calcolerich

I've been living in Sydney for the past 7 years. I'm 35 years old with 2 kids (13 and 15 years old), and although I must admit Sydney is beautiful and fabulous, it is just so hard to get ahead; it's work, work work, and it's nearly impossible to buy a nice house anywhere near the water, and if you're living in Oz, you may as well take advantage of living near some of the world's best beaches.

Plus my kids are a bit too metro growing up here...I want my kids to grow up outdoors. Sydney does have amazing opportunities, but in my experience, it's a bit of a rat race unless you are very well off: too expensive, too much traffic, too many people, too far to drive, everybody lives far away from eachother so we rarely get together to visit.

My heart has been telling me Sydney isn't for me almost since I arrived in Oz, that Perth is the place for me, but it's so isolated, I don't know anybody there, and the kids and I fly to the US regularly and that'd add 6+ hours to our already 22+ hour flight.

I've been researching for months, and have come up with a plan to move to the top half of Wollongong region (although the bottom half has some of the most amazing views in the world of Lake Illawarra, Lagoon, Ocean and Mountains all in one). The reason I say top half is I get the impression it's a bit more upper class. I've settled on Bulli, which is just near Thirroul (maybe the nicest yet most expensive area of the Gong). Major train station 5 minutes away in Thirroul, trek from there to Sydney City centre is 1 hour 15 minutes. The public high school in Bulli leads out onto the ocean. There are at least 3 excellent schools in the Gong as far as I can tell: Smith Hill Selective, Edmund Rice for boys, St Marys Star of the Sea for girls. The houses are almost half the price of what you'd pay for the same thing in Sydney, and many have great views.

But today at lunch, my friends in Sydney had an intervention to try and stop us from leaving. They think Wollongong has more crime, bogans, worse schools, less ambitions for the kids, fog, wind, not much to do, etc. But none of them have ever lived there, or know anybody that does. They also have quite a bit of money. Not many Sydney-siders seem to have a great opinion of the Gong, they think more of Central Coast, although I'm not sure why except it's warmer and the Gong has a bad rep.

I'm so confused, I thought I had a good plan, where I could pay less rent, save up to buy a house on the beach, live a cruisier, more outdoors lifestyle, with friends closer around so we can do things like: wakeboard, surf, fish, camp, 4x4, be regulars at a local pub, the kids can walk to school instead of travel 1 hr each way, etc. (which there's not a whole lot of in Sydney), but I don't want to mess up and make the wrong decision, or my kids to lose opportunities. I just want to do the best thing, I'm in search of the perfect lifestyle.

It would be wonderful to talk to someone that actually lives in the Gong, or Central Coast, but has lived in Sydney. Is there anybody that has some time to talk to me on the phone here in Oz? I have a month to decide what to do, and would love to hear someone with actual experience. We love Australia, all of these places are beautiful. Now we just have to figure out which is the best place for us