JugglingJohn

Hi all,

We've settled on Adelaide as our Antipodean home and we've done a fair bit of research as to where we'll settle.

Where do you recommend for a husband and wife in their 30s with a seven-year-old and five-year-old (when we arrive)?

We love the outdoors. I love to fish and the wife loves to swim in the sea. Both our boys love to play sport outside too.

Ideally, we want to be really close to the sea and we don't mind a commute of an hour-plus into Adelaide so we've been looking at Port Noarlunga and surrounding areas.

What are your thoughts? Any advice much appreciated!

Scottish couple
Edinburgh

Amazulu

Wherever you live in SA, you'll need your own generator as the government of that state, which is deeply incompetent, cannot guarantee your electricity supply

Pollyana

HAve a look for posts by Rasen78 and old.sparkles, I think they've posted a bit on suburbs in the past and they are both close to Adelaide.

GarryP

Port Noarlunga is a long way down, which means a long way from such attractions as Adelaide has to offer. If you were looking for sea as virtually the only priority I might look further up, or indeed look to the hills (which tend to be better for the countryside part of your equation.

Jobs and the price to rent/buy are going to sway your decision, so I'd be looking at those.

old.sparkles

Not true although in the 4 years we have had power cuts twice, both in the past year, both the results of storms, although others have been affected by power shedding and may have had more outages.

There have also been a number of blips where they have been undertaking work, and usually (but not always) there is notification in advance. These can be anything from a few minutes to a few hours.

You may also hear that we have the most expensive electricity in Australia. Comparing costs is not straight forward, but I think that we have the highest per kWh cost, and possibly second highest daily charge. Costs though are not dissimilar to UK costs, and if you have solar, costs can be reduced dramatically.

I'm not near the sea - closest beaches would be up to an hour drive with a similar drive to the city. I'm north of the city on the edge of the Barossa.

Amazulu

Rubbish

SA's power grid is held together with spit

They have little thermal baseload. There is no fat in the system - without the interconnector SA would be f**ked

Power shedding in a 1st world western democracy - one of the wealthiest nation's on the planet - is acceptable?

SA is a ghost, passenger state that relies on the rest of the nation to carry it and is run by an incompetent socialist government. Wake up and demand better

old.sparkles

Where I worked in the UK we had to power shed approximately 4 or 5 times a year. NSW also undertook power shedding recently. Admittedly both are businesses (UK was steel works who were also a generator, and NSW was aluminium smelter), but still not solely a SA or Australia problem.

Agreed though that at present, SA is a net importer across the interconnector.

EDIT - can I suggest if you want to discuss this further, a new thread is started so we don't derail OP's thread

GarryP

How the hell did this get to be about SA power?

Anyway, fact is it's nothing to do with solar, wind, or thermal. It's to do with poor management and the failure of the market to deliver in the face of perverse, simplistic, metrics.

Nobody has control of the wheel, they are expecting 'the market' to deliver power with the only control being via price. However the metrics don't really punish companies for failure to deliver - so we end up with brownouts and everyone playing sloping shoulders.

And it's going to get worse as Hazelwood closes and Victoria ends up importing rather than exporting.

It needs someone in government to carry a big stick and tell the companies what they are going to do - eg unroll the worst stupidities of privatisation.

Oh, and keeping solar and wind on the grid, and not killing them through anti-islanding, would be a very good move - as the coal generators have fallen over it's been the solar in particular that's kept things going, when it's allowed.

Amazulu

Last post on the issue

Load-shedding in the UK is pathetic too - at least they have identified their shortcomings and are building major nukes

NSW also has capacity issues due to reliance on wind power (which doesn't work)

SA has a couple of gas-fired stations that the operator cannot afford to switch on. I read the other day that on the day of the shutdown, SA was using 3000MWh yet was only generating 90MWh.......

Energy policy in Australia is a total mess at the moment and SA is not to blame for some of their energy issues but their incompetent, window-dressing government is just exacerbating this

Pollyana

Hopefully you and Rasen can get this one back on track and stop it becoming yet another thread

I really like Adelaide, but two short visits aren't enough to give real advice!

JugglingJohn

Um...

Pollyana

Try this thread for starters
http://britishexpats.com/forum/barbi...elaide-891008/

rasen78

Hi John

Ignore the others, us Adelaidians are a friendly bunch

Port Noarlunga is a lovely area, really pretty with great beaches, a nice jetty for fishing, a reef for snorkelling and a bit further up, some decent waves can be found. Nice little boutique shops and a great range of eateries, ranging from your bog standard pub fayre through to the higher priced, more exclusive type. Think there is vegan/vegetarian restaurants, mexican, italian and some others. Port Noarlunga South is south of the river. Not sure if there is much shops wise, but it is very popular with water sports with fishing and kayaking being very popular along the river, and paddle boarding.

For access to Adelaide there is the train from Colonnades, or the southern expressway is easily accessible from a little further up the road. You could easily be in they city within an hour (I would estimate 40-45 mins on a good day) by road. Not sure of the train times but they are frequent. We live approx 15 mins north from Port Noarlunga and it takes us about 30-35 mins to drive to the city.

Not sure of the house prices in Port Noarlunga, but the closer you get to Christie's Beach, the cheaper prices will be as Christie's is not such a popular area, having had a bit of a rep in the past. Also, be aware that Port Noarlunga, Old Noarlunga and Noarlunga Downs, although all within the same area, can all command very different prices. Old Noarlunga is the original township area and is a distance from the sea. Port Noarlunga and Port Noarlunga South are the areas I have been talking about above and Noarlunga Centre and Noarlunga Downs are the more industrial areas (shopping centre area etc).

If you wanted to go further south, Port Willunga is very nice, with an award winning restaurant and stunning views of Willunga beach. There is also the shipwreck of the Star of Greece (award winning restaurant is named after it) that you can snorkel on. There isn't too much else at Port Willunga, but Willunga itself has more amenities, or there is Aldinga. But you are looking at approx 75-90 min to get to the city from these areas. You are, however, a spitting distance from McLaren vale and the wineries etc.

Hope this helps

JugglingJohn

Thanks Rasen78! Great info there! We originally were looking at Christies Beach but then we heard that it's got a bad rep. Why is that?

rasen78

Bad loutish behaviour, tagging (graffitti), higher crime rates. It is a lot better than it used to be and the local council (Onkaparinga) have sunk quite a bit of money into the foreshore area to improve it but it is generally a lower socio-economic demographic there, higher unemployment etc The beaches are great there but I wouldn't choose to live there. Noarlunga is a nicer area. If your kids a younger, primary school isn't too much of an issue as most primaries are good, but high school will become an issue. The further south you go, the less choices of high school there are, and a couple of the local public high schools aren't great and some of the private don't have the best results either. However, schools change, so in a few years time this will all be old news!! Good luck with it all!