"Aren't you guys happy there?"
Well yes, we are. But we're looking at the bigger picture and trying new things.
From my perspective, for as long as I can remember, when asked whether I think of myself as a city person I've answered "not really". My parents can confirm, but moving away from the city has always been something I've wanted to do. I hate crowds, and Sydney is now a huge city with useless fundamental design now incapable of moving people where they want to go when they want to go, either by car or other means.
Try driving at 3am, as we had to do a little while ago when there was no other option for Phoebe - that's how roads were
meant to work. Then try the same thing at 8am. That's how Sydney, and any other big city now feels to me - millions of people stuck waiting to get somewhere else they want to be. Trains are a little better - just as cramped but at least they move and there's less rage.
But, the really silly part is that they don't actually
want to be at that target destination. Who wants to work in a cramped office? Humans evolved to roam free and work the land and all that, and now in the last century we've come to spend two-thirds of our life in an office (or factory, or shop, or whatever) and somehow perceive this as normal.
That's the world we live in and I can't change that (I might be aiming to, but that's longer-term). However I can try to make the other third of my life as enjoyable as possible. Here where we are now in suburbia, I had hoped to be able to to say that was happening. Instead, we barely know our neighbours - those on one side have never even said hello. There is no community spirit anymore, no place to gather akin to European plazas, even if you go into the CBD!
Everybody has somewhere else to be, is perpetually busy, and no time for each other. That's the real shame of it, and we're hoping to find a new place that can help.
So that leaves us with two basic options - either move further inner-city where life is more vibrant, travel times short, and lots of like-minded people exist, or move further out, to a "simpler" life.
Moving
inwards, the drawbacks as I see it are:
- price - a run-down two bedroom semi with two metres of backyard is not worth a million bucks, no matter where it is
- space - for the dog and the bub to run around - is significantly less than we already have
- noise - traffic and of course our city has that fantastic triumph of planning, an airport smack-bang in the middle of it
- child-friendlyness - well, plenty of children grow up inner city, but deep down that still doesn't feel quite right to me
- pollution - air, noise, visual, ...
Alternatively, moving
outwards, we get far more house and land for our money, somewhere to live more off the land with our own food and energy sources, a strong community, peace, tranquility, and a good place to bring up Phoebe amongst animals, rolling hills and fresh air.
Drawbacks will of course be being further from our friends and family, longer commuting times to work, and the risk of mono-culturalism. We've mitigated these risks in our actual choice of location which I'll elaborate on more later.
I also want to spend significantly less of our lifetime income paying off a pile of bricks that we live in. Australian capital city property is
amazingly over-priced compared with pretty much anywhere in the world, and I'm no longer interested in playing that game to the point that it impacts the pile of money we have to actually enjoy life with.
It's still rather scary even after much delibration and with an easy way out, but I do honestly feel we are making the correct move for this time of our lives.
As always, time will of course tell. Maybe the drawbacks will be large enough to get us back on the bandwagon - they appear to be for millions of others! Or have they just not truly considered their options?