carojey

Hi there - have posted this on the immigration section too but think it should go here instead (new to this..) ..

Anyone living in the Byron area, Bangalow or any towns close by? We are moving out to Oz in early January and that is where we are heading with our little boy. Would love to hear what its like to actually live round that area - weve been to Byron Bay as tourists but when you're away from the touristy hippy stuff is it a good place to live?

Or should we do a complete turnaround and head to Perth instead.... hmm ...

Any advice would be excellent Thanks! Confused Caroline

stevereed

pricey on the house front I'm led to believe

Bunny007

Hi there Confused Caroline - I would like to think I could be of some help to you as I am headed Byronshire way in the summer of 2005 but I probably have more quetions than answers, so......if I may, I will tag onto your thread and benefit from your posts!

Alasdair and I are moving over on a business visa and will be opening up a small B&B in the area (this is a requirement of the visa) and would like some ideas on where would be a good area business wise. We have never visited Australia but our daughter Jax has toured the East coast twice and she just loves the area and is going with us (I can blame her if it all goes wrong) on a skills visa as a chef . Also tagging along will be Daz who married the darling daughter in April without fully understanding what he was doing! He will be a well needed injection of fresh blood into our strange :scared: little family circle.

I have spent many hundreds of hours looking for B&Bs for sale in the area but can't find much. Will probably build or buy something and extend. Have dowloaded hundreds of property listings from Real Estate sites and I spend time imagining myself beside the pool with my Bacardi and Diet Coke (on permanent diet) and sitting on new Poolside furniture from Woolies with solid arms (just in case those aussie spiders hide in the hollow underside of that cheap plastic patio stuff we have just now and bite me when I pull the arms up to execute the fully reclined position).

Imagine self on brand new cruiser, 32 feet, sleeps five, two fridges, one for fish one for . Taking the old tourists out to whale watch and enjoy a few beers while I pocket hundreds of spondoolies for the privaledge (would I?).


After guests at fabulous B&B are fed and gone out for the day, bunny007 will spend great deal of time at magician's (sorry..meant beautician's) before meeting all expat friends for lunch (I better start making some don't you think). Can feel the breeze in my hair :scared: as I drive brand new Lime Yellow open topped Saab with automatic soft top open/close remote control gismo firmly in my mit. Smartly avoiding sunstroke by wearing some sort of headgear which flatters my facial features (although such a hat probably does not exist!).

Picking up hubby after his work as trolly collector at Woolies (Woolies is the only store I know) and whisking him off to posh foodery so he can wine and dine me as only a man can do!

Did I say all of that out loud?

OOps!

The Banana diaries have obviously gone to my head!

Seriously, however, I have never been so excited about anything in my whole life (sorry Al). Aussie is our biggest ever adventure and if it all goes arse for tit I can honestly say that already I have had the most fun ever just daydreaming.

The reality of the situation is that we have a hotel to sell plus two houses (ours and Jax and Daz) and visas to acquire before our dreams can come true but meantime am selling everything at car boots that's not screwed to the floor. Got rid of the York Multigym last week. I bought it to get body fit for daughter's wedding but never used it since. Strangely nobody seems to want my palm top or my old digital camera but then neither do.

This is my first ever post and I feel quite proud of self.

Regards Bernice

debsy

Bernice
sent you a pm

aussie73

Houses at Byron Bay are expensive , but thats because its a popular place to live.
l would rather live at the Byron Bay area then Perth.

MrsDagboy

Bernice, welcome to the forum, laughed out loud at your post , sounds like you'll fit right in .

finsbury

Hey Caroline

My other half grew up in Byron and some of her folks still live there so that's going to be our first port of call. I got my de facto PR visa earlier this year and we're heading off to Aus in a couple of weeks.

We would like to settle on the North Coast but we're not sure that we'll be able to. All depends on work really. We both work in law so its likely that there won't be too much going on in the Byronshire area. so we might settle in Sydney or maybe Brisbane. We haven't given up on the North Coast yet. We're taking a couple of months off when we first arrive so we'll be doing some sniffing around and making decisions on work/settling toward January/February.

I'm not sure what kind of work you would be into but the job market is probably fairly quiet in the Byron Area compared to the major cities. Property prices are also pretty crazy in Byron Bay itself. A plot of land in Byron was on sale for the equivalent of $AUS1m per square acre earlier this year. So that gives you an idea of what it can be like. Though not sure whether it actually sold at that price.

But house prices/rents would be much less stratospheric in the in-land towns, particularly Ballina, Alstonville or Lismore, and probably further down the coast like Lennox Head and Evans Head. Lismore is the main town and it's the home of Southern Cross University so it's more likely that there would be more work opportunities there. I know of quite a few people who work in Lismore and who commute from other near-by towns. Byron Bay, for example, is around a 45 minute commute each way.

So I don't think it will be impossible to settle in that area but it may be more difficult than say a bigger city like Perth. I should know myself in a couple of months.

As for it being a good place to live, from what I can gather from talking to people who live there (haven't actually been myself), there is a big difference from living there to visiting there. It is possible to get away from the commercial side of the town and live a pretty good life. Funnily, I was talking to the in-laws about this last week, and they said that they would hardly go into the town itself during certain periods of the year but that doesn't stop them from loving it. It's just a different way of life I'd guess. I dare say the same goes for the 'hippy way of life' but it is an area that attracts people seeking an alternative lifestyle. Everyone I have spoken too who lives there don't want to leave and there are lots of people who would like to live there. So that to me is a good indication that it's a good place to live. But I guess its being able to create a lifestyle that accomodates work, house, living etc.

Not sure if you've come across these sites before but they might also help.

www.bigvolcano.com.au/human/wollmap.htm
www.bayweb.com.au/forum/
www.northernstar.com.au/
www.coastalwatch.com

Bunny007

Hi everyone,

I have a little question for those who know the Far North Coast of NSW.

Do you have an Autumn?

Do the leaves on the trees turn red then yellow then fall off, as they do in Britain?

Should I already know the answer to this question? Or do I just have a brain the size of a pea?

Regards

Bunny

ali south

can you share your visa timeline (application times) please

finsbury

Don't know about red or yellow but I hear brown is quite prominent. The North Coast has been on a 5 year drought. Might even be 9 years. From what I can gather, the four seasons are less pronounced though there is a noticable difference between summer and winter.

Hadrian

We're moving to Byron Bay in September 2005, have only spent a few days in the area on holiday but loved the rolling hills behind the bay (very much like Tuscany but obviously without the old towns), and of course we loved the beaches (especially Whatego Beach)

If all goes well we plan to live in Bangalow or nearby.

Bryron itself is too expensive, and to quote a resident of Ballina who runs a shop in Lennox Head - 'Byron is full of vagrants, druggies and dropouts in the summer', but when we were there in August on holiday this year it seemed a very pleasant place indeed.

Would'nt live in Lismore though, as we were told that it was like a hot house in summer due to it being situated in the bowl of an extinct volcano so there are no cooling breezes from the coast.

moneypenny20

Great first post. LOL. in this fab world of yours, (can I join you please) who does the cleaning, cooking, bed making, shopping or have you got fairies if so where from and how much

You obviously have a great outlook on life and a cool family - you should do well.

Welcome aboard.

Bunny007

Hi Moneypen,

I can't believe that I forgot to mention how I imagine myself organising the domestic godess side of life in Oz.

You must think that I am some air-head!

Well I have it all sused. For a start..........the gorgeous hubby Al (featured recently on "weakest Link" ) is a supermarketoholic.

Similar to others of his sex he is obsessed with 3 for the price of 2 offers (Safeways/Morrisons) although to be fair he never buys products that we don't use. My only complaint is that there is no way we can eat, wear, bbq or drink all the stuff he has bought before we go to Oz and I have already made enquiries with aid agencies willing to fly several plane loads of the surplus to famine struck communities world wide!!

As a man getting on in years and finding a few silver strands among the black (is that part of a Rabbie Burns poem?) he needs to be reassured about his sexuallity / masculinity. I don't so much think of it as the male menopause but more of an aging process. I am however not the sympathetic type and Al has to turn to others for reassurance and here again Safeways sarves his needs.

After some early morning banter with staff and customers at our "pockie wee B&B" (an Ann Robinson quote) I send him into town with a shopping list a grumble or two, a bit of a nag and a gentle reminder that he is needed back to cook lunches at 12 noon.

He is then just in the right mood to flirt outrageously with all the supermarket girls from checkout to customer services, from shelf stackers to managers. He makes tablet (a sweet Scottish delicacy) and takes it in for them. He jokes and gossips and acts the fool and they love it. One of his devil-may-care antics is to run verry fast with his trolly(empty or full) (inside shop or in carpark) and then to jump on and glide for as far as he possibly can with whatever momentum he has accumulated :scared: . I do my best not to show my jealousy when I occassionally join him on a shopping trip. But I was a bit done when I learned that the staff though I didn't shop because I was in a wheelchair. Guess who told them that!!!

So.......................there will be no problem with the shopping as Al will do it all. In fact we are hoping to get him a job as a Supermarket trolly collector in Oz and that way he can make money and have fun all at the same time.

As a point of information I will be going on a business visa and not Al as he is too old he! he!

Gord I don't half twitter on.

That just leaves cleaning cooking and bedmaking to conquor.

Easy...................the business visa says I have to employ a full time Australian to help me in the Possum Creek Pardise Retreat and Spa (or B&B as we call them in UK) and I thought if I spoke real nice to this aussie person and they had a max of 6 residents to look after then.... they might not notice if I sneaked in a little extra washing into the laundry. And what harn would it do if they had one more meesely little bed to make etc. etc.....you get my drift.

So all sorted and its back to the magician's sorry beautician's!

On the domestic front.
I got a new laptop in 2003 and have never used it because....and this is hard for a would be technocrat to admit....I had it come ready installed with the incorrect operating system i.e. I wasn't able to network with the gorgeous husband Al's computer or the darling daughter Jax computer even though we all share the same office.

Today I will reboot.

I feel that sharing this information with you will give me the push I need to get it done.

I am shit scared I do something stupid.

I don't wont to have to come back on here and admit defeat so wish me luck

Bunny :scared:

KerryG

Hi Hadrian

We are also moving to Byron in Sept 2005!!!!

My hubby lived in Byron a few years back for a few years and knows the area well.

Our friend lives in Bangalow, she loves it. We will probably end up a bit inland, like mullumbimby or such as it is pretty pricey. I agree about Lismore!!

Kerry

carojey

Thanks everyone! I am feeling so much more positive about moving to the Byron area now, glad to know a few of you are heading there too, be good to keep in touch when we arrive as we are going to be all on our lonesome (as my Dad likes to tell me everytime he sees me)...

Stu is going to be the breadwinner whilst I give myself skin cancer on the beach everyday and shop for bracelets ,bikinis and flipflops (so he says anyway... sure I can find more to do than that with a 2 year old in tow..!) He is a carpenter so I am hoping that he'll find work easily - chippies are needed everywhere aren't they?! Have been looking on the government job search and there seem to be lots.

We got our residency visa a year ago on Stu's trade - we came out for a month last December with Jude when he was only 9 months old (lovely plane journey, can't wait to do it again..) Hired a camper and drove from Brisbane to Byron cos I really wanted to see it again from my last visit years ago - then travelled up the coast to Airlie Beach. We stopped there for nearly a week at a lovely campsite and went out diving and snorkelling on the outer reef - it was wonderful.

We had to turn round and go back to Brisbane - no time to get further which was really annoying as wanted Stuart to see further north... the country is just too big!!

So anyway we had a lovely time last year and then I have spent the rest of this year persuading Stu to sell the house and go! The stipulation on the visa was that we had to make one visit before April 2004 and then we have until June 2008 to settle there.

And now only 2 months to go (unless the house sale falls through at the last hurdle, please no!) - I am wound up like a spring - hopefully I won't give myself a heart attack before we leave!

So yes, thanks for the advice I mean to say - could have done with this site when I was applying for the visa!

Caroline