21 August 2008

Weston Creek the best place in Canberra to live?

21 August 2008 | johnboy

The Canberra Times offers fine example what drivel can be written if objectivity is completely embraced. Frankly you can report on any old crap as if it’s true.

In this case a BankWest Quality of Life Index is apparently proof that that Weston Creek is the best place to live and Tuggeranong is desirable because it’s so cheap.

Here’s a hint, the best places to live have, more often than not, the higher real estate prices.

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Shocons12:00 pm 24 Aug 08

I live at Weston. Its greatest advantage is proximity to other parts of Canberra via the Cotter Road/Tuggeranong Parkway, Hindmarsh Drive, and (via Lyons) to Woden and then to Adelaide Avenue. Outside of peak hours I do the carpark beside the Canberra Club building in 10 minutes and about 12-14 in peak hour depending on the day.

Weston Creek PO is well run. Cooleman Court has the best chicken shop in Canberra. Mr Chops the butcher is getting better and better, too, but I still think the best butchers on the south side of town are the MSA butcher at Mawson. and the butcher at Griffith shops (although both are a bit on the expensive side). Woolies at Mawson is better than Woolies at Cooleman Court (for some reason, the Cooleman Court store never returned its management to former standards after the refurbishment a couple of years ago–favourite items disappeared from the shelves and shelf-stocking seems to be less well done). Freddie Frapples, until it closed for the current refurbishment, provided an excellent greengrocery service at the middle-of-the-range level, but the greengrocery associated with the halal butchery at Mawson is a very good alternative. I miss Sakeena’s coffee and baked cheesecake at the moment too. I hope the advent of an Aldi store at Cooleman Court will put Woolies on its toes. I wish, too, that we had a small hardware shop in the vicinity.

I-filed6:34 pm 22 Aug 08

justbands is your house in Duffy 12 minutes from Civic in rush hour? How long does the journey take if you set out at 8.30 am?

luke796:16 pm 22 Aug 08

im just a humble sparky. i should have mentioned im working as a subbie in a remote aboriginal community on an island a short flight from darwin. i just fly in and out each week, but more often than not ill have a 4 day weekend for 3 weekends a month and then spend one weekend on the island. not sure id be making the same sorta money in darwin but the money is a lot better for tradies up north. i dont really know about other professions, but i think generally pay is good up here.
it can be a hard lifestyle up here i spose if you dont wanna be here (army folk) but i often seem to meet people who came for a week holiday and never left… ive never once met someone who came to canberra for a holiday and never left.

peterh5:36 pm 22 Aug 08

three rs said :

doe it matter where you live as long as you have a roof over yout head

but if you lock yourself out of the house in a thunderstorm in darwin, it isn’t half as bad, the rain is warm.

do that here, and the only warm rain is you being carney’d on.

three rs5:14 pm 22 Aug 08

doe it matter where you live as long as you have a roof over yout head

FredJ2:39 pm 22 Aug 08

luke79 said :

haha yeah the build up brings out the best in people lol
as far as humidity goes.. it’s not humid all that much cept around the build up and before it rains in the wet and even then i dont find it too much of a problem. i think coz there is a fairly consistant temp everyday your body has a much easier time dealing with the weather. i enjoyed the 4 seasons of canberra but what used to annoy me was the big temp changes even within a 24 hour period. and dont get me wrong canberra and sthn nsw has very beautifull scenery and nature but it’s not as ‘untouched’ as up here and i think i like that feeling you get when your cruising up a creek or river, barra boofing on one side of the boat and big crocs sunning themselves on the bank, eagles and amazing birds flying around. and all that is a few minutes from your front doorstep and i live pretty close to the city of darwin.
darwin is by no means for everyone, i dont doubt that for a second, it’s sorta isolated, expensive and so on, but im a single fella in my late twenties, im earning about 2 or 3 times what i can earn in canberra (i went from earning about 50k to earning about 120k and i only work when i want to so as you can imagine i only work about 15 days a month), i love fishing and exploring, love a cold beer in the pool after work any day of the year. alhough i miss some parts and some things about canberra i doubt id ever go back there. i think id maybe head to some parts of thr sth coast though.

What do you do? Sounds like the perfect life/job.

luke791:52 pm 22 Aug 08

haha yeah the build up brings out the best in people lol
as far as humidity goes.. it’s not humid all that much cept around the build up and before it rains in the wet and even then i dont find it too much of a problem. i think coz there is a fairly consistant temp everyday your body has a much easier time dealing with the weather. i enjoyed the 4 seasons of canberra but what used to annoy me was the big temp changes even within a 24 hour period. and dont get me wrong canberra and sthn nsw has very beautifull scenery and nature but it’s not as ‘untouched’ as up here and i think i like that feeling you get when your cruising up a creek or river, barra boofing on one side of the boat and big crocs sunning themselves on the bank, eagles and amazing birds flying around. and all that is a few minutes from your front doorstep and i live pretty close to the city of darwin.
darwin is by no means for everyone, i dont doubt that for a second, it’s sorta isolated, expensive and so on, but im a single fella in my late twenties, im earning about 2 or 3 times what i can earn in canberra (i went from earning about 50k to earning about 120k and i only work when i want to so as you can imagine i only work about 15 days a month), i love fishing and exploring, love a cold beer in the pool after work any day of the year. alhough i miss some parts and some things about canberra i doubt id ever go back there. i think id maybe head to some parts of thr sth coast though.

peterh10:57 am 22 Aug 08

luke79 said :

lol.. the wet season doesnt even last as long as a canberra winter and is probably the coolest and most comfortable time to be here. the build up can be pretty hard but thats only really a month. i find you get used the humid heat much quicker than the dry heat. i also find that the humid heat isnt anywhere near as uncomfortable as that dry heat you get down south. that dry hot wind zaps the life out of me.
im a sparky so i dont work in an air conditioned office, i also spend most of my time outdoors and very rarely have a porblem with the heat. i do kinda miss those cold fresh mornings in canberra… but not much lol

you do know that darwin used to be the dumping ground for the ADF of all the staff that you just couldn’t do anything with, they were a slab short of a slab type of thing, and the volunteers….

best years of my young life. go Wulagi!

best thing is the evening thunderstorms, then a clear day next day. ant would love it – the photos you can get are absolutely amazing. best storms ever.

as for the build up, the feeling of your brain imploding is about the same. that month is the only time no-one catches up with the neighbor across the road who insists on cleaning his knife collection on the front porch. He is getting signals from somewhere. no-one knows where, though.

Spitfire310:48 am 22 Aug 08

“i find you get used the humid heat much quicker than the dry heat. i also find that the humid heat isnt anywhere near as uncomfortable as that dry heat you get down south,“

Are you nuts??? High humidity and low 30’s is my idea of HELL. I’m glad it suits you, of course, but in my humble opinion Canberra’s climate and natural environment are absolutely magnificent.

Holden Caulfield8:50 am 22 Aug 08

I’ll take your word for it I think.

Holden Caulfield10:42 am 21 Aug 08

@justbands, thanks for that. I figured family reasons would have figured highly for you. Mind, I still maintain much of those reasons are typical to Canberra rather than anything unique about the Creek. And judging by your definition of close, then large parts of Belconnen are equally as close to the locations you mentioned.

I still don’t believe the 12 mins to Civic thing, but I guess it depends on the time of day you travel. I used to live in Nicholls and I got from work (Fyshwick) to home once in 18 minutes. But it was 11 o’clock at night, haha. I don’t deny you’ve done Duffy to Civic in 12 minutes at all, but perhaps because so many real estate agents try and claim pretty much any suburb that is not in inner Canberra is “just minutes from Civic” my cynical mind tends to think of these travel times in a more real world morning commute scenario. Or are you going to try and tell me you can get from Duffy to Civic in 12 minutes on a normal morning drive between 8-9am?

And your comment that nothing is close to Gungahlin is fairly typical of the “geographic centre” line that Creekers are willing to live by. Sure, Gungahlin is on the outer fringe as much as Tuggeranong or North Belconnen are, but it’s a damn sight closer to Civic than both. My old place in Nicholls was 14km from Civic and my old place in Phillip was 12km from Civic. Anything on the Civic side of the Gungahlin Town Centre would be 12km or less from Civic. I can’t imagine Duffy is any closer. I haven’t lived in Nicholls for 4 years and at that time there were no traffic lights on the Barton Highway until Northbourne, so getting in to town was pretty easy outside of peak times.

I just find it funny that people try and say their suburb/area is best, when as I’ve suggested, much of the reasons that make a suburb a great place to live are typical to the majority of Canberra.

But, I’m a north side lad, and as we all know, you’re either one or the other in this town. :p

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