Hi Everyine
We are moving to Brisbane in the next few months and trying to get our bearings etc.
So can anyone help with a couple of questions please?
First - What area do people recommend we look at tp live? bearing in mind we have 2 small children so schools are a big consideration.
Second - WHere to shop for clothes, food etc. I woul dlike to know which shops are best so i can go onine and look at prices of items etc.
I look forward to you replies and help.
Thanks

You need to tell us more about your choice of where to live as Bris is a big place. Do you prefer inner city or Bayside living? What is your price range? Are you renting or buying?

As for clothes - try Kmart or Myers (Google the links) and for food try Coles and Woolworths. Be aware web sites are not normally that good over here as they rely on shoppers going into store as opposed to online.

Good luck mate

Personally the north side is nicer than the south. Ferny Grove, Hamilton, Ascot are some of the most expensive to live. Not much point living on the bay as there are no beaches unless you head an hour north or south of the city except for Bribie Island but commuting ain't fun as Brissy roads are worse than London which is funny for a town a tenth the size.

Anyway, as for online. Don't bother. Oz is a millenium behind on websites and online shopping. Even Ebay is expensive here. You want clothes or pretty much anything you either ring for pricing or have to go to a store.

The City, Chermside have the largest shopping malls, Carindale and some other large mall on the south side.

Gold coast is very commercial and really not very nice to live in IMO. Mooloolaba up the north coast is much nicer.

I have a spreadsheet which shows the top twenty schools for NAPLAN results in 2009, will post it when I get home but from memory the top state schools are in Bardon, Indooropilly, The Gap, Wilston, Ascot, Chapel Hill.

Having reccied them all the only one I would discount is Chapel Hill due to commuting times to CBD, this may not apply to you.

Personally if I was you and you could afford it, I would look at Ascot and Bulimba first. Then work out from there.

Southside has some very nice areas, well serviced and easy to commute to the CBD. It depends on how far out you want to live, but Greenslopes, Annerley and Carindale with Mt Gravatt and Sunnybank or even Shailer Park or Alexandra Hills, being further out, could all be possibilities. If you are considering public transport this link may help <http://translink.com.au/>

Gold Coast is not ALL commercial and has great suburbs with good schools and plenty of infrastructure too, not everyone wants to live in the more touristy areas. There are plenty of areas that are great for families.

For Schools this link may help <http://education.qld.gov.au/directory/schools/index.html>

This list I did a while ago may help with the shopping.

Many of the local stores are Qld based but other states would have equivalents ....click on link to go to store website...if they ask for a postcode for store pricing just put in 4000 for brisbane cbd. Note there is also a bunch of online only stores that compete with these bricks and mortar stores and you can play one against the other sometimes. Also note that haggling is expected so the list price is rarely what people pay especially in appliances.

Bedroom Furniture

Discount - Large shops; More than one state

Super AMart
Ikea
Fantastic

Discount - Bedding specialists; More than one state; Some just do ensembles.

Fortywinks
Makin Mattresses
Sleepys
The Sleeping Giant
BedShed
Beds R Us
Captain Snooze

Discount - Local state based chains (Mainly Qld); Most states have plenty of these

Furniture Galore
SleepZone (Apollo)
Dial A Bed
Beds Plus
Eureka Street
Aussie Living
Bali At Home

Mid range

Harvey Norman
Domayne
Freedom
Myer
David Jones
Far Pavilions (Qld)

Higher End - A few examples; These tend to be one off stores in flash inner city suburbs

Inspirations
Dare Gallery

Bedding but not beds:

Adairs
Pillowtalk


Lounge Room Furniture

Discount - Large shops; More than one state

Super AMart
Ikea
Fantastic

Discount - Local state based chains (Mainly Qld); Most states have plenty of these

Furniture Galore
Eureka Street
Aussie Living
Bali At Home

Mid range

Oz Design
Nick Scali
Harvey Norman
Domayne
Freedom
Dare Gallery
Myer
David Jones
Far Pavilions (Qld)

Higher End - A few examples; These tend to be one off stores in flash inner city suburbs

Ambrose
Charcoal Interiors
Inspirations
King Furniture


Appliances

Discount - Large shops; More than one state

Bing Lee
The Good Guys
Betta Electrical
Retravision
KMart
BigW
Harris Scarfe

Mid range and above - Large shops; More than one state

Clive Peeters
Harvey Norman
Myer
David Jones
Brisbane Appliance Sales (Qld)

Largest inventory is usually with Harvey Norman, Clive Peeters, The Good Guys....then usually the superstore versions of Retravision, Betta Electrical, Bing Lee...then dept stores like Myers, David Jones.

There are very few areas where you couldn't live. Good schools can be found in, at a guess, 90% of Brisbane so this doesn't really narrow things down for you.

Because of the low density/large blocks Australian cities tend to get cheaper the further you are from the city centre as commute times creep up. Apart from the odd rough inner city suburb most inner city living is priced highly.

Because government schools tend to follow the demographic of the area they are in, on average, they will be better the closer you are to the city. This is not to say they are all rubbish in the outer suburbs or all great in the inner city, just "on average". You find some people in the outer suburbs send their children to private schools to avoid the local state school. This is turn weakens the local state school further as a greater percentage of the pushy parents have removed their children from the state system.

The other thing that influences prices is house style. In the inner city pre-war wood and tin roofed "Queenslander" houses are abundant and popular. As you move out, say approx 7km+ depending on the side of Brisbane you're on, they change to more austere post war wood and tin or wood and tile houses built for returning soldiers. These houses are not as popular though many are converted with decks etc to improve them. Approx 10-12km+ from the city centre the houses then turn to 1970's brick and tile, 1980's brick and tile and so on in ripples outwards.

The newer brick and tile areas can be dearer than the extremes of the wood and tin post war area as some prefer the modern brick and tile to the austere post war wood and tile even though they are further out.

Major grocery supermarkets are:
- Aldi
- Coles
- Woolworths

There are also a lot of independent fruit and veg shops, butchers etc usually positioned next to the supermarkets. Lots of farmers markets as well where fruit and veg is often far cheaper.

Repost:

Brisbane has been broken into transport hubs with each side of Brisbane generally having a designated hub (usually next to a large shopping mall). If you buy near these, or between them and the CBD, you generally will get a good commute.

- Eastside is Westfield Carindale (Carindale)
- Southside is Westfield Garden City (Upper Mt Gravatt)
- Northside is Westfield Chermside (Chermside)
- Westside is Indooroopilly Shopping Centre (Indooroopilly)
- Plus the city centre has a lot of shopping and surrounding inner suburbs.

These are the hubs where the government is positioning more shops, jobs, transport etc.

These hubs are approx about 8-12km outside of the CBD. Any suburb along the traffic route between the hub and the CBD or feeding into the hub will usually have the best transport links. These will usually be buses.

Suburbs near the hub or along the route on the southside include: Wishart (very nice family suburb - kids playing on the street), Upper Mt Gravatt (busy but handy) and Mt Gravatt (some great pockets), Eight Mile Plains (big houses - multicultural), Holland Park (old money on the hill), Tarragindi (beautiful suburb full of trees).

Suburbs near the hub or along the route on the eastside include: Carindale (family suburb popular with greek and italian immigrants), Carina (nice local shops), Carina Heights (the heights make it), Camp Hill (getting closer in now), Norman Park (renovators galore), Coorparoo (mixture of busy shopping and quiet old world houses).

Suburbs near the hub or along the route on the westside include: Indooroopilly (Shops and groovy train station), Taringa (nice local shops and train), Toowong (busy shopping village plus some beautiful quiet area's with nice parks), Auchenflower (can almost walk to work from here), Paddington (lovely pockets like Rosalie village).

Suburbs near the hub or along the route on the northside include: Chermside (currently winning the biggest mall in Brisbane competition - we're a dull lot), Kedron, Windsor, Lutchwyche

Train routes only serve some of Brisbane so are very suburb specific. Some people never live near a train their whole life.

My pick is the westside of Brisbane from Paddington/Red Hill/Ashgrove/Bardon outwards until you hit a suburb you can afford or a house size you can live with.

I have left out a huge number of suburbs with good transport - this is just to get you started as I know it must be confusing with so many to look at.

Was gonna give you 'Karma' for a good balanced informative post - but BE decided I'm not allowed to!...

So - for the record and in the tradition and following a good post with complete duds:

"What he said!! ^^^ "

Fraid I wouldn't call any northern area of Brissy as good transport. Once they finish the busway to Chermside it'll make Chermside to the CBD much quicker than it is now but old northern rd and waterworks and milton rds are nightmares even for the buses with there T2 lanes. Better but not fantastic when compared to other cities in Oz and worldwide.

Southside is a bit better for the busways but only upto a few k's out the city bar the southern busway.

Brisbane does not want to invest the money to design brand new transportation and so tries, yet fails, to modify the existing road structure. They don't even believe in railway flyovers so in rush hour the main suburb roads get clogged up every 20mins or more by a train crossing the road.

I'm not joking but it takes as long going half the distance into Brissy than it does doing twice that into London. For just 20k's outside the city will take you from 40-60mins each way depending on the suburb line being travelled.

If you are used to wasting your time in traffic or a slow train system then cool but I'd suggest working from home in Brissy cos the commute may drive you nuts pretty quick. Does me

Just an honest response from someone who has had to travel the north and south by both train, bus and car for his line of work. I now refuse to use the roads between 5-10.30am and 2.30-7pm as it is just bedlam for such short travel distances.

Yes you have to pick your location and distance from town. We have a good service from Ashgrove, continuous buses with hardly any wait and with usually an easy run into town. Though I ride my bicycle so my wife is the one who catches them. Dedicated veloways are planned along waterworks and kelvin grove road to extend the acceptable commute times out further I think. Also good along the Ipswich line out to Indooroopilly. OK out along the Ferny Grove line as well. Around the Wooloowin area also looked ok - not too long. Obviously frequencies could be improved.

The new busway being built initially to Kedron will be great for those suburbs too. As you say it will eventually extend to Chermside being the transport hub.

Just got to make sure you check the timetables before picking a spot because while some are good you can easily fall into a bad pocket that takes forever.

Yes the south east busway is now 17km long with plans for a further 5km to springwood. Bus only takes 21 minutes to travel the length of it. A lot of the southside busses feed onto it. For example Wishart Outlook is 16km out of town but bus trip takes less than 30 minutes.

The roads have been particular bad the last few years but I think the massive roadwork programme has added to that. Duplicated Gateway bridge and motorway widening, Ipswich motoroway upgrade, Airport Link tunnel, Go Between bridge, Clem 7 tunnel, Kurilpa bridge, Airport Roundabout Flyover, Moreton Drive motorway, Ted Smout Bridge and now the Legacy Way tunnel.

This has been an unprecedented amount of public works. Hopefully when all done things will be better. Maybe a few more of those road bucks should have gone on public transport.

To be balanced in the last few years they have extended the northern busway to the RBH, are half way through the northern busway extension to Kedron, have built the eastern busway link to Uni of Queensland and started heading out towards the eastern suburbs.

The next big project is the cross river rail tunnel to ease the train bottleneck over the merivale bridge and add a few new underground stations to the city network but it has been put back because of the floods. This project will allowed increased train frequencies across the network as well as new services to the gold coast and satellite towns. Like always it is time and money. Low density living comes with its drawbacks. Most of the money is being spent to build transport improvements out to the hubs I mentioned so anywhere along those spines will improve in the future.

Thanks, I hope BE didn't ban it just cause it was me

School results attached. These are year 3 results for 2009.

Red I had ruled out, either due to cost or journey time to CBD
Orange were maybes
Green were top options

Journey times were to Valley, hence bus routes are longer due to change in CBD, having done it now for a few months it's less of a hassle than I thought.

Just a note to say thanks for the info too, we need more of that around here.

My advice means little as I am living (and loving it ) in the sticks, but hated my old commute to the CBD ... so, in short, most people don't want to live here

No worries...I sometimes wonder what it's like to live out there in the sticks and what's what as I know nothing about it...maybe potential immigrants would like to know too to see if it suits them? Specially those that aren't CBD workers. Is it time for you to write "The Dead Guide to emigrating to the SEQ sticks" ??