alkristensen

We flew with singapore air. Brilliant in every way. From hot towels to refrresh coupled with never ending food and drinks. We will defo fly with them again.

Also if you are in singapore for more than 6 or 7 hours between planes, you get a free tour of the city and markets and other goodies!


My god. How easy was the flight.NOT. It took us nearly a week to get over the Jetlag but we have soldiered on renting a car and driving from brisbane down to byron bay via every single suburb in ther gold coast and heres what we think.

We set off to find somewhere with a nice little beach community of 75% residents and 25% tourists, with a few cafe/bars eateries etc and a bit of sign of life. We dont want a massive house just a little 2 bed with a bit of a garden.

Wow were we in for a surprise.

Gold coast= high rise miami style blocks, great beaches but soul-less

The gold coast suburbs to sum up in 1 word.
Stepford!

Very very neat and tidy everything looking all spanking brand new and very very stale and much the sameness, it was really like a massive posh Barrats estate and seemed life and souless to us.
Helensvale and burleigh heads/wates/robina were probaly the nicest places that we went through.

Byron Bay, fantastic place with just the right smattering of everything we wanted but quite cut off from everywhere else as there are no big cities near by and the price of houses are ;like Chelsea and Kensington. There was a shop freehold on one of the main streets for 4 million dollars and it was a kebab house!!

We then came back up to the Redlands area and looked all around Was very impressed by the area as a whole has alot going for it in the way of links to Brisbane(within the hour im told) and was everything we wanted except the beaches are mud flats and the rocks nearby are red making the sand look like a cross between ulhuru and blackpool at low tide.

Very pleasant communities though and if it had a nice beach it would have topped our list.

Wynnum was very nice with not a lot to do.
Manly was lovely but a huge marina and some nice little shops.
Cleveland was great with a great shopping arcade
and ultra posh raby bay was nice but a bit too gold coast for our liking.
Wellington point was on a par with cleveland and these 2 would be our choice for us for this area as they had a nice feel to them and a bit of un-uniforminty as after a while of looking at row upomn row of brand new everything you lookat, it becomes a little dull!

We then went to redcliffe. Great place, nice jetty and ok beach, cheap housing, and nice prom, but we got the impression that there were a few too many rednecks and old timers, i can see why its nicknamed Deadcliffe now as we were there on a sat afternoon and it was full of old biddies(does everyone go away for the weekend here)?

We then drove to Bribie island, lovely place , nice beaches but miles and miles from the Route 1 motorway and just a very long straight road to get there.

After that we ended up in caloundra at the bottom of the sunshine coast.......Wow what a difference up here. A few high rises but nowhere near as many as the gold coast but in between them, LIFE!!

Lots of bars cafes fantastic beaches and weve only been here a day AND HILLS. Everywere we have been so far (except byron and a couple of other minor bits) have been so flat that the houses just seem reallycharacterless, hope you know what i mean by this as its hard to explain.

What makes alot of these places seem lifeless is thsat the main roads througth most of theses places are where the shops are. You have one big shopping area on the highway, like a retail park, and nothing when you get in to the urban sprawl, its quite weird as it doesnt give a real sense of community in my eyes.

This is in no way set out to offend anyone and its just our views based on our personal requirements and wishes for where we want to live.

Our basic needs are:

A beach that has nice sand for the kids and us to play on.
A nice commiunity feel to a place not a ghost town
House prices average
A bit of life bars shop etc, but not in your face ibiza style.

We dont ask for anything else and dont care about the problems that are the same here as they are in the uk regarding the crime etc. I live in a city now and have lived in moss side in manchester and come out of that alive, so anything else is secondary.

We will be visiting mooloolaba and maroochydore and noosa in the coming weeks and so far we are very impressed as it tick aquite a few of our boxes.

If not then we are moving to Manly or Coogee in Sydney as it still tops our list for the nicest place even though the weather is a bit more temperemental down there!

Everyone will have their own needs, but be rest assured in the fact that there are free barbeques,cycle paths, lifeguards,water fountains and all other maner of graffiti free and prisitne things in this country that flabberghast me.

The people are brilliant, and congratulate you for moving to the best country in the world, and having extensively travelled i can agree with them. WOW!



We have hired a holiday apartment for the week and its like a penthouse for $500 for the week between the 2 of us. We ve been paying more than that per night in motels! And after easily opening a bank account (within 6 weeks of arriving easy,after that need more i.d. free banking if you have more than 2000a$ in the account) and doing all the above mentioned in 1 week, we are having sa well earned rest for 11 days before the car has to go back!

Good luck everyone it is all worth it believe me. No rose tints here as im here now.

LOL

Alkristrensen for expats news live from maroochydore!


alk

annqldau

Couldn't comment on Bayside, Redlands, Cleveland area but we live at Deception Bay above Redcliffe and if you go down to Redcliffe lagoon on weekend and beach during the day heaving with people out enjoying themselves also Scarbourgh just along from there very nice and excellent fish and chips but unlike UK choice of 20 fish to go with your chips. Mud flats at Deception Bay good for a walk on and Redcliffe has the nice sand for a lie on and swim.

Plenty to do round hear and ideal gateway to the Barrier Reef as not to far or the mountains etc. or Australia Zoo which if you go to twice you get years free visits which you would never get in UK.

Quick into city nice easy roads and also if you look around in local area you find lots of shopping places in each village just have to know where they are and cinemas etc..

We loved everywhere from Brisbane up to Cairns all very nice and very green. Housing gets cheaper as you go further North from Brisbane except Bribie island and Noosa as wanna b rich places. Where you can only get 1000sq meters in Brisbane area for $300,000+ you can get acres of hectres when you move north for same price.

tabby

Do love to hear people's experiences, and totally agree - we love Cleveland and Wellington Point too.

Mooloolaba and Noosa were fantastic, but for us they will be a weekend away trip, esp Mooloolaba where you can camp on the beach for $13 a night!

Oh well, 46 days to go

scissors

WOW your covering alot of ground mate,how long is your trip we re i bayside and we love cleveland and wellington point theres a real community spirit around here,yes i agree if there were some nice beaches it would be just perfect,but we are very central for the city gold coast and the sunshine coast,for us it ffits the bill perfectly
good luck with your search

tracey

Vic&jase

Just what I wanted to read on a Sunday morning with my coffee, something to get me geared up again for the week.

Thanks for the time taken to put post on and look forward to the next as you are now entering 'the area we have in mind zone'. Happy travelling mate.

Vics xx

Rooksie

Fantastic post!! look forward to reading more - KEEP IT COMING!!

zakspeed

I am glad to hear somebody else survived Moss Side i spent 7 years in
Greatney walk ,its not there any more and thankfully either am i.
we are also moving to Brisbane / gold coast next year , counting the days enjoy the sun and save a bit of beach for us

alkristensen

We tried to get as much in as possivble while the jetlag wore off.
We are only here for 3 weeks so the first week went like this just in case people have limited time, it can be done........

day 1 plane

day 2 and 3 rested at bowen terrace international accomodation,new farm,brisbane. New farm is a great place if you are a city lover. In zone 1(cheap day pass covers all seacat bus and train in that zone for about £1,60 for the day and it has a great park with free bbqs and a lovely little shopping arcade. Cant recommend Bowen terrace highly enogh.Its a hostel but morre like a home from home, has a fully equiped kitchen and you can come and go as you please, and isnt a full on party hostel as is set in a quiet residential street with nice rooms and is run by an aussie/italian family, and its more like staying with friends, as Join and Laura the hosts make you feel like they have known you all thier lives. The rooms are 49 dollars a night and we have stayed there 3 or 4 times now as is great for us over 30,s if you want a feeling of homeliness and tranquility..(07) 32540458 .You only have a 10 minute walk from here in to Fortitude valley, whhich reminded me a bit of manchester city cenre, with loads of shops and bars etc.

Day 4 hired car from east coast rentals(cheap and the hyundia getz is air con and really nippy)and set off to byron bay and went via.....
Helensvale
Labrador
Southport
Surfers
Broadbeach
Mermaid
Nobby
Miami
Burliegh heads(nice)
Palm beach
Currumbin
Tugun
Bilinga,
And then we stayed in a motel in coolangatta for about $75 for the night.

Day 5
Drove through tweed heads
banora point
kingscliffe and on thugh loads of little beach communities on to byron to rest for 2 nights

Day 6 Drove up to hippy colony Nimbin, inland by 20 miles via ballina (which was cheaper alternative to byron but not as nice) and back to byron for the night.

Day 7 From byron up the motorway and off at
Burliegh waters then through
Varsity lakes
Robina
Nerang
and a few other something waters or lakes cant remember, but thats why as they are all very much alike and Stepford like.
Then back on the motorway up to the redland bay area, taking in
Cleveland
wellington
redland bay
manly
wynnum
thorneside etc
and all in between, and stopped in cleveland for 2 nights at the cleveland motor inn. As far as motels go this was 5 star with a pool and tv,2 double beds, ensuite microwave fridge aircon bbq and was $82.50 a night. Nice and quiet too and was in ormiston.

Day 9 Drove up the motorway via nudgee beach(lovely place just outside of brisbane with great boating/fishing lake) 15 mins from city next to airport, then on to
Bribie island and back to motorway (20-30 mins from motorway each way so dont bother unless you want to see it)
Caloundra, and finally
Mooloolabah,
We then set down to rest our heads for the nxt 11 days in marrochydore for a week and noosa for 4 days and we are going to get local buses and walk around and get sa feel for the place instad of driving through ity and making snap decisions....we know what we like so we can move on pretty quickly.

We made a list of what we wanted before we came out and discussed it to great length so that there was no mius-communication as to what we both wanted, and as we went from place to place compiled a top 3 or 4 and up until we reached the siunshine coast it went
1. Manly,sydney
2. Coogee, sydney
3. Byron

But now.

1. Mooloolabah
2. Everything else is irrelevant as its out of our pirice range LOL.

We did all this in a week so ignore the timescale. We have been in this apartment for 2 nights now and its monday morning and we arrived last saturday night. All the above times are estimated as cant remember most of it from jetlag, we were have our evening meals at 3pm and getting up for breakiie at 4-6am for the first few days!!

The driving distances are tiny you could drive from noosa to byron in a day no probs, like manchester to london really.

Hope this helps.

alan and clare.x

lacey21

oh Anne stop it I am dying to be there,
Alk fantastic descriptions keep em coming chicken, I didn't even know you had left yet lol
Anne we'll be neighbours soon hugs Lace x

alkristensen

we re only here on validation, and then moving out spring 2007(uk spring) as we have a few little loose ends to tie up, but mainly to save up enough money to buy a house outright so that we can semi retire, as most of the jobs here are casual may as well work towards that LOL!!!

Im only posting what i would want to hear and sorry fot the typos but its hard to remember what we have done and it was 3am when i started this essay, as im trying to get up an hour earlier everyday to get me back on to uk time as ive got work when i get back and one of my staff is expecting and due any day( well his wife is!!) so ive got to cover his paternity leave!!

I was also hoping to make people who live in said areas to pipe up their thought on what i have said, as you need to really get out of thje car and have a look and until you know an area well you wont find thre best bits. I hope i didnt offend anyone livng on the Gold coast, its justy our perception and taste. We are 34 and 38 respectively and have no kidsd yet and we arent ready for stepford and 2.4 kids.

To sum it all up

GREAT, and expect the unexpected.

al.x

Jonahs_mummy

Hi Al
Glad to hear you are having a great but busy time - can I just disagree with you on one point? How can you call all the GC Suburbs souless & like Stepford? There are over 50 suburbs & I know that the areas my family live in & we are headed for are nothing like you describe! Ashmore, Labrador, Carrara.............. Okay maybe some of them can seem very "samey" as there are a lot of new developments but on the whole I disagree that they are all like Stepford. Okay they are all clean & tidy but coming from the UK I am wholly looking forward to that!

Claire

jad n rich

Sunshine coast - you said you liked hills, beach and life, the hinterland is beautiful and extremely hilly, but not near beach as in places like buderim, coolum and Noosa where you can be minutes to beach and live in the hills and have some Life.

Noosa is the most expensive of those 3 and definate drawback is its a distance to the end of the coast with most jobs, and bit expensive as its quite a snobby tourist destination.

Buderim is the hilly part right behind mooloolaba and alexandra headland beaches, probably why its so popular is it does have life with its own bustling main village, which is has good cheap restaurants at night, go up and try Thai Frenzy really good.

IF your more into property on the beach, Alexandra headland is the best bargain houses 2 mins to beach are a third of what the cost in mooloolaba just 1 klm down the road. No way a suburb and plenty of stuff to do at night.

Coolum has never grabbed me, but its hilly, beautiful surf beach but can have some very low income aspects.

Jobs many are casual, but thats not a Coast thing its an australia thing, 30/40% of australians are employed that way, if you look at the expats on the coast I cannot think of any that have not found work.

Hope that helps if you have a very specific question on any area PM me we have lived up the coast over 3 years now, we did live on the Gold coast for 3 months and did not like it at all, the two coasts are very different.

Centurion

I find the reverse oddly. Many Brisbane and GC suburbs are relatively new and thus tend to be small blocks with very large houses built on them. A lot of the newish build suburbs lack infrastructure although they look neat, tidy and amazing house designs I for one am not sure I could live there.

I prefer an established community feel. Something with a little character. This often means the housing is older of course and not as neat and tidy so to speak and for nicer areas more expensive. A lot of the Brisbane suburbs are quite soulless I find and its a criticism that has been levelled by some of the less than pro-Australian brigade on previous posts and does have an element of truth in it.

The GC, Redlands, Brisbane and SC is an enormous area of course and its hard to generalise about a particular area. The GC for example is not all Surfers, neither is the sunshine coast Noosa and Redlands is not just Cleveland.

Ultimately its whatever floats your boat personally and I wish every success in anyone finding the place they wish to live. A great original post and thanks for sharing.

fraser

I know exactly where you are coming from we've moved from the east of Melbourne to the west, the east has lovely parades of shops, leafy streets.
The west new build estates and shopping malls.

You can't beat the character of an already established area.

LesleyM

Thanks for all the info. It is very useful to get different views and ideas from several people.