Unfortunately bris-twmba by bus is a pain from what I've heard, but you could look it up? Toowoomba to mt ommaney is an hour and 30mins, about 2 hrs from here to the airport.

I know I said it as a joke but we really are loving it here, it has everything but doesn't feel overly big and there are some really nice ruralish suburbs, we're in suburbia and we still get roos and rabbits about our streets at night.

So far I can't fault it here, we like the kids school and there's another two schools the same distance from us we've heard great things about as well. There is literally a park on every corner, there is always something going on and a lot of it is free or a gold coin donation.

They are building a new library (current one is great though), heaps of markets on around the place, there is public transport but never used it so don't know how good it is. People seem friendly.

Highfields seems really popular with people from out west who wanted to be in the city without being in the city, only been up that way (the other side of town) once but it looked good.

Who knows, might be an option if nothing closer to brissy pans out