Tom1

I’m a Canadian (Montreal) professor and will be on sabbatical leave, living in Canberra and working at ANU, for essentially the entire year of 2006. (I’ll be coming with my wife and 10-yr old daughter who, in theory, will be attending the Telopea Park school.) This will be our first time in Canberra (and Australia too).

We’re trying to decide on a place to stay.
Is there a good place to see ads of houses and condos for rent – a website would be great. I've found one very good site but there are very few furnished places and they tend to be expensive. How do professors (or diplomats leaving for a temporary posting abroad) in Canberra find renters for their homes? (Our best option would be to rent the home of a Canberra professor who is leaving for the same period.) I can’t find a website with this, and Australians seem to rarely use sabbaticalhomes.com, which a lot of Canadians, Americans and Europeans use.
What neighborhoods should we look at? We’d prefer to be in a neighborhood within easy walking distance to stores and restaurants (town center), and with relatively easy to the Telopea Park area. We’ll probably buy a car, but my wife would often have to get around by bus, and bicycling too would be an option.

Any advice on how to go about finding and choosing a place would be great! (And if you have any other suggestions, including your favorite places to visit within about a 3hr drive from Canberra - double thanks!!)

Tom

Neil_Oz

Tom1, I can talk about Canberra localities etc., but not the specifics of furnished rental accommodation - before I weigh in, have you spoken to ANU administration about this? I imagine that they spend a lot of time fielding similar enquiries from visiting academics.

Bokhara

Tom,
I may have a lead for you - could you post your e-mail address, please? Friend lives in Canberra D.S & going to Turkey, looking to lease their house.
Cheers,
Bokhara

Neil_Oz

You need to know that life in Canberra without a car is awfully limiting - the city is the epitome of (sub)urban sprawl, and despite the vision of the city's designer we still don't have a light rail system. If you don't plan to acquire wheels, at the very least you'll have to plan on living in the Inner South or Inner North areas (the division being the lake). The ANU is Inner North, bordering the commercial centre ("Civic&quot, Telopea Park School is Inner South. (BTW, I think I can guess why you chose that English-French bilingual school )

My first reaction is that you'd be best situated in the Kingston or Manuka areas, close to TP school. It's only a short hop to Civic, therefore the ANU, by bus, or if you're a cyclist by bike. Canberra is a great city for cyclists, and low rainfall means that the weather is propitious for outdoor activity. Despite what other Australians may tell you, you should find the weather joyously temperate by Montreal standards.

Both localities are close to good shops and restaurants, and Manuka in particular is the liveliest after-dark place in Canberra, helped by its proximity to the main embassy district, Yarralumla. And both have lots of apartments. Manuka is not a suburb as such but, like Kings Cross in Sydney, a commercial centre at the intersection of several suburbs.

The alternative is to live in Turner, adjacent to both Civic and the ANU, or O'Connor, the next suburb to the north.

I'll try to suss out the best website for apartment rentals and get back to you. In the meantime, I suggest considering renting a serviced apartment for a week or two while you hunt down a suitable place - much preferable to taking somewhere sight unseen, unless like Bokhara's it comes with a good personal recommendation.

Bokhara

Tom, sorry - meant to say, he's in the Diplomatic Service.

BlueGum

First try allhomes.com.au, a great website, they have loads of homes for rent. Not many fully furnished though as Australians tend not to rent their homes that way.

I know someone from Canada who is living here for two years and I think she told me the Canadian High Commission? (try the Australian website) helped them find a home unit in Kingston (lots of new apartments there). Just a word of warning... renting is quite expensive here in Canberra especially near the city centre!

Go to the Action.act.gov.au bus website for routes of all buses around town, they have a very good service.

Favourite place to visit for us so far would be Bateman's Bay which is on the east coast about 2 to 2 1/2 hours drive from Canberra. If you like skiing then Thredbo is a couple of hours to the south.

Any other questions just ask.

Tom1

Thanks for all the great information - I appreciate it alot!

And thanks Bokhara for being willing to put me in contact with someone who might be open to renting us their place. My e-mail is below -- just replace the (AT) by @ (this is my weak effort to avoid getting on those automated spam lists...).

tk.legrand (AT) umontreal.ca

Thanks! Tom

Tom

Neil_Oz

Further to Bluegum's good advice, I agree that the bus service is generally good, but not so great if you have to use two or more buses to get where you're going - we have an interchange system which will have that effect if you're too far out of the city centre, and out of peak hours the routes can meander - you may end up seeing more of suburbia than you really want to.

Places within 3 hours of Canberra by car - you can include Sydney (out of peak hours, anyway). Most of the New South Wales south coast, a beautiful and mostly unspoilt string of Pacific beaches, is within 3 hours' drive - there are many picturesque routes between Canberra and the Coast. You can also include much of inland southern and central western NSW; there are many towns in these farming and grazing areas good for a weekend getaway, often with good local wineries and decent restaurants. (The Canberra region itself is now a significant producer of cool-climate wines - in fact we've just discovered a good small winery and olive-oil producer not 10 minutes from where we live at Pialligo, across the road from the airport.)

A few small tips for newcomers:
* eat out at Manuka/Kingston and Dickson (latter mostly Asian)
* the "art house" cinema is Electric Shadows in Civic
* buy fresh food at the markets in Fyshwick (open Thu-Sun) and Belconnen (open Wed-Sun) rather than supermarkets

You can also search for rental properties at www.propertyguide.com.au/ - select "ACT" as your state and search by suburb and price range. Not sure if it's as good as Allhomes though. Note that the beginning of the academic year will be something of a seller's market. Against this is the fact that there seems to be a boom in apartment and townhouse construction at the moment.