sarahjaneb

Hello!we are hoping to move to Perth with our 1 year old son in august this year and just want to check that we are doing the right thing really.Our main reason for leaving england is how bad the crime is here (particularly from the youths) and we read that perth is supposed to be one of the safest citys in the world.Is that really the case or can we expect not much of a difference?
Another thing I have to ask is how bad the bug and spider situation really is. I asked the man whos dealing with our visa application and he said that if u so much as leave a dirty plate in the sink for a second a swarm of cockroaches will turn up and carry it out your back door..which as you can imagine..wasnt exactly the comforting answer i was hoping for

Thankyou for any help you can offer us
From Sarah and Darran

RedT

Hi Sarah, welcome to BE!

I can't speak for the crime rates in Perth but I certianly think that chap was pulling your leg about bugs etc! My OH and I spent three weeks in Oz in August for a family wedding/reccie and we didn't see one single thing that bothered us! There was a little lizard thing in my brothers back yard but nothing lethal! He's been living there for 7 years now and has seen only a handful of the really big scary spiders (which are actually good coz they keeps flies and smaller bugs out of the house). He said you just stop thinking about it after a while and there's just a few basic things you need to be careful of (like not sticking your hands into a pile of leaves in the garden in case there's anything in there!). But on a day to day basis there's nothing to worry about. If it was that bad, none of us would be planning on going! haha!

In terms of cockroaches, the only one i saw was not in my brothers house (where the washing up could happily sit there for hours/days!) but in a posh hotel!!

best of luck,

Therese

Loch Lomond

Perth is no different from any other major City in the world as far as crime goes. There are numerous threads on this forum on that subject.
As Perth has a hot climate you get the associated wild life with it. Thier are some spiders and snakes you need to be wary of, however most are harmless. When you move here you will very quickly get accustomed to the normal way of doing things....if a childs toy has been left outside and not played with in a while, you will give it a kick or shake it as this enrages any redbacks inside who will attack you....Only joking, obviously. Older suburbs are more prone to cockroaches. And only if you leave your dirty crockery out for several days will you be visited by them...you are more likely to see ants.
It's not really as bad as made out. If it was we wouldn't be here.

Cheers LL

aston man

here comes my usual reply..

i saw a crip packet blowing round last week

hey look,this is the best advise you can have,honestly..punch in crime in perth in the search,your question has been asked a thousand times and to be honest,most perth questions end in a massive bust up..why i dont know but thats the truth..get yourself a few free hours and trawl through all the old threads..
you will see what i mean...

i hope this does not sound ignorent but honestly ,,you will see what i mean after a few months.....

where i live is a thousand times better than where i left..but that raises another issue,where i left and where you live in perth...

good look in your journey...

take care..

ast

rockpeblar

We moved over last May with our 1 year old son and he's loving it here. We rented a house in the hills with a pool and for the last couple of months he's been in the pool almost everyday. Yes we've seen our fair share of local wildlife but nothing has bitten any of us yet
Our second child is due in April and I definitely think it is a better environment to bring them up in. Our son has been out everyday since we got here - probably not something he could do back in the UK given the winter weather. Also the houses are bigger here than the comparable UK home so lots of room for all their toys.
You see graffitti and hear some hoons at night but that is better than back in the UK where the local kids loved smashing windows, setting fire to park benches and destroying the streetlights.
Overall, as far as I'm concerned, Perth is better than where we were living in Plymouth

NikiL

http://www.police.wa.gov.au/ABOUTUS/...8/Default.aspx

They're having a problem with the website at the moment, but when its working again you can choose a suburb & it'll give you an idea. If you google/wilki the suburb name for population size that will give you an idea of how much per 100 head of population, and your local councils tend to post the equivalent crime occurences and population for each area in the UK. That should give you a rough idea of comparisons.

bluejohn

A couple of christmases ago we came from a night out and found a couple of coacroaches trying to walk away with the telly.

sarahjaneb

Haha thankyou all for your replys. I guess theres knowhere you can live anymore with no crime but at least youve put my mind at rest about the bugs.

Dorothy

A great deal of the crime goes unreported here, as the local police can't be bothered to investigate anyway.

Our house was burgled twice within one week here in Perth. The first time my husband had to INSIST on the police coming out because his passport and work laptop with sensitive government information was stolen. The second time we dialled 000 from my mobile. The police said they would look into it when my husband said someone was breaking into our home. The never asked for the address, never mind the suburb we were calling from. How the hell are they going to look into the burglery when they don't even know where we're calling from?

Amazulu

Crime levels are similar here to the UK - some types ofcrime worse than others and vice versa. Perth crime levels will be similar to a same sized UK city.
This is a hot city on the edge of a vast, mainly unpopulated island. Bugs are a reality but manageable - apart from Millipedes they don't worry me. If you have a real issue with bugs then I would avoid moving to Australia and go to somewhere like New Zealand.

marcpiano

There's more of a 'such is life' approach here especially with regards to minor/petty crime (though it won't seem so to the victims). Cops simply don't have the resources to deal with every single offence or report, so sometimes you'll just be expected to grin and bear it.

Exile

I think you have to be in a pretty rough area of the UK for Perth to be an improvement in terms of crime. There is a lot of burglary here, mainly related to drugs.

Jessy69

Suprising.