Stephen Jones

Hi any expats on here living in Canberra?

How do you find living there?


Steve

UncleKev

A shame that nobody replied to you.

I am not strictly an expat as I was born in Melbourne, but I have lived in the UK for over 15 years so I am in a good position to compare notes on living in either country.

My personal view is that Canberra probably offers the best combination of job prospects and quality of life of any of the main Australian cities.

It is spread out quite a bit, but due to the low population density, nobody needs to spend more than half an hour commuting to work. Housing is much better quality for the money than similar priced housing in most parts of the UK.

Before the downturn it was probably the easiest place for an IT practitioner to get work. Its an ideal place to raise a family, although single people tend to bitch about it being sterile and boring. On the other hand its an easy drive to Sydney if you need a fix of big city life. About 3 hours by car from my house in Canberra to Sydney CBD. We quite often go up to Sydney for theatre or other big events.

There are loads of opportunities to do outdoor stuff like walking, cycling, running etc. There is virtually no pollution here because the only industry is white collar admin type stuff.

The downside is that it is an hour and a half drive to the coast, and that it gets EXTREMELY cold in Winter. The local Rugby team (Brumbies) is crap as well, just had a record loss to the NZ Hurricanes.

Canberra is not perfect, but I like it.

ossigeno

And most of the jobs surviving the downturn will be eradicated by the Gershwin report.

quoll

I guess I would fit into the expat category!

It's as good a place as any to live in Australia IMHO. Our facilities are excellent, the education generally gets to the top of the score chart although we do have a thriving inependent/Catholic system which serves almost half the student population - esp HS. The weather is better than many places with definite seasons - you do get a few weeks of HOT!!!!!!!!!!! and also a few months with minus C overnights the humidity is low. The coast is just under 2 hours away as are the snowfields so if skiing or surfing is your bag you arent too badly served.

We are in drought which has made the place look more tired than it has in past years, there is a fair bit of new building with the outer suburbs spreading further north at the moment. Nowhere is far from anywhere in Canberra so a daily commute from one end to the other is never going to be more than 45 minutes. A traffic jam has 5 cars in it at rush hour

Quite a bit of community participation in a wide range of events but not that sense of community that maybe you get in the smaller country towns and certainly not as strong as a UK village/small town. Lots of people overstretched with their mortgages and needing to be two income families, some stress because of potential job cuts to the public service and also a lot of previously employed consultants to the federal govt now also flooding the job market. Our local pollies are not as corrupt or inefficient as other states although we are financially not as sound as we should be and every decision is made on social justice/human rights/PC grounds rather than (sometimes) common sense.

Lots of nice restaurants which can be quite $$$, lots of good coffee shops, quite a bit of parking at shopping centres if you are prepared to pay for it, pretty good public transport especially to the inner suburban areas.

Neither of the rugby teams are much chop actually, the Raiders also tend to be vying for the wooden spoon much of the time.

quoll

That would be the Gershon report http://www.finance.gov.au/publicatio...iew/index.html

Graham and Maria

We live in Canberra, theres a few Canberrans on here.

Without going into specifics Canberra is a great place to live....Its getting bloody cold from now on in though

Seems to be low crime.
Excellent roads.
Excellent parks and bushland.
Beautiful wildlife.
Lakes and rivers to explore.
Theres always something going on here, events, markets ect
Less then 2hrs from the gorgeous coast.
Less then 2 hours to the snowies.

Downfalls:
Extortionate rents and house prices in my opinion.
Its very sprawled and semi rural in some areas making a taxi home from a night in the town for us around 50 bucks (we do have drinking holes a lot closer though)
Cold winter and crappy insulation = high leccy bills
very high temps in summer = brown grass lol...cant win

Its better then some of the other cities we've been to, but may not be your idea of Australia...depends what your looking for really, most of the other expats we've met here also like it, I expect they will chime in soon


edit...Quoll beat me to it

ossigeno

In addition to what's been said already I would add:-

Good
Cheap / 'free' flights with Tiger from Canberra airport

Bad

• There is no Coles or Safeway in the city centre! But Superbahn is good.
• If you leave office after 6pm in city centre you will find:
  • Very little open
  • Public transport at best one bus every 30 minutes

quoll

And dont forget we now have an Aldi in the Canberra centre! From memory we dont have a Safeway anywhere in ACT. Loads of Woolies though.

mohogony

l think it has the lowest crime rate of any city in OZ, maybe criminals find the place too boring to live. Canberra has the reputation of being the most boring city in OZ, but l have never been there so thats not my opinion, but it seems like a great place to live to me if you like outdoors stuff with all the bycicle tracks, lakes and rivers, parks, national parks , mountains and snow fields.