I've only visited Brisbane fleetingly but your reasons for moving don't sound particularly solid.
Food is expensive in Perth but I cannot see that, given how much it will cost you to move, you're going to save anything in Brisbane - assuming that food costs are actually cheaper there.

I have young girls also and I've lived in a few different countries and I think Perth is the best place I've lived in for young families. What may be true is that when they reach late teens they start to think about leaving the state or the country - personally I think this is no bad thing. I don't think living in any city for your whole life is the way to go.

It is isolated and the landscape is pretty boring for hours on end. This is one negative that I couldn't disagree with. And although Amazulu points out its relative proximity to Asia, I'm not sure that frequent visits are possible for normal families. We have a household income above average but struggle to get the four of us away on holiday.
(Having said that, if I cut down on beer, we might be able to afford something - or, come to that, feed the kids).

This repost might help.

Annual Dry days Per Year:

288 Brisbane - Annual Rainfall 1149
270 Adelaide - Annual Rainfall 622.1
265 Perth - Annual Rainfall 867.6
260 Sydney - Annual Rainfall 1084.4
255 Melbourne - Annual Rainfall 648.5

Summer Dry Days Per Month (Min/Max Temps Celsius)

30 Perth (17.9 - 29.7) <---- Very dry summer
28 Adelaide (16.7 - 28.6) <---- Very dry summer
26 Melbourne (14.3 - 25.9) <---- Medium dry summer
23 Brisbane (20.7-29.4) <---- Humid with afternoon storms
23 Sydney (18.7-25.9) <---- Humid with afternoon storms

Winter Dry Days Per Month (Min/Max Temps Celsius)

27 Brisbane (9.5-20.4) <---- Very dry, very warm winter
25 Sydney (8.0-16.3) <---- Very dry, warmish winter
21 Melbourne (6.0-13.4) <---- Wet, very cold winter
19 Adelaide (7.7 - 14.8) <---- Wet, cold winter
16 Perth (9.0-17.4) <---- Very wet, warmish winter

Note: Based on 100 yr averages at city centre reading stations (where available)
Note: Comments on right of temps mine so just best guesses based on the numbers.

Am interested where those stats are sourced.

Also, a dry day does not constitute a 'sunny' day.

I used to live in Brissy and have visited Perth. I did find Perth to be alot more expensive for most things and the shops closing at 5 was weird for a city, I live in CQ now and my local coles and woolies are open til 9 every night. Apart from that the only thing I found to be different was the surroundings everywhere looked exactly the same whereas Brisbane there is more variation in house styles and architecture. IMO I don't think you would really benefit moving from Perth to Brissy unless there was something to draw you there other than food prices.

Have you been to Brisbane?

We haven't been to Brisbane as yet - plan to go in the next couple of months.

To other replies - I only mentioned the cost of food because I keep hearing conflicting stories about food prices - some say cheaper in Perth, some say cheaper in Brisbane. I still don't know the answer to this.

I have no itention of planning to move from Perth to Brisbane based purely on the price of food!!!

We are just not feeling 100% settled in Perth and rather than move back to the UK, we'd like to not give up on Australia totally and want to consider trying a new place here.

I did them a while ago but always did them from http://www.bom.gov.au/ ....I think I had to check each cities historical stats and compile from that.

FYI, Perth food was published in a study released within the last 12 months from memory as being close to the dearest in Australia but as you said wouldn't be enough difference to base a move on

salaries would be a lot lower in Brisneyland as well.

These stats are only as meaningful as you interpret them. Brisbane and Sydney get CONSIDERABLY more rain than Melbourne, yet your stats give the impression they are drier.

BB

It's not really tricky though - Brisbane has less rainy days but when it rains, it rains more intensely - I think everyone knows that. Melbourne got 17mm yesterday and that seemed fairly exceptional - that would be completely normal for a rainy day in Brisbane - heck, I can think of many, many days easily over 50mm when I lived there.

I would say fish dry day stats are historically accurate. In typical years Brisbane gets sun all year around, almost wall to wall May - Sep and for the rest of the year typically sunny mornings which cloud over as the day goes on - often leading to rain.

...not saying the weather is always great in Brisbane, the last 2 summers I was there were in fact shite!

Agreed. Thats why I use the facts from bom as it is very hard for us all to gauge just on memory or using a year or two as your data. Everywhere has bad weather sometimes including Brisbane.

I thought they were quite clear

That's why I stuck the annual rainfall right next to the dry days so it was obvious. I find it is much more misleading putting it in rainfall order as some people not used to different climate systems automatically assume more rain means more wet days - which in most people's case is what they are trying to gauge. "Most" people aren't trying to work out how hard the rain is...usually they are more concerned with how many days will be sunny, not how hard it rains on the days it does rain.

I think Brisbane has a great combination of a lot of dry days combined with heaps of warm rain that comes down hard and fast to keep the place green. but I would say that wouldn't I? Even on the days Brisbane can't count as dry days it is often dry and warm for much of the day and then just chucks it all down in 1-2 hours in the afternoon. For having such good weather we must pay a penance of some overly humid summer days but you can't have everything

ah, but the winter two years ago I think it rained for 2 and half days in 2 months....sunny, dry and non humid perfection