Adelaide hills information

[mac]

Hi all! Our family are moving to Adelaide next year and after some research have decided that we would like to settle in Adelaide Hills. The town we have looked at in detail is Bridgewater. What do people think of this area? Are there any other areas/towns which may be of interest to look at? Are there any areas to avoid? We don't want to live too close to the city but it needs to be easily commutable. We have three daughters aged 9, 6 and 2. Many thanks. Mark, Natalie, Abigail, Jessica & Mia

[Blossom]

Somebody asked about bridgewater a couple of weeks ago. Probably worth having a little look back. :-)

 

But briefly, it's a nice places but REALLY cold in winter with frosts most of the time.

[Pommyspark]

Hi all! Our family are moving to Adelaide next year and after some research have decided that we would like to settle in Adelaide Hills. The town we have looked at in detail is Bridgewater. What do people think of this area? Are there any other areas/towns which may be of interest to look at? Are there any areas to avoid? We don't want to live too close to the city but it needs to be easily commutable. We have three daughters aged 9, 6 and 2. Many thanks. Mark, Natalie, Abigail, Jessica & Mia

 

Mac there are lots of places around and about Adelaide, what is driving your requirements, cost, desirability ?, we looked at loads of different places as we wanted to move to the hills when we had been here a year. We ended up no where near where we were looking and got a really nice location just south of the city (Eden Hills) bit of help from Phil Spencer like. I can help you with an outside point of view maybe

[snifter]

I think it's a lovely little place. We've looked at property up there. I prefer it over Aldgate and Stirling too. Can't say there were any 'bad' areas to it. It is only a small place bear in mind. Think it has it's own state primary school which iirc is meant to be excellent but no senior school. This could well mean having to head down into the eastern Adelaide suburbs for kids of high school age.

 

Personally, as lovely as it is we decided against living there.

 

What are you wanting from a suburb/area? We want trees, green space and easy access to the hills but also good state schools. We've just agreed a house which falls in a zone, fab school and we are 2 mins from the road into the hills and beyond but also within reasonable distance to the city and coast.

Edited May 30, 2014 by snifter

[Guest Guest12727]

I Think it has it's own state primary school which iirc is meant to be excellent but no senior school. This could well mean having to head down into the eastern Adelaide suburbs for kids of high school age.

 

There is Heathfield High School which a lot of people in that region send their kids to. Or there are buses to schools down the hill.

[jim and adel]

But briefly, it's a nice places but REALLY cold in winter with frosts most of the time.

 

That is such an off-putting statement. Generally, hills towns are a few degrees cooler than on the plains. I find Adelaide cold in winter full stop, and a few degrees either way doesn't make much difference. As for frosts, totally incorrect to say it has frosts 'most of the time'. On some winter mornings there'll be a light dusting of frost (if you leave your car on the drive you'll see it on the windscreen, but it will be gone with one swipe of the wipers); occasionally, on the very coldest nights there might be a 'proper' frost that you see on a British winter morning, but these are few and far between. Once the sun's up, there's certainly no frost.

 

To the OP, it's a nice area. We looked at it when we decided to move to the hills but it didn't quite feel right to us (we have friends there who love it and wouldn't live anywhere else). Other nice places around that part of the hills include Stirling, Crafers, Aldgate, Mylor and Hahndorf. We went that bit further and ended up near Mount Barker. The part of the hills closest to the city - including Crafers and across the Piccadilly Valley - do get quite a bit more rain than elsewhere in the area, so if you don't like the wet stuff you might want to look either on the plains, further into the hills (which get more rainfall than Adelaide itself but not as much as Crafers etc) or towns in the southern part of the hills (ditto).

[Blossom]

I sell plants to nurseries all over Adelaide, including the hills and I'm told all winter how many frosts they have (due to them obviously affecting plants) and I was shocked at how many there are. I drive up from the city and have to take an extra layer of clothing to put on once I get up there as it's that much colder. Crafers for some reason always seems the coldest. This is every other week, so regularly enough to have a very good idea of how much colder it is.

A woman I work with tells us she has to scrape her windscreen more often than not in winter.

 

Even here on the plains we get a fair few frosts, although mostly light ones. Often it looks like dew, but if you touch it it's crunchy.

Personally, as I say, it's too cold for me in winter up there. Day times often are nice, but mornings and evenings are bitter.