mordechaivanunu

Hi

Anyone got any comments on areas to live north of Brisbane. My OH is looking at a job as a midwife, in Caboolture. I hope to get work at one of the refineries in Brisbane (lytton area) We would like to live nearer Caboolture than Brisbane, and also have friends from UK living in Albany Creek and Aspley. Also we have three children (10,12,15) so we are looking for good schools and a bit of a social life.

Thanks

tabby

My ex-boss lives in Nudgee it has a train station he loves it there

You can see which suburbs there northside by looking on www.ourbrisbane.com.au

midwifetanya

Hi,

We have recently relocated to Brisbane (I am also a midwife starting work at Caboolture!!!)
We have moved into the North Lakes (Mango Hill) area which is great for families!
Hope this helps,
Tanya x

matt-and-jenny

Hi
We live on the Zillmere/Aspley Border and really like it. I work in Lawnton (not quite as north as Caboolture), and my drive to work is great, as I drive against the rush hour. And believe me, Brisbane is getting bad for rush hour traffic. Matt commutes (25 min from Zillmere station into the city).

Pollyanna also lives in Aspley, she may be able to give you some insight.

wargod

I agree with Tanya - we also live at North Lakes, and have two children and so far so good !!

themerlin

What about bribie island Island ?

woogle

have you tried looking on www.whereilive.com.au ? You should be able to get some info from there.

BobbyDazzler

Tanya/Wargod

My family and I visited North Lakes whilst in Brisbane over Easter and were very impressed with both the concept of the 'planned community', the facilities, parkland and also good choice of land and housing

We asked to be put onto the North Lakes mailing list and only the other day received the (I believe) first "Lifestyle' magazine produced by Stockland/North Lakes

Having recently being granted PR visas, we are again coming out to Oz over Xmas in order to validate and will again be looking at North Lakes, initially from the viewpoint of hoping to identify potential rental properties for when we make the move 'for real' in August next year.

Both my partner and I have secured jobs in the Newstead & Herston areas of the CBD and if I recall, the commute was approx 30 mins, albeit not in the rush hour when I guess you could double that time.

I'd be particularly interested to hear your views of North Lakes in terms of quality of schooling, crime rates/anti-social behaviour, access times to the CBD and anything/everything else which we might find useful

A friend of ours told us that North Lakes/Mango Hill had a bad reputation in terms of crime etc but I have to say that this is in sharp contrast to all the other (good) things we have heard and read about NL

Cheers

BD

232Bar

We're at Kurwongbah - kept away from the housing estates - She travels to redcliffe Hospital, I travel to Eagle farm (about 40 mins in rush hour). Much prefer it here to the 'designed communities'

themerlin

I don't think these 'planned community' estates are a good buy long term, blocks are too small and they are too far from the city once all the plots are sold the developers are going to stop organising all these events they seem to have.
I think they are going to be the first to slump if the housing market cools off .

Thats just my option anyway

Billabong

The crime in North Lakes is reported in one of the local papers and we always laugh at just how low these stats are. There is a security patrol throughout the night as well.

wargod

Hi BD,

I have just re-read this and must apologise for the length !

You mention that you intend to come over during Christmas to view rental properties etc, until a few weeks ago I was in the exact same position. Looking on the real estate sites there were only a couple of ‘suitable’ properties. Therein lies the problem – choice!

I am no snob, however, in the UK I had a nice 4 bed detached in a nice area etc and I intended to obtain something similar over here. I viewed 2 or 3 places – indeed, the only ones on the books. 2 of them were lowest (bungalows) one was too small, the other wasn’t too bad, but expensive for what is was and had no garden at all.

The 3rd property was a highest this wasn’t too bad but is was surrounded by other houses being built, as I have two young children I thought that perhaps the noise and traffic may be an issue, however the clincher was in fact the main bedroom was downstairs, and as we have two young children we didn’t want the hassle of having to run upstairs each time they fall out of bed etc!!

As luck would have it, my wife spotted what seemed to be a suitable property from back in the UK using a site called seqrents.com.au. I went to have a look at it, and instantly decided it would do.

You mentioned you visited NL when you were over here last, well I don’t know if you’ll recall, on the main road through NL there is a ‘centre’ which is called the Night Owl, well we are sort of behind that. Between us and the Night Owl is the ABC Kindergarten, some land, and a play area the actual name of it is called the Crest.

My first thoughts were that it might be effected by the proximity to the Night Owl but I have been there for 3 weeks now and can honestly say there is no disturbance what so ever. It is a ‘gated community’ i.e an electric gate in and out of the area, we have a communal swimming pool and BBQ area, and it is kept very clean and tidy by the resident caretakers. I would wholeheartedly recommend it. The house itself isn’t as big as I would like however. It is a 4 bed detached with air con downstairs, all bedrooms are doubles, the only let down is the downstairs rooms. A very small – but perfectly adequate kitchen, a dining room and a lounge.

As I mentioned previously we have two children so space is a must, my wife and the children arrived last week and so far so good, we tend to spend more time out of the house than we do in, so to be honest it really isn’t much of an issue at all.

Commuting – I drove to work for the first 2 weeks and each time it took no more than about 30-35 minutes leaving NL roughly at 8.30am and leaving my office between 5.30 and 6.00pm, with one exception which was the other Friday night, this took me exactly one hour. I work in Milton (opposite the Suncorp Stadium) to give you some idea of how central to the CBD I am.

To give you an example when I first moved over here my company set me up in a place called Taringa which used to take me 20 minutes, and that is not much more than 10k’s away so moving to NL didn’t really increase my commuting time at all. I am currently using the train to commute, this takes approx 40 minutes, frequency is roughly every 30 minutes, from a place called Petrie, about a 10 minute drive from NL it costs $8.80 return I dare say that a weekly/monthly ticket would be cheaper.

Crime – I work for an insurance company and have recently been working on car theft stats. If you imagine NL to be in the middle of Petrie and Redcliffe. There is only a few reported thefts in both Petrie and NL, Redcliffe however does have a significantly higher theft rating. I wouldn’t read too much into this though as these figures are black and white, rather than being based on a ‘per capita’ crime rate. My gut feeling is that it is a nice area. Additionally NL is an every increasing develpment so again these stats will be out of date!

School – My son (4 year old) started yesterday at the ABC Kindy mentioned above. You get to choose the hours they stay between something like 7.30am and 6.30pm. My wife dropped our son off at 10am and picked him up at 2.00pm, apparently he said that next time he goes he wants to stay longer, which I am taking as a good sign. This morning in the car when driving past his school he said that he preferred this school to his other one, again another good sign? As for prices I think it was something like $50 for 1-3 days regardless of how long he is in there.

Someone mentioned about block sizes, which is a real issue. We intend to have a pool, and we would also like a garden. We are looking to build a house, a Clarendon homes Ballina 43 (www.clarendonhomes.com.au) to be precise. When we were here in March we had a salesman draw a to scale plan of how our house would sit on what is normally the largest block available (640sqm) 32m deep by 20 wide. From memory I think it works out that you have 7m front garden (stipulated by Stocklands) 4m (width) down one side and 1.5m(width) down the other side with a 9.5m (depth) rear garden which is quite large but I am not sure it would fit both a ‘reasonable’ sized pool and have enough room after paving and fencing etc to have a usable grass area. That said occasionally you do get bigger blocks coming up so its just a case of keeping your eyes open and being in a position to proceed sooner rather than later.

Feel free to ask any other questions, i have only been in NL a few weeks but will try my best to answer.

Regards

Jon

glennandkate

Hi, I know this thread is a few weeks old but thought I would add - Just before we came out I was speaking to a colleague who said he had a sis-in-law in Redcliffe (which is where we wanted to move originally) Anyway we met up with her when we arrived and it turned out she is a relief teacher and has worked in high schools all over the outer northside and she said the best school in the area is Pine Rivers High (this was better than the private schools). We have since acted on her advice and moved to Petrie to be in the catchment and we are loving it. The kids (13 and 14) are really settled at the school, there is the train station a mix of old and new housing and the most wonderful scenery.
I think your best bet will be to write down all of these places and just spend the first couple of weeks travelling around the areas. What is right for one might not be right for another. But do bare in mind Pine Rivers High, I am more than pleased with the school.
Katie x

lisamcl

Hi everyone,

We fly out on 13th November and are heading for Brisbane after a bit of a road trip. Scary!!! I don't suppose it's even worth looking at areas until we actually get there is it? Luckily we have got a friend who has set us up with a dog/house sit for a month (Samford) so that should give us time to find somewhere to live. I'd really like to be nearer the coast. To be honest, I can't really get my head round it all at the moent and have this knot in my stomach most days!

Lisa
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