Job offer received, house up for sale. Hopefully not too long before we arrive in Brisbane.

Can anyone reckon good areas to live in. My husband will be based in the city so do not want to travel to far each day, he will be driving as he has a company car.

We have 2 young children aged 4 and 6months so are looking for an area with good schools/childcare. Don't really want to be too far from shops etc.

Will the company pay for parking as well? Very expensive to park in the CBD. Are you looking at all areas in Brisbane including the more expensive areas or do you want to be further out in a less expensive area?

Main point is nice area for the children. Not sure about the parking cost, will have to find out

There are dozens of child friendly suburbs with good schools, parks and childcare on all sides of the city, close by and far away. Most of them are like this.

People tend to decide on things like commute time (varies depending on whether by public transport or driving), budget, demographic (will the people be similar to them), location (near beach, mountain, active cafe/walking suburb or sleepy car based area etc), house style (wooden character home or modern brick and tile) etc. As Brisbane is so suburban almost all of these types of areas suit and cater to children.

You can feel comfortable that most areas of Brisbane will offer children a good life. There are good private schools throughout Brisbane but with govt schools you have to be more careful....understandably they tend to correlate with the demographic of the area they are in so the strongest govt schools are usually in the highest socio economic areas that are closer to the CBD. Exceptions to this rule exist of course as it is just a generality.

I have found the C&K childcare centres the best and, for example, the one we used Rosalie C&K was fantastic: http://rosalie.candk.asn.au/Photos.aspx Again there tends to be more of these in the inner city suburbs I think.

Hi,

We are also arriving Brisbane in November so could you please suggest for us a couple of suburbs with good quality of life and excellent public primary schools so we can start doing some research for rental.

Location and distance from the CBD is not really a big issue as I still don’t know where my work site will be. My main concern is good public schools and friendly neighborhood. It will be for the first 6-12months until we decide where to buy.

The most successful public primary schools (from a raw results point of view) tend to be in the more expensive inner city areas. Of course some other areas have excellent public schools as well. Given the limited criteria you have given a nice place to start is Rainworth school at Bardon. Let me know if this area doesn't suit and why and I'll find more.

Hi
Try looking at the Redlands, we have lived there for the last six years and never looked back. There is a train line into the city, you are near the water and it has some excellent schools.
There are several nice areas on the waters edge such as Wellington Point, Raby Bay, Cleveland Point , Point 'o Halloran , Redland Bay.
Our Daughter went to Wellington Point State School and we had no problems at all . There are also some excellent private schools like Redlands College or Ormiston College.

Agree with what Fish.01 says about suburbs closer to the city being a bit better for schooling etc. For me I would sacrifice the bigger newer build houses in outer suburbs for something in an older more established suburb.


Off topic now........I hear Rainworth has had a rough week like Somerville. My daughter doesn't go to Somerville any more but we still have a lot of friends there and see them on a daily basis. My youngest has had several teary nights because the girls talking about it have really got to her.

We have some excellent state primary schools out in the west like Pullenvale, Brookfield, Kenmore, Chapel Hill and Indooroopilly.

Also private schools like St Peters.

We're in Pullenvale and I work in Kelvin Grove, I couldn't sacrifice the space to move closer to the CBD.

Agreed. I would put Indooroopilly, and even Chapel Hill at a stretch, as inner suburbs btw. Chapel Hill SS seems to always have a good reputation. Lots of good schools all over, they are not restricted to one area it's just playing the odds really when someone says they want good public schools it's more likely they will find them in higher socio economic areas.

Still unbelievable what happened. Was very impressed with the somerville girls showing restraint when talking about the mother.

Yes, handled very well by staff, parents and students....truly hard to imagine that it could have happened. Our senior dancers will do dance a classical piece named after the young girl at our christmas concert in November....so, so sad. I don't know how the father and brother will ever recover.