Moving from Sydney: What we’re after
We’re planning on leaving Sydney in the next year or so, and we’re looking around for places to live. Here’s our list of requirements:
- A four-bedroom house, or at least a three-bed-plus-study, so that I can continue to work from home while we house our ever-expanding family
- Price range: somewhere around AUD $400k-430k at the moment
- Somewhere with a real sense of community and identity (which rules out most of suburbia!)
- Ideally somewhere fairly rural - but not too rural, and not full of rednecks
- As close as possible to a major city - ideally Sydney, as that’s where most of our friends and business contacts live
We’re currently scouring the country for suitable places; so far we must have checked out over 50 villages, towns and cities up and down the east coast. I’ll be talking about each of these places, including their pros and cons, over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for places that would meet the above criteria, I’d love to hear them! 
November 1st, 2007 at 11:02 am
We have been to Bellingen and loved it too. Other places on my list to check out would be 1) Bangalow (inland from Byron Bay), a very vibey place but smaller than Bellingen, 2) Bryon Bay itself or somewhere close by. Has a reputation for being very alternative but it is slowly becoming more and more mainstream, 3) Noosa, pretty trendy place with expensive property but there are areas opening up nearby which will be a lot cheaper, 4) Bowral, the southern highlands are beautiful and it is only an hour and a half from Sydney.
Good luck on your search and keep us updated.
Jason
November 1st, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Thanks for your suggestions Jason. We passed through Bangalow briefly I think, and it looked nice. The areas around Byron and Noosa were a bit too pricey for us sadly.
We’ll definitely check out Bowral - we’re exploring south of Sydney at the moment and are coming up with some great options. Thanks again for the tips!
June 12th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
How have you got on with your search for a better place? We seem to be in a very similar situation to you and we’re going to check-out Bellingen next weekend. We’ve already discounted the Blue Mountains, Bowral (lovely but too expensive plus East Bowral was a major turn-off),towns around Jarvis Bay area (too surburban) and many other areas within 2 hours of Sydney.
Have you left Sydney yet?
Kay
June 12th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Kay, thanks for your comment. It’s great to hear from someone in the same boat! Are you currently in Sydney?
Well it looks like we may finally have decided on the Southern Highlands. I’ll be writing a post about this shortly. Not East Bowral though - I agree with you, it’s a turn-off. Rows and rows of identi-homes. (A local park ranger we bumped into said it was “as if Campbelltown had grown legs and moved down to Bowral!”)
I’d be interested to hear why you discounted the Blueys. Personally it’s a bit too far from the beach for my liking, and I found some parts of it a bit down-at-heel somehow!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy Bellingen. It’s a lovely place. Do let me know what you think of it.
June 15th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Yes we’re in the Inner West. I didn’t say why we’d discounted the “Blueys” because I find it hard to sum up in a few words. We’ve been weighing up the positives and negatives for about 3 years now but when it comes to it it feels like it would be a bigger move than going 6 hours away to Bellingen. Nothing’s going on and although it may sound ridiculous to some (particularly as we have a 10 month old baby) there’s barely any decent pubs! Proximity to Sydney is great but driving regularly on the Great Western Hwy would kill me. Many more positives and negatives, I could bore you to death.
I look forward to seeing your post on the Sth Highlands.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Oh Wow….some people just like us! My husband Daniel and I are in Melbourne and have been tossing and turning where to move to with our 2 year old.
I absolutely adore the Blue Mountains…but its a tad expensive for us and too close to Sydney. We also want to send our daughter to a Steiner school, so were originally going to go back to Newcastle, where we both grew up. We decided…what the hell, if were gunna move we may as well really move. it all came down, in the end to Bellingen - they have a great Steiner school, and a steiner long day care and preschool as well as having all the great things that you guys have said.
Now the rubber has really hit the road for us, as we sold our house last thursday. We were pretty relaxed originally about the settlement time, but now the buyers need a quick settlement - like 1/8/08. Wow!! This is scary! We are going up to scope out the land/ rentals (no time to buy), and crossing our fingers (we have 2 dogs!) that we can find something quickly.
Have you got something up in Bellingen Kay? We are finding that ther are more rentals outside of Bellingen proper - but when thinking of flooding, that can be a good thing!
Hope you do well down in Bowral too Matt…beautiful place, but a bit too expensive and cold (yeah I know…we live in Melbourne!) for us
June 16th, 2008 at 1:41 am
@Kay: I know what you mean - the Blue Mountains don’t seem to have many things going on do they? Or maybe you have to live there a while to discover them! And yes, where are all the pubs?! Actually I feel that even Sydney is bereft of pubs (once you get outside the CBD that is), but that’s because I’m comparing it to London. I have a blog post in the offing about this topic actually.
@June: It sounds like you’ve made a good decision with Bellingen. It really is a nice area, and I’ve heard good things about the Steiner school too. Also, I expect that now you’ve committed to it and got the ball rolling, everything will fall into place - it usually does.