WHERE'S BEST TO LIVE IN NZ AND WHAT DO WE NEED TO KNOW: PART 5!

[AngryBeaver]

Look at us Chatty Cathy's!
Justa oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
(I'm not sure )

Waihekegate is fine with me frick! Was thinking of you today. Was at Mount Maunganui. Had a reeeeeally great day. The kids just loved it. But I was so preoccupied with making sure they were covered and creamed up etc that i completely forgot about myself. I am BURNED to a frigging CRISP. What a spoon I am.
Enjoy yourr meetup tomorrow you three x

I did do it before we left justa but needed to reapply! It was crazy hot. The sea was like bath water. We bought a great beach tent from Mitre 10 before we left, it was really good...and was only $12!
It's not like Spain here is it? Where there is a guy hiring out sunbeds and parasols! As a NZ friend told me "kiwi's bring their own shade!" was so glad we got it!

Quick message as late but I'll casually stroll in to the meet up just after 3pm by the time swimming is done and I've got there.

I'll look for you on the grass around the sandpit area??

(Justa - hope you got my text)

After all that, I'm afraid I'm out for today. The bug has returned with a vengeance (oh, dear god, the nappies ) and I won't take the risk of passing it on to any of you. Trust me, it isn't pretty!

Have a wonderful time!

Hope the bug is gone soon viola.

We're on our way soon (got a few errands to do on the way), I've packed the watermelon now!

Fab afternoon, thanks.

Boys are shattered.

Dh just getting dd1 to bed now. They were knackered but hyper - they loved it :-)

Sounds like you all hada lovely time, how nice you were able to meeet up. Was it scorching with you? Got up to 35 here...incredibly hot. It was ds 1's 5th birthday today, my Mum cried on and off all day
vvviola ah crap (scuse the pun) not nice for you guys. Never pleasant when one of your tots is poorly. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery x

HELLLOOOOOOO girls - so nice to catch up on recent posts - I can't believe how long I have been away from here. We are narrowing down the job options to gorgeous Tauranga, where we have close friends (hospital allegedly advertising a post in March - I'll believe it when I see it, but here's hoping!) and to Perth, where we used to live (but SO bleeding expensive nowadays that I doubt we can afford to move there, realistically) but also realise that we might not get to go away at all, if neither works out. We'll see. I cannot believe how long it is all taking, and how much more difficult it is to find an opening down under - especially in Oz - than it used to! Anyway - great to see all the familiar names are still here! We have been busy - moved house 3 weeks ago (from a rental into our own home), after going to India for two weeks over Xmas (stayed with Indian friends in Kerala - fab experience). Love the new house, can now walk kids to school, DH can walk to hospital to work etc. My work is ten mins' drive away. Lovely. AB - I see you are facing a BIG decision!!!! EEEK! Good luck! Much love to you all - frik good luck with the imminent move - everyone else, sorry I haven't had time for a full-on trawl so haven't fully caught up with your news, but hope you are all very well and thriving. XX

Ahhh, there you are meerkate, have missed you! New house sounds FAB!!!How wonderous!
Funny you shouls mention Perth, a woman on the waiheke community fb page, pm'd me and told me I should consider movin toPerth, that it was cheap, we could get a big house with air con and a pool!! No??

Am having a huge wobble about Waihke. I really want someone to tell me it'll be ok. But everytime I say we might be moving there,people go "Ohhh it's lovely"...and I KNOW they want to follow that with "But I wouldn't live there!"
One woman told me her bro used to live there but could stand the restriction of ferries.
Another woman told me her son moved off due to water tank/septic tank and isolation!

Also,(shhhhhhhh) I am a few days late!PROBABLY STRESS RELATED....but,shhhhhhh!

I don't know about Perth, I think it used to be quite reasonable but has got quite expensive now. It's very very remote so anything that has to be flown in, goods or food or whatever probably has the price bumped up because of transport costs

There's are couple of threads in Living Overseas at the mo about Perth and one poster reckons she spends about AU$600 a week on groceries . Mind you, everyone else on the thread seems to spend less.

Blimey day's! That's steep!
Don't think I could live in Oz anyway.
But have serios reservations re Waiheke...panicking

Hi girls! So nice to be back on here

WWS I read every word of that thread with a mounting sense of horror, believe me!

AB the consensus seems to be that it is truly horrendously expensive these days - Perth seems in the same bracket as Sydney in many ways - rental in the nice sea-side suburb we used to live in would now set us back over the equivalent of £2000/month (over double the going rate in our current location - we just finished renting for a year). Obviously salaries are higher too but I am not sure that we could really afford a good quality of life over there - our quality of life here at home is very good, barring the appalling UK weather!

Plus, NZ is MUCH more us - we love the fab beaches, lush countryside, walking, biking, and the variety of weather (just not the crap we get here in England all the time). Hmmm - we'll just have to see what comes up. My preference is definitely for Tauranga, I must say! Plus the Aussies have put so many restrictions now in place for work - I would get a job in NZ much more easily, which is very important to my sanity and happiness! I love my job here and dread the thought of not working (part-time, I hasten to add)

AB I feel for you with this latest dilemma. I must say Waiheke would ring a few alarm bells for me too. It's like a microcosm of NZ itself, surely - the most stunningly beautiful place ever, but SO isolated! I couldn't then live on a stunning-but-even-more-isolated mini-island off the coast of said bigger island! However, our former nanny from our Dunedin days is one of the most contented people I know and she lives full-time on Great Barrier Island and has the most idyllic, barefoot, bohemian existence ever, as far as I can see, surrounded by a close community who are very supportive of each other. So perhaps that's what Waiheke could be like? I have never set foot on the place and maybe I'd be bowled over! GOOD LUCK with the decision-making!

Much love xx

Hello everyone I've been lurking a lot these past few months, not part of the 'gang' as it were but still grasping tid bits of NZ going on We had our trip back to NZ over Xmas / New Year and it was fab, really really lovely to be home... even a nasty bout of chicken pox (DS 4.5yrs - vomited for 5 days), thrush for me (awfully humid that country you live in), a staph infection for wee DD (minor and easily fixed but grrrrrrrrrrosssssss) cant sway me from claiming a great holiday!

I just had to pipe up with my 2penny worth with regards to the Waiheke dilemma... AB dooooooooooooooooooont doooooooooooooooooooo itttttttt

Okay, that's probably not very supportive or constructive but honest to goodness noooooo nooooooooooo nooooooooooooooooooooo

I own some of the biggest NZ branded rose tinted glasses you've ever seen but living on Waiheke would be hard going and you are already in a situation of low support on a day to day basis and have had a horrifically rough year, you deserve to be able to voice your reservations to your DH and for them to have precedence over his enthusiasm or at least for them to taken very seriously.

I think you guys would really love Beachlands, its far enough away from CBD that you feel like you are out of Auckland almost but 15 mins over the hill (Whitford) you are in East Auckland (Botany / Howick, another 10mins to Sylvia Park, airport is about 30mins), CBD by car is about 40mins (non rush hour), your DH can catch ferry to CBD if he'd rather, Shelly Bay beach and Maraetai beaches are really fantastic, I saw several day care / nursery options offering the 20 hrs free, the school is really nice from what I saw, the Te Puru community centre has all the sports you need for adults and kids and there is a coastal walkway that goes for miles ( has off leash area for dogs, bush walk, walking/cycling path). My FIL commutes from Beachlands to the North Shore every day, that is a huge commute (1hr 15mins each way) and he does it happily as he loves living there (only moved there three yrs ago).

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now but I just wanted to butt in and add another voice to those already who have said be cautious of a move to Waiheke... there are so many lovely, less city like areas in Auckland... Titirangi is beautiful if you rather bush than beaches (tho it might have those too I've only been there a handful of times!)

As for us, we are in 'ducks in a row' mode, we figure its best to get ourselves sorted over the next six months or so so if an opportunity arose we would be in some kind of position to take it but realisitically it'll be another year or two before we go back... I'm DETERMINED to have my 40th birthday in NZ (3yrs away). It was easier to see the rough around the edges parts to NZ life this trip, its an expensive place to live and salaries are not overly generous, NZ drivers are impolite and need to be taught how to drive on open roads / motorways property and its harder to find a really good steak and cheese pie than it used to be but those are some of the prices you'll pay for the opportunities that are available

I think kiwidreamer makes a really good point - there are other areas of Auckland that are less city-ish, maybe semi-rural and if you want to leave them to visit other areas of Auckland (or anywhere else in the country) you don't have to spend $$ going on a ferry first. These areas may involve a longish commute but no longer than the hour from Waiheke.

Beachlands is a really good example, I've only been once but it seemed like a really nice little seaside community but you could drive to other bits of
Auckland easily. And it has a ferry to the CBD to avoid the traffic. And of course I agree that Titirangi is lovely

Otoh, Waiheke does seem to have quite a strong community who organise quite a lot of stuff to do. It's not a terrible place to be. But it is a bit rough and ready, I think you have to get used to stuff like living on tank water, possible shortages in the summer etc.

Kiwidreamer glad you enjoyed your trip back (despite illnesses). Where do you plan to move back to, Auckland?

kiwi, glad you hada good holiday, bad luck about all the illness...no fun.
Dh reeeeally doesn't want to spend an hour in the car. He will be working 9-5 in the CBD, so it will be rush hour travel.
He says he didn't come here for that.
Agree that Beachlands is lovely. Someone also told me about Whangaporoa, which also looks really good.
I am so worried sbout Waiheke, but another thing is, we could afford a house there.
We have only got $500k to spend, and nowhere else in Auk can we get a house with a bit of land, and a short commute for that.
If there is...please tell me!!!

The commute from Waiheke is going to be 2 hours a day, though of course sitting on a boat with a drink is more relaxing than sitting in a car in traffic

I think you could get a house on the Whangaparoa peninsula for 500k, the ferry from Gulf Harbour is about 45 mins so same sort of commute time as Waiheke. Not sure if the houses come with much land up there though.

Just a few years ago 500k would have given you quite a lot of choice but not so much now. I'm afraid

Well that's it, when we got the boat over it went really quickly, and like you say you can sit and read a book or have a drink, so doesn't seem tsuch a hassle.
I a bit gutted we've only got $500k to play with, just a fewk more and we would be in such a different situation.
Although, I did say to dh "what would you do if the land sells this time? (we have greenbelt land in uk waiting to go through council) Or we win the lotto?!" And he said "I'd still move to Waiheke!"
So...I think he is quite keen!
Actually today I feel a bit calmer about it, don't know why.
I think a huge part of my concern, was my Mum. I just know she'll think it's like the arse end of no where, and think we are mad for moving there. I am worried that she'll be bored there. I know she will be, because she is bored here and thereis much more to do!
So that has really bothered me, as she comes so much.
Also, as I still feel responsible for her emotional well being, as I have caused her so much distress by leaving the Uk, so don't wish to displease her further.

When I realised that, I felt calmer.
Because, for the most part, it will be me, dh and the kids...and I think I'll be ok with that.