Moving to Canberra?

[alias_young]

My family may be moving to Canberra soon and I am excited/anxious about the move as I have never been there before. My husband has been there before and loved everything but the cold. I am a 25 year old mum of 2 kids under 5 years old and will be going to uni. I live in a small town at the moment and would like it better if they had more shops. I lived previously on the Gold Coast and miss the beach but not the stress, traffic, e.t.c... We will be renting and prefer a home with a larger yard, close to a primary school and preferably there will be parks and a corner store-milk, bread, e.t.c.. nearby. Can anyone suggest a suburb? Are there many groups for mothers like me to meet other mums? Is it very multicultural? How cold does it get? Are ther many family restaurants? Do you have good shopping malls? also how easy would it be for me to get night work , doing waitressing, e.t.c...?

[Piratess]

Hey there! I was born and raised in canberra lived there for 23 years! I can see why you arent looking forward to the cold, coming from the Gold Coast, but its not all that awful truly! As far as traffic and stress goes, Canberra is pretty easy to get on with. The drivers can be a bit bizarre, but you get that everywhere. Public transport is a plenty, as is schools, parks and stores. Civic is the major shopping mall, there is also malls at Tuggeranong, Belconnen and Woden. Tonns of work available! especially night work! As far as multicultural there is huge diversity, i have listed sites for you to look at. I hope you enjoy Canberra, good luck.

P.S> Its only 2 hours to the coast (Batemans Bay) and three to the snow!

[Ken E]

I've been here 16 years, came from Rockhampton and Brisbane before that. The length of time the cooler weather lasts gets me down a bit but a pair of decent jeans, pullover and jacket take care of most of the cold when outside. Also a pair of gloves, they do not have to be thick, and a hat of some kind is good too.

Most of the suburbs in Canberra, with the possible exception of the really new places are built with a school, corner style shops and sports ground or park in the middle. That is why you will not see shops on the main roads. There is often a take-away or small restuarant as well. Some primary schools are set to close soon as they have too small enrolments.

As the other answer said, there are 4 biggish shopping malls. These are in the "town centres" Woden, Belconnen, Tuggeranong and Civic. There are also other shopping precincts like Southlands, Kambah and Cooleman Court (Weston Creek) with a fair sized supermarket and a group of specialty shops around them.

Nearly all Canberra allotments are 32 perches, that is a fifth of an acre, don't ask me the square metres. Most areas have natural gas past the door and I'd advise you to get a house with central heating already installed. Rents are going through the roof, $380 per week is common for some fairly ordinary places. Big yard, newish large house - maybe $450

Minimum temperatures can be down to -7Centigrade, but that is rare. Mostly though you are looking at frost every day for 8 -10 weeks or more with night minimums of -2 to -5C. Once every two or three years a morning fog does not burn off by 10am and the temp will stay at about 0C until 1pm. Finally the fog clears, temp rises to +2, then drops again. That is about the worst of it. On such a day there might be a little snow. Mostly though the daytime max in winter is 9 to 12 C. Summer maxes can be 40C but are usually less than 35C.

Despite the high rents and housing shortage if you are prepared to pay you can get some nice places. If you are prepared to live in an older home the inner areas are good. A little further out you will find houses in the 30-40 year old range. Places like Pearce and Kambah, Isaacs, Deakin fall in this range. Some of the newest suburbs have minor transport problems, but tend to be on the north side and closer to the Uni of Canberra or ANU. They sometimes have large houses on small yards.

You will find a range of social groups. A colleague of mine virtually ran the multiple birth association here several years ago, (she had twins) and there are oodles of other social groups, car clubs, choirs, sports clubs, art clubs, you name it.

Plenty of restaurants, some of them pretty good. Everything from Ethiopian to French. Thai seems to be popular just now.

Multicultural. Well the people on the same floor of the building where I work come from all mainland states, New Zealand, Argentina, Germany, France, Turkey, South Africa, Ethiopia, Malaysia, England, Scotland and India. Others in the bldg are Ghanian, Spanish, Yugoslav, Greek or have parents from all over the world. One bloke in my section, a widower and English by birth recently married a Brazilian lady of Native American ancestry.

There are two Indian temples, four or five varieties of Orthodox church and at least one mosque and one synagogue. I frequently see women and at least one man in Islamic dress of one kind or another, Bhuddist monks and Sikhs with turbans. You can even join the Burns or Hellenic Clubs without being Scots or Greek.