Like many of us who now call Newcastle home, I didn’t always. In fact, when I first moved here and started meeting other mum friends, the ones who were from out of town far outweighed those that were born and bred Novocastrians. I hail from Sydney originally, via a 2 year stop in Brisbane. By the time our family was ready to pack up and head down to Newcastle we felt we had experienced enough different cities and were ready to try and settle.
Sydney which I loved and could never imagine leaving, was becoming unaffordable and was changing drastically all the time. I go down to visit family and friends now and feel claustrophobic thanks to all the building and everyone trying to squeeze in on top of each other. And the traffic… it can take over 40 minutes to get from one suburb to another.
Brisbane just didn’t excite me the way I thought it would. I couldn’t go anywhere after 2pm because then it could take over an hour to get home because of the peak travel time. There were great facilities for children, fantastic parks etc, but not enough for a night life. I’m a mum but I still like to try to get out and try great good and have drinks with friends. Our local restaurant where we had our mummy catch ups was Coffee Club!
So then Newcastle. Boy is it a changing city. It seems to have everything on offer. I live in a place that is around half an hour of the city, on acreage and it costs around the same amount as a 2 bedroom unit in Sydney, not kidding. The kids get up each morning and head off to feed the chickens. We can ride quad bikes, have a heap of people over for a BBQ and not feel squished, have a massive trampoline, hell we can even have a horse if we want! My Sydney friends are blown away by this as you can imagine. If I want to head into the city, it takes half an hour, I don’t really even need to allow for traffic. I have the choice of a few, always updating shopping centres. Restaurants are plentiful, my problem is time and money now, but I feel I’m spoilt for choice.
Basically I don’t feel I’m missing out because I’m not living in one of our big cities. In fact, I feel that my quality of life is spot on. So thanks ‘Newy’ I love you!
