Well we didn't initially, we emigrated to Cairns in 2004, so we were still by the sea, but in 2011 that all changed, funny where fate can take you, so what happened?
It was 29th April 2011 when Sandy and I found ourselves heading back to the small Outback Queensland town of St George. We had been there the previous year when we had been setting off on our grand tour around Australia in a caravan. However, we now found ourselves heading back to this outback town - so why was that?
Sometimes life has other plans for you, and fate had decided travelling around Australia in our caravan, being footloose and fancy free, was not going to be one of them. I had had my first health scare earlier that year, which made us re-evaluate what was important to us in our lives.
For us it was about having a sense of connection; to each other, but also to a community, a place and its people, somewhere to call home. Over the years, Sandy and I have lived and worked in many towns, in many countries, but nowhere we'd really called home. Now we were ready to settle.
But where?
To help us decide we made a list what it was we were looking for; the must haves, the nice to haves, and things that we would be happy to compromise or negotiate on.
Here are the sort of things that we included, your list might be different:
- Employment opportunities
- Housing (cost, availability, quality, good suburbs, where to avoid)
- Shops (supermarkets, chemists, basic necessities)
- Business in town
- Entertainment (sports, restaurants, pubs/ clubs etc)
- Quality of the surroundings (space, noise, rush hour, parking)
- Climate
- Size of the town
- First impressions, how did the town 'feel', was it friendly
- Cleanliness/up keep, was the town in good repair
- How far from the nearest big town/city
- Transport
- Medical care/availability
- Roads in and out of the town - were these main routes.
So it was not a spur of the moment decision and having a list helped us to evaluate possibilities objectively and not get too caught up in the moment. Which is so easy to do!
St George was not the first town we had looked at. However, we had made a shortlist of possible towns and thus armed, headed off in our caravan to review with new eyes, looking at their 'liveability'. There is a big difference between passing through a town and "thinking how pretty, what a lovely place to live" and actually looking for a place to hang your hat. You have to bring it down to practicality and functionality, a bit like buying a house.
We arrived in St. George around lunchtime that day. The Pelican Rest caravan park, where we had stayed previously, had just come under new ownership. Steve and Lorraine, made us very welcome and new lifelong friendships were born. Little did we know that we'd be staying in "Pelican Rest" for a little over a year.
Saturday, the last day in April, was spent driving around St. George, reviewing the town and surrounding area. We had forgotten what a little gem of a place St. George was but it soon came back to us as we drove around, just why this town had stuck in our minds following our previous visit and subsequent travels. The evening was taken up discussing, over a few beers of course, the pros and cons of the town. I have to say our list had a lot on the pro side and very little, if anything on the con side.
So whether you are choosing a suburb, town, village or house, make a list, be honest with yourself, identify what is a 'need' to have and a 'nice' to have, what does that means to you. How a house looks can be easily changed, but location, amenities and functionality are paramount.
This has worked for us.
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