Living in Gold Coast?

Has anyone lived (or is currently living) in Gold Coast?

I may have a potential job offer there and I wanted to get a general sense of how much rent is, average cost of living, whether I could get around without a car, etc. I also wanted know what your impressions of the Gold Coast are.

I'm hoping to live near work (which I think is downtown) and I think the salary range is 45K to 56K - is that enough to live (and hopefully do some travelling on the weekends?)

Thanks!

I don't live on the Gold Coast so I can't help much with specifics.

For information on rentals check out here:
http://www.realestate.com.au
There's tabs at the top of the page for rentals and shared accomadation.

Here's a map website to help you figure out where all the suburbs are:
http://www.whereis.com.au

I can't help you out with the transportation, but if you look up the area and bus routes or train routes I'm sure you'd find what you're looking for. I don't think there's much for train routes around the gold coast unless you're headed into Brisbane.

Thanks!

Where exactly are you working, and where are you hoping to live?

I just read your thread again and I'm wondering if you're going to be working in downtown Brisbane (the cbd) and hoping to live in the Gold Coast. If that's the case you're looking at a rather larger commute.

However, if you're going to be working around Surfers Paradise then the gold coast would be ideal.

the job would be in nerang, gold coast. i'm not too familiar with any of the neighbourhoods, so i was thinking of possibly looking into living in surfer's paradise.i like the busy-ish lifestyle that's high density and close to grocery stores/amenities.

That would work then. As far as I can tell from the bus routes it would be about 30-40 minutes on a bus.

http://jp.translink.com.au/TransLinkJPC ... anced=true

I couldn't find a bus map so I tried the trip planner. It's a really great tool actually. You can type in the suburb you want to go from and the suburb you want to go to and it'll tell you how to do it and how long it will take. So, I tried it with Nerang and Surfers Paradise as the suburb and the result is about 30-40 minutes. I had no idea what time of day you'd need to be at work so I just put arrive before 9am.

I used this when we were looking at buying a house. I would always check out the address on the trip planner to see what the commute would be like. It was really helpful.

Hope that helps.

thanks! that will be very helpful! i'm waiting until my visa process goes through before looking for a place to live but i can't wait to look for a place by the beach! it's almost surreal granted the latest (light) snowful here!