alkristensen

i totally understand what you are saying, but ive had to think about it for a while and reflect. I will miss alot about manchester, not england, mainly friends and the local pubs spring to mind mostly. but a new chapter is about to be written in a differebnt style.

Where are my roots?

Im half dane,quarter ducth, quater english. Family mum uk, dad spain, brother germany, aunties and uncles australia,denmark holland.

Manchester is a place where i live and have great friends and go for a beer. Its not home. Nowhere feels like home.

Maybe oz will be, i will find out soon.

Thanks and i have travelled more than most for my age and wont stop by coming here. My brother is tranferring to the aussie army in a year or so when he retires and when his stint is up we are off round the worlding again.

In no way am i naive as ive lived trhrough more than most people will endure on their deathbed by the age of 30.

I can never look back nd say that my life wasnt dull !!!


al

Jonahs_mummy

Guys,
What can I say...? I KNEW that something was going on! Yer crafty buggers! I must say its a hell of a way to get people shouting about the area they live in so you can find out what it is REALLY like! Maybe we will see you on the GC afterall? LOL
Claire

annqldau

Going to the meet up at Caloundra on Sat any of you going?

alkristensen

Would love to have, we are on a plane sat 3pm back to sunny Manchester, well the weather here in brissie is certainly getting us geared up for home again, as it p1sses it down constantly in manc.

Will keep in touch and would love to meet up when we arrive.

I dove the hmas Brisbane from Noosa after all. Was my first wreck dive and was really scary, as I'm partially blind from my brain ops and the distance with the mask on was a bit foreign to get through the doors with all the gear on, and was knackered for the second dive as it was a small dive boat with nowhere to lie down for a bit. Went with blue water out of noosa and we partially penetrated the hull in to the gun room and canteen etc and they didnt care about how many dives i had done so there may be a chance for you there. Hope you get to do it soon as it was a great experience, but i prefer fish and reefs myself and even though its covered in barnacles after this short time, there isnt alot of marine life yet, there will be soon though im sure of it, so by the time youve done your OW then itll be teemong i reckon.

Will update when i get home on what we thought of noosa and our conclusions.

take care all and wish we were at the meet.

Al and clare.xxx

wargod

Thanks for the info on the areas - and have a safe trip back

Cheers

Jon

lacey21

Safe trip back alk

hugs Lace x

alkristensen

Noosa, very nice, not that pretentious as people would have it. Very nice coastline and set back from the road with a few rows of trees and bushland between the main street and the beach. The main street has lots of ladies clothes shops, and from clares perspective alot of them were very "dorien" from birds of a feather,LOL, lots of rich peoples very tasteless garish tiger print bikinis, dresses and such, but some very nice shops in between. There are plenty of cafes and restaurants for every need but they seem to be a bit of the same. Need a few more curry houses and Mongolian, Mexican, Tibetan (something not Italian and French), and if anyone lives there and would like to correct me then go ahead as it will inform others of whats to offer there as well as my experiences.

Noosa junction, great row of shops with pretty much everything you need and not too far away from everything else with a good Irish pub that shows the sports and a few eateries mainly cafes.

Noosaville, lovely riverside bit of noosa, lots of nice places to eat and the river is spotless with sand banks making it look different shades of blue and white, very relaxed and chilled out place but a bit on the over 50s side for us and a bit sleepy.

On the whole, quite liked noosa, but just 50kms up the road from mooloolaba you could tell the diff in humidity, very sticky, clothes didn’t dry overnight and lots more bites than anywhere else we have been on this trip. Very mangrovey all around and too humid for me (may have been a one off, but not the climate for me im afraid). The place had a little buzz near the beach, but the 3 or 4 noosas were too far apart if you live here I feel to have any sort community feel, but out of the people I spoke to, there seems to be more younger families moving in to the area so it wont be sleepy for long. The house prices were slightly higher up here, but you could still find a 2-3 bed for 260-330k if you wanted in Noosaville near the river.

We have come back to mooloolaba just to make sure it’s what we want as we have had doubts that it is THE place for us at this stage of our life. We couldn’t see any sign of nightlife in the week we were here (but we were in maroochydore and didn’t ask anyone) so we came back and went out for the day as residents rather than tourists. We went down to the sunshine plaza to the pig n whistle to find out about the sport they show there (get the priorities right!!). This is a chain of English style pubs and they have loads of big screens and show footy till 3am on fox sports 1+2, they told me that they had just this week had sentanta sports installed for more variety on premiership games, and if there is a pay per view game(such as the Celtic/rangers derby last week) they charge $25 dollars a head upstairs and you have a bar up there too. They serve alcohol til 3am and chuck you out after 3 as they cant serve or attempt to serve beer after that time(no lock ins whether beer served or not). The sunshine plaza WOW, just like any shopping centre in the uk, except built on the maroochy river so it has a river boardwalk with lots of cafe and places to get food and sit down, with a Myers target Coles and lots and lots of miss Selfridges and top shop top man next type shops, cheap and cheerful fashionable places.

To sum it all up, we really liked the maroochy area as a whole, and its hinterland places like buderim, nambour, palm wood and woombye were all cheaper up and coming places 10 minutes from a ice beach and shopping arcades, however we feel that we aren’t at that stage of our lives yet (i.. the 2.4 kids and the ¾ bed house) so we may yet decideto live in Sydney for a year (well manly) as it is around the corner from the city for spoting events,gigs and lots of work for both of us whbile we find our feet in the country. Clare likes greenery and peace and tranquility, and I like cities more so manly Is a good compromise for both of us at this stage of our lives and then we will move up to the sunshine coast when we are ready for a family and the things that go with it.

Another factor is that realistically we want our friends to come and visit us and Sydney is cheaper to get to by about £200 which makes a big difference to deciding whether to come or not.

I hope this has been informative for people and is only biased to our tastes solely, and our opinions should not sway you from looking at an area yourselves. It has takjen 1500kms and 3 weeks of searching and the reflexion of whether mooloolaba area is the perfect place for us NOW or in a few years, so definitely go and have a long look at places and make sure you both know what you want as it cold lead to arguments if you don’t discuss before you move out there what exactly you want and what you are willing to compromise on as you will never find the absolute perfect place. There will always be some little thing wrong with it, mainly friends and family missing, but try and at least tick as many boxes as you can and be open minded.

Good luck everyone.

Al and clare.xxx

merlotsmum

Al & Claire

Only read your last post but I am book marking this for our return sometime in next few years, very informative.

Thank you.

MMum

Rooksie

ditto that - brilliant post

debbiemc

great post, really informative thanks for taking the time to tell us.

debs x

annqldau

"I can't believe it" all that and you are going to live in Sydney...LOL... .

You've sold out on us...diving's not so good so you'll still have to come up over. Know what you mean about the night life, all the Aussies go to bed for 8pm no sense of late night fun, but we are about to change all of that by importing lots of Brits who want to stay up late.

We are transporting friends and family over for that though... and shouldn't worry about the 200 quid they pay that not you and if they really want to come they still do... .

alkristensen

I know but i have a lot of mates just getting on the prop ladder in manchester, and its really dear to buy round here at the mo, so every pennyu counts. 3 bed hoiuses in my part of manchester are going for190,000 quid and thats for a terraced!

We will move to maroochy area sometime in the near future, but i dont think its right for us now, its beautiful around there but suydney has more of a buzz. We are glad we did our reccie trip, was a little dissapointed when the realisation set in that we had spent 3 weeks there only to find that we may end up somewhere else in the country, but we are glad that we did it this way rather than buy on site (which we could have done LOL) and then regret it. So all in all it was a very tiring and worthwhile exercise in the grand scheme.

Thanks for all the nice comments about the post. I wanted to tell people what i would want to know, but not everyone is the same as us so go and have your own adventure, and from what we have seen, you wont be dissapointed.

al and clare.

See everyone on SC in 3 yrs LOL

kevinbloomfield

Excellent post

BTW When you were in Mooloolaba did you go to the Surf Club? We went there twice and it was excellent, 1st time we had a lovely carvery, 2nd time we had a massive seafood platter ($50) that filled 3 of us up!!
All this and it is directly on the sea front with live music (every night I think), free entry and drinks are cheap as well.

Also, I can't understand why people moan about the shopping in OZ, the sunshine plaza seemed to be more or less the same as Lakeside / Bluewater in the UK, apart from being spotlessy clean and in a beautiful setting. Woolworths and Coles seem to have shops all over the place with a very wide range of products.

Good luck with Sydney though, the Manly ferry into Sydney has to be the best introduction to the harbour / city, I think we took about 20 pictures just of the Opera House and the bridge!!

Jonahs_mummy

When we were there we went to Mooloolaba, Alex Headland & Maroochy Surf Clubs - all had fantastic quality food & were amazing value!!

Similarly, on the Gold Coast, Sharks AFL Club is def worth a visit!

Claire
x

kevinbloomfield

Yep I was amazed at the quality of the surf club at mooloolaba, the 1st time we went there with Deb and Kev Reeve (off the TV), they are so nice and we had a lovely evening (hi Deb and Kev!!).

Sure beats going to the local pub for ribs and chips!!