYROSE02 said:

Reading all these positive reviews of Melbourne doesn't so much make me want to live there as spend some time there, but the same is true of all the state capital cities. If I was giving advice to anybody trying to choose where to live I'd say, assuming you have the time, money and job skills spend a few weeks in all of them and see if one "emerges" to grab you.

That advice ignores the somewhat different housing costs. There are regular posts from people giving a salary and asking whether this is enough for a family to live on to which the answer is often barely if you want to live in Sydney.  Your money goes a lot further in some of the other state capitals.

I love Sydney but right now if your work allows you to choose your location I would say pick another city. 

 

Edited May 30, 2017 by ScottieGirl

[Smiths]

Having done Melb and Sydney I'll take Sydney every time.  Melb is the pits!

[Collie]

On 5/29/2017 at 22:19, markb28 said:

I moved to Oz in October 2012 and lived in Syd for 3 years before moving to Melbourne.  Big pros and cons for both places but Melbourne just feels like a much more real place, the people, lifestyle and culture suits me much better and along with slightly crappy weather has a lot of the good stuff from my hometown (London) but still having the beaches within an hours drive, great wineries and even snow if you want it. I feel much more part of the community here in Brunswick which has loads going on.

It doesn't have Sydney's harbour (never tire of that) or decent city beaches, however I've got out to good suburban beaches in the same time it takes to find a park in Bondi/Palm Beach. I lived in Newtown when in Sydney which was great but again real estate prices were crazy and west Connex shortly to ruin the local vibes. Unfortunately to get the best of Sydney, location is everything as its hard to get around and even the dullest suburbs are way in excess of $1 million for a simple 2 bed townhouse. I know at lot of people talking about being priced out and willing a crash on. Also the gentrification is turning swathes of Sydney into very dull zones of rich foreign students (Alexandria) or former nightlife areas being destroyed (Kings Cross) by state government/police interference.

The VIC state government are just so much more progressive than in NSW, easier to get around, better highways and public transport ,all night trams at weekend free trams in the CBD zone all day, Drinks/meal at 3am - not a problem, a vibrant CBD at weekends - check,  Better food here (like massively). 

For balance, in Melbourne there is a lot of annoying construction everywhere, variable weather, numbers on public transport rising and a worse job market than Sydney.

For now its more affordable to buy a house, and for those with a smaller budget easily attainable within an hours commute. First home buyer stamp duty abolished from July.  I made the decision to buy a house here within 6 months - finally shaking off the UK/Oz dilemmas which were always there in Sydney.

I stayed in Manly a few weeks ago as a tourist, its great to go back but I don't think I'd consider living in Sydney again, my partner feels the same and she grew up there. 

 

I have never lived in Melbourne but visited lots of times, lived in Sydney for >10 years.  I find this post very accurate, Casino Mike did huge damage to Sydney in his term from West Connex (which nobody wants)  to the lock out laws (pushing people towards casinos).

If you can afford to live in inner Sydney, it is (or was) a great place to live but I would have no desire to live out west, north west, upper north shore or down south.

Newtown is a great spot, quirky and full of life.  I lived in Balmain/Rozelle which is also a great spot but a lot quieter than it was 15 years ago and is slowly dying.

 

[MARYROSE02]

I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know what West Connex means?! Does it affect me living in Surry Hills? I'm affected by the light rail every day when trying to negotiate Devonshire Street.

I whinge about the lockout laws insofar as they affect one pub - the Surry Hills (or Triple Aces) where I go to watch Spurs and after 0125 they close the bar. In my part of Surry Hills there is no lockout. I never go to the Cross or the Casino.

All cities change over the years, good or bad but if you live in a place well, you live there. You don't usually move to another place which is also changing.

Sent from my D6653 using Tapatalk

[ScottieGirl]

West Connex is the road , mainly a tunnel, that will connect the M4 to the City West Link so that people can by pass Parramatta road. Also planned to connect it to the M5. It affects the inner West, Haberfield is now a building site, Annandale will have ventilation stacks all over the place. Rozelle is going to become a spaghetti junction and Victoria Road will become a car park.

 

[MARYROSE02]

Just now, ScottieGirl said:

West Connex is the road , mainly a tunnel, that will connect the M4 to the City West Link so that people can by pass Parramatta road. Also planned to connect it to the M5. It affects the inner West, Haberfield is now a building site, Annandale will have ventilation stacks all over the place. Rozelle is going to become a spaghetti junction and Victoria Road will become a car park.

 

Thanks for explaining that. I read the Sydney papers every day too. I guess I have a mental block on anything that happens outside my Surry Hills bubble. I walked down to Central today and had my umteenth experience of the light rail and sometimes if seems as if they never do anything although of course they are. I saw the tracks appear at the crossroads of Devonshire and Elizabeth Sts recently.

I thought Victoria Road was already a car park! I remember a few weeks back I met a mate in the Commercial hotel in Parramatta where he was attending a Giants group meet up to watch their game against St Kilda (I think) and he drove me back to the city via Parra Road and I could see more roadworks on the adjacent M4.

I always liked Haberfield and do remember seeing a news report about empty homes bought by the State government but not demolished.

I suppose there have been other times when there have been massive changes to Sydney, e.g. when they built the Sydney Harbour Bridge from, what, 1926 to 1932. Imagine all the homes and other buildings demolished on both sides of the harbour. I think that Mt Steel, one of the hills overlooking Moore Park was built out of the land extracted to build the rail line from Central to Circular Quay via Museum and St James.

It must have been a shock to Parisiens when their city was demolished in the ?1850s? by ?Hausmann? (for Louis Napoleon)who constructed all the wide boulevards which necessitated destroying old Paris.. I was doing some research on the Impressionist painters whom I knew nothing about until recently. I still can't understand why what they did was so radical? OK, a new style of painting focussed on outdoor subjects, often ordinary people rather than the studio-finished works on history or religion. I digress but it was interesting enough to make me think of enrolling in a unit on painting from the revolutioniary period at the OU.

I remember coming back to Sydney after a six year absence, a mate picking me up from Mascot to drive me out to my brothers at Picnic Point which had always involved driving via Forest Road/Stoney Creek Road but this time we went into this long, long tunnel into a motorway and I was amazed.

PS I wanted to ask how you are coping with leaving Sydney after 15 years.I hope I got that right? I went back to England after 18 years here and although I'd intended to come back within a year I stayed for 12 years.

[ScottieGirl]

Thanks for asking @MARYROSE02 yep back after 15 years.  I am coping with the geographical change OK it's the other life changes that are more challenging. The plan was toget a work transfer snd that fell through so I took redundancy. Financially a good move but a lot to deal with in one go.

Part of the reason for going was my elderly mum, her health is starting to decline and I am the only one so no siblings to support her. Having got back it's clear that is the right decision. She smoked for years and now her blood pressure is uncontrolled.  She is a cardiovascular accident waiting to happen,  could be tomorrow could be in 5 years but I don't want to be the other side of the world when it does. I am sure you can relate given your brother's recent scare. 

Now I  have to decide where to live. The original plan was to buy THE retirement house near  the sea but now wondering if I should buy a small place near mum. Then there is the issue of finding gainful employment.  I am taking the how to eat an elephant approach:one bit at a time.

I can cope with the weather, it's colder but it's also drier. The coffee has got a lot better thank God but eating out hasn't.  I  miss the excellent Thai, Vietnamese and dumpling places. Then again the supermarkets are way better. There is no substitute for radio 4 live or the choice of Saturday AND Sunday papers in Sydney. 

I do wonder whether I will go back to Aus at some point. If the Sydney housing market dips and the pound goes up it is an attractive retirement proposition. Maybe the dream retirement house is on the northern beaches. Never say never ?

[MARYROSE02]

We seem to have shared a similar trajectory and when I went back to the UK it wasn't for the same reason as you but it ended up that way. I was made redundant from Garden Island Dockyard in 1996 after 15 years with the Commonwealth Public Service, first with the Customs service at Redfern Mail Exchange (since demolished and replaced with a new office building on the corner of Chalmers/Cleveland/Pitt Sts) and the Department of Defence.

At times that job at Garden Island was horribly stressful but it was also a large part of my life and I was devestated when I lost my job. Later on I came to realize that it wasn't so much a silver lining in the cloud as the whole cloud was a silver lining. I went back to England with a one year round the world ticket and a month after I arrived I got a part time job with Royal Mail in Southampton. After 3 months they gave me some paid leave and I went back to Sydney to clear my flat and rent it out.

After a year my Mum had an accident from which she died - knocked over by a dog in our driveway which broke her hip and led to a heart attack and she never came out of hospital. Without making a firm decision to stay with my Dad it happened anyway. I got offered permanent full time work with Royal Mail and stayed till 2008 (my Dad died in 2005), i I could have stayed in England, carried on with Royal Mail until 60 or further and improved my pension. But I had always intended to come back and my brother lives here, my other brother I mean, out near Camden at Spring Farm. He followed my out in 1979 and never went home. My brother who is presently with me has been living in the USA and Asia.

I learnt to cope with the weather. I always dreaded winter but I got used to it. I still went for my bike rides but I had to leave earlier in the day not late arvo as in spring and summer. Funny really the contrast between winter when we'd take our arvo break in darkness and summer when it was still light when I went home at 2130.

I became a Radio 4 addict mainly at work - The Archers at 2pm, Arvo play at 2.15, then the various documentaries and shows until 5pm and on Fridays a second Archers episode. I have to say that Radio National and 702 (in Sydney) are reasonable substitutes for R4 though. I think I even wrote to RN and asked them to get The Archers as they already had other R4 shows. I agree about the newspapers, although reading The Australian it's not unlike its Murdoch stablemate The Times and I like the Sydney Morning Herald too. The Weekend OZ lasts me into the week to be honest.

The supermarkets in the UK are probably better. I actually miss the George clothing rather than ASDA itself and I started to favour first Waitrose and then just walking over to the village Alldays (Co-op now?) with a smaller range but able to walk rather than drive as I can here up to Coles in Surry Hills.

After my Dad died I bought our parents' house and it's now rented out just as my flat in Sydney was. History repeats itself. My garage here still has stuff I "archived" 20 years ago when I went to England, and my attic in England is stuffed to the brim with the same sort of stuff.

I don't know if you agree with me but I found the experience of living in England again, and living in Sydney again, as being like emigrating. My unproven theory is that many people yearn to return (nice rhyme?) go back in spring or summer for a holiday, think how magical it is, but if they do go back to live and work it's a different experience. Often former friends have moved on, with different life trajectories, and the experience of living overseas gives you a different outlook too.

I've droned on too long! The one thing I miss about England is riding my bike or walking in the New Forest and having the countryside literally on my doorstep. I sometimes regret not travelling to Europe more but the odd thing is that even as I'm thinking about a first UK trip in nine years, I don't want to have a grand tour of Europe, I want to rent a cottage in the New Forest and go cycling and walking every day.

At worst you could probably plan to spend winter in Sydney every year? Where are you by the way?
Dave.