Maybe moving to Sydney
Tim and I are finally making more of an attempt to move out of this much-too-small-unit. After looking at a couple of places around Prahran, we decided Maidstone would be better and made a shortlist of places to consider renting there. But, we changed our plans again, and now we’ve decided to move to Sydney. We’re considering Bondi Junction, Burwood, Chatswood, Hornsby, and Parramatta. Whether we’ll get there before changing our minds again remains to be seen.
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pfctdayelise said,
July 8, 2006 at 1:39
Sydney is evil! Evil expensive if nothing else.
Perth is a nice city I would move to in a flash, but it might be too remote for your tastes. :)
Angela Beesley said,
July 8, 2006 at 2:02
Perth is gorgeous. I visited Tim’s sister there earlier this year, but it’s so isolated. Sydney is more expensive, but then I’ve lived close to London, so it’s still cheap by my previous experiences. It’s also closer to Tim’s friends and family, and has a nicer climate and beaches than Melbourne.
Mark Elliott said,
July 10, 2006 at 13:12
I agree with pfctdayelise - Syndey is evil - Melbourne culture is sooooooooo much more rich, please stay!
Angela Beesley said,
July 10, 2006 at 16:17
“Evil” seems rather too harsh. :) The Sydney Wikipedians I met were lovely. Anyway, if I’m going to be 10000 miles away from my family, it makes sense to be in the same state as Tim’s.
Ta bu shi da yu said,
July 27, 2006 at 23:56
If you are looking for cheap property, you can’t go past the Parramatta (I can never spell that name) region. Did I mention that I only just bought a house? :)
Mark Ryan said,
August 21, 2006 at 0:52
Don’t Tim’s close family live ridiculously close to the NSW/Victoria border anyway? If that’s the case, you’d be better off moving to Canberra :)
Angela Beesley said,
August 21, 2006 at 2:38
No, they’re closer to Newcastle.
Nick J said,
August 22, 2006 at 11:59
Bondi Junction, Burwood, Chatswood, Hornsby, and Parramatta: all are good for public transport, but pricing would probably mean you’d be renting an apartment in all (not a house). Depends what you’re looking for: close to the airport, close to possible IT work, close to family, close to cultural stuff in the city? If you wanted the airport, then Burwood or Bondi Junction; if you wanted IT work then Chatswood or Parramatta, or maybe Hornsby and drive to North Ryde, or Chatswood and drive to North Sydney; if you wanted close to family, then Hornsby puts you within minutes of the F3, and then it’s a 90 minute drive to Newcastle. If you wanted cultural stuff, then Bondi Junction or Burwood (or if you wanted somewhere “hip and grungy”, then maybe Glebe or Newtown). Really it depends what you’re looking for and how you rate the relative importance of those things, and of course the respective rental costs.
Angela Beesley said,
August 22, 2006 at 14:35
Thanks for the advice Nick. I guess what we\’re looking for is
Actually, perhaps I should say that\’s what I\’m looking for. Tim\’s far less fussy. :)
Nick J said,
August 22, 2006 at 18:29
> close to the airport (under $50 in a taxi)
Well from around Ashfield it\’s approx $25 to the airport (sometimes $20, sometimes $30, depending on the traffic). So double the distance from the airport terminal to Ashfield, and then draw a circle around the enclosed area, and that\’s your search space. Basically Chatswood would probably be just inside the area, Parramatta could maybe be inside (because of the M4), but Hornsby would be outside. Also my folks live right next to Hornsby, and I was meeting my Dad at the airport a few months ago, and he nearly missed our flight because the journey from Hornsby took him 2.5 hours in peak morning traffic (he said that it was the worst he had ever seen, and in general it takes about 1 hour outside peak times if the traffic is running fine, but be aware that\’s your \”worst case scenario\”).
> close to the city centre (via bus, but only one bus - I have an irrational dislike of changing buses)
It\’s not irrational - where you really waste time in public transport is in the waiting for it to arrive, and when you have to change you effectively have to wait twice, plus there\’s twice the chance of things going wrong. I would include the trains though as well if I were you (i.e. include anywhere that\’s one train journey to the city centre), or the ferry (although much rarer than buses or trains, but most ferry routes will get you to the Circular Quay). In my opinion, anywhere that has more than one public transport option gets bonus points (since they will probably follow different routes / have different strengths, etc).
For the buses, you can get a list of the outbound routes from the city here: http://www.sydneybuses.info/commonpdfs/sydneybuses/map/terminusmaps/Cityguidemap.pdf (inbound should be the same).
Simplifying it massively, but basically the bus routes give you:
* the Northern Beaches (a route which follows the Northern Beaches from Curl Curl all the way up to Palm Beach)
* Inner West along Parramatta Road (Annandale, Leichhardt, Haberfield, Ashfield, Burwood, Strathfield, etc.), and Newtown / Enmore / Marrickville /etc.
* Eastern suburbs (southern area: Kensington, Kingsford, Coogee; Or northern area: Elizabeth Bay, Kings Cross, etc).
* Many others besides (see the \”Destination & Departure point guide\” for a full list of terminus points).
For the rail stuff, you can get an image here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/CityRail_Sydney_2006.png
Any stations on multiple lines should get a very slight bonus (because they\’ll generally have a few more trains).
For the ferries, you can get a map here: http://www.sydneyferries.info/timetables/networkmap.php (the scale is a bit small though).
> close to the beach (one train stop away or similar)
Well you wouldn\’t get a train to the beach - the only train stations even remotely near to the beach are Bondi Junction (which despite the very similar name, is a bus ride away from Bondi Beach, and it\’s too far to walk pleasantly between the two, so you can scratch that because it\’s more than one leg), and Cronulla (which is an easy walk to the beach, but it\’s at the terminus of one branch of the Illawarra Line in Sydney\’s south, and it takes almost exactly 1 hour from the city to travel there). You might be able to get a bus to the beach in the Eastern Suburbs (e.g. Coogee / Maroubra / Bondi), but I wouldn\’t personally recommend it - you\’ll probably want to take towels / a book / water / etc, he might want to take towels / a boogie board or surf board / something to drink, and at the end of the day you\’ll be covered in sand and slightly sticky from the salt. A bus there and back carrying that stuff and in that heat (since you\’re probably not going to go the beach unless it\’s warm & sunny) in a possibly crowded bus whilst sticky sounds like hell-on-earth to me. Basically I\’d personally forget the bus, and get a very cheap car, and use that instead. Personally I usually go to South Maroubra beach, and I go in the mid-late afternoon (e.g. 3 PM) - that way it\’s not too crowded, and we can get a park, and it\’s a pleasant 25 minute drive each way, with the windows down and towels on the seats and the radio turned up.
Another option for the beach is living on or near the Northern Beaches, but it only has buses (no trains), and you can find yourself living a long way from the city & the airport (e.g. I used to live in Mona Vale, and if I recall correctly it took 1 hour each way to/from the city by bus).
> close to a supermarket (5-10 minute walk)
That should be pretty easy (most but not all suburbs will have a supermarket). I\’d use the other stuff as your broad criteria to identify areas you\’re interested in, and then suggest using the proximity to supermarket / parks / bank / etc as one criteria to help select/rank specific properties.
> Actually, perhaps I should say that’s what I’m looking for.
Well, you\’ve got to use some criteria or you\’ll drown in the sea of choices! E.g. if I go http://www.domain.com.au/Public/SearchResults.aspx?mode=rent&State=NSW&Areas=Eastern+Suburbs%2cInner+West%2cNorth+Shore+-+Lower&agid= it shows more than 300 rental properties in the Eastern Suburbs / Inner West / Lower North Shore.
Look, at the risk of seeming too forward, let me ask you some impertinent questions:
* How often do you eat out? For example, I eat out a little (so I don\’t care too much about how many restaurants there are), but my sister eats out almost every night (and so she lives somewhere with lots of restaurants, and she loves it).
* When you step outside your front door, how much personal space do you need or want? (There are some suburbs that are quite busy bustling places, like the places you listed before, and others which are quieter, or don\’t you care).
* Not sure how important high speed internet is to you, but do you want ADSL-2? Only some exchanges have it (see list at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/index.cfm?a=wiki&tag=AEG_NSW , and the writing in brown is which ISPs have ADSL 2 at that exchange - iinet is generally fairly expensive, and take a grain of salt with anything which says \”coming soon\” or \”TBD\”); Generally however, most inner-city areas should hopefully be reasonably okay for this now.
* Rank the importance of these criteria: close to beach; close to airport; close to city; good public transport; number of restaurants; anything else that matters to you that I\’ve missed.
* How \”rough\” an area do you want to live in? E.g. there are bits of Sydney that score well on the other criteria, but in which I probably won\’t want to live. However the unrough bits, full of yuppie mummies who drive BMWs drinking lattes by the harbour, tend to be fairly pricey, so there\’s a cost trade-off involved here.
Angela Beesley said,
August 22, 2006 at 20:26
We eat out once a month or less, but that might be because there are no restaurants where we currently live.
I don’t really care what’s directly outside.
We definitely need high speed internet.
I want somewhere in between rough and “yuppie mummies”. :) But not too drastically different from Melbourne prices.
Nick J said,
August 23, 2006 at 12:56
Sounds like you’re pretty flexible, and that you don’t really have anything too specific in mind. :) In that case, I’d just make a list of what suburbs meet your non-financial criteria (sounds like a number of places in the Inner West, Eastern Suburbs, and Lower North Shore would be suitable), and then when you’re next going to be in Sydney get the list of places for rent, and whittle it down to a short-list based on financial criteria and the description of the property, and then visit say the top 10 or 20 places on that list, and then choose the one you like the best. Good luck! :-)
WikiAngela » End of 2006 said,
December 31, 2006 at 12:27
[...] Tim visited England for the first in May. We stopped off for a two day trip to Hong Kong on the way. My first nephew, Alex, was born in May whilst I was in England. The book I part-authored, Wikis: Tools for Information Work And Collaboration, was published in May. Back in Australia, we attempted to find a new place to live but never got round to moving. Emil Podlaszewski, Wikia’s new head of product development in Poland, was introduced to Wikia but didn’t actually start until later in the year. The Polish team has been expanding every month since. [...]