Bendigo anyone??

I am wondering do any of you guys live in/ near bendigo??
Whats the area like?
Kid friendly?

Just looking at places to move to..... my first idea was geelong but im just having a quick look at some other places too!!

I'm Bendigo born and Bred.
I live about an hour out, but head in every sinlge week.
I read something in one of our local papers/mags yesterday that said that Bendigo was named by UNICEF as Australia's first Child friendly city.
I don't mind Bendigo. It has everything. It's close enough to all regional centres and only 1.5 hrs from Melb along the freeway.
It's still got a bit of a country feel about it.
I'd love to have a BB friend nearby :)

Just wanted to add, if you want to know anything at all about the area, feel free to ask me;)
Happy to help

I live in a country town and i dont think i'd handle the 'city life' very well lol.
Oh and a bonus too - our kids are the same age :) Logan is June 07 and Bella is Feb 09!
Whats the weather like most of the time?

I'm a country bumpkin at heart too. I can't stand big cities! I nearly moved to geelong before we had kids.

The weather is pretty good. It gets a bit warmer than Melb most of the time, but only a few degrees. Night's are generally a little cooler.
Where are you from?

I love Bendigo such a nice place to live. I lived there for 3 years while at uni. I have a few friends who live there with kids and really like living there as its big enough a place without being melbourne size.

you could come live near me :D

I live in Warrnambool... i think its about 3-4 hours away?
What is the rental market like? hard to get into up there? pricey?

WOW its gonna take me a while to get used to your new name!! haha
Your town was in my mind too :) Tell me about it......

we're an hour away from bendigo, it's alright, i go in town each second week, and ballarat the other weeks in between.
Our latest discovery is that there is no JB hifi there! Ballarat has one but.
The hospital has left a lot to desire for us. Treated us like crap, and told us we had no option but to go all the way to melb for birth, and wouldnt even share care with melb so we'd be travelling to melb for the entire pregnancy! All because we live just outside their catchment area. Plus they stuffed up our 19 week ultrasound, wouldnt show me a thing, screwed up the photo cd so the images were all completely unreadable, and refused to accept our complaint. And to top it off the social worker kept insisting i drink beers with my man every day! Whilst pregnant!
But if you are thinking of having any more children, our beautiful midwife hails from bendigo, her name is Helen Sandner, and she's just wonderful!
You should like easter time too, havent seen it myself for years but there is the chinese parade and all the chinese dragons are amazing, the kids will love it!

Sorry you had a bad experience Phynna. I had 2 wonderful experiences at the public hospital and I'm outside catchment area.

RR if you have a look on the real estate website, it will show you most of the properties for rent and for sale. I can tell you which parts of town you'd probably want to head away from.

hey not your fault niadla! Hospital should be apologising! Even worse about 2 months after they told me i couldnt be their patient they rang to tell me i'd missed 2 appointments, i said of course i have! They then tried to deny ever telling me i couldnt be there, and to come back to them! Grrr! But i never would have found my midwife if the hospital hadnt of treated me like that, so i'm glad for all the headaches!

Bendigo is pretty. I love it when we go there, so calm and peaceful but allas....IM here in Shepp and hubby aint gonna move in a hurry

shep isnt far away is it maz??
Niadla, that would be great if you could let me know the good and bad areas!!

Can I direct some of you bendigo ppl to this thread to help this member out
https://www.bellybelly.com.au/forums...g-bendigo.html

Thanx

RR what are you looking to be near? Do you need public transport? Do you want to be within so many kms of the big shopping areas? Close to hospitals? My 2 suburbs to try and steer clear of are Long Gully and California Gully, but there are good and bad parts to both.
Are you looking to rest or buy? I can let you know which agencies are the better ones to deal with ;)

Hey Laura ... we nearly moved to Bendigo before we moved here to Ballarat as we thought it as Maz described as being ' Pretty ' too :D

Our absolute ONLY reason for not moving to Bendigo was that it would be that bit of extra travelling time to drive to Melb and Sth Gippsland to visit family & friends and we couldn't DO anymore longer travelling as we are already doing as no one comes to visit us from Melb or Sth Gippie (lazy them i say) !!

If i were you i would seriously consider moving to BENDIGO if the city is not for you and that you need a change from Warrnambool, ... as you know i would just LOVE, LOVE you to move here to Ballarat BUT Ads & i are after 5years of living here are sick to death of the numbers of ferals here (the numbers are growing from what we can see & experience just within 5years or possibly we have been blind all this time). Even if you could afford to live in a **nice** part of Ballarat you still have to contend with ferals in all shopping districts, etc ... and rough areas can be just a jump across the main road from nice areas here which is far too close for us.

My new hairdresser here in Ballarat has just moved from living in Bendigo for many, many years she said there are ferals in Bendigo too but when Ads & i have gone to Bendigo we have failed to see as many as we have in Ballarat, maybe it's a matter of living there to find out .

Laura as you know i'm no snob so my description of ferals as you prob have guessed are huge foul mouthed, lifelong dole bludgers, some druggies or alcoholics (yes tinny in morn for breky), domestics verbal & physical fights, and lets not forget the neglect of the children (kills me to see). I have witnessed far to many verbal swearing threats and that's just going shopping during the daylight with my little DD which is terrifying. Have watched cops chase a groups of thugs through a main shopping district, and once i found a gun above a shopping areas roof canopy & i told the police and it later sat there for weeks (yes lovely for tourists to see). So sorry i'm coming across negative of the town but sadly it is here amongst some actual lovely aspects here.

Bendigo reached a population of 100,000 this year (Ballarat not being far behind), towns with everything you need in it, like a mini Melb (like Feeb has described) :D

Laura, DO you know anyone living in Bendigo ???