Clifton Hill – One of the top ranked most liveable suburbs

If “location location location” is the all important factor when choosing where to live or buy a house, then the recent results from The Age’s ‘Liveable Melbourne’ study should provide further evidence that Clifton Hill is the place to be!

From the study:
“With a median house price of $766,000 and a ranking solidly in the top 10,Clifton Hill — a leafy oasis of Victorian homes and Yarra parkland amid the traffic of Hoddle Street and the Eastern Freeway — is arguably the best-value suburb in Melbourne: you’ll have to drop down to 20th place (Hampton East) to find somewhere cheaper that’s even close in terms of liveability. So why is it so much higher than its immediate (and pricier) neighbour Fitzroy North (28)? It has marginally better access to the train, it’s a bit hillier, and it has a bit more open space.”

Links:
Our Liveable City
The List – Melbourne suburbs’ liveability ranking revealed

Bump and Grind

If you ever take a drive through Clifton Hill, and it is a lovely suburb to drive through, keep an eye out for the speed humps. They are scattered quite liberally around the streets. Most of them are the ‘plateau’ type – a gentle rise, wide flat section, then a gentle fall. You can go over these at a reasonable speed – actually you can go over these pretty much as fast as you like – they are more speed undulations than a hump.

Then there are those on Ramsden Street. Oh boy. These aren’t designed just to slow you down, these humps are designed to rip the transmission out of your car if you so much as travel more than 5 kmph over them. They don’t look that lethal as you approach them – but after the first time your car is catapulted in the air,  you certainly slow down before the next one. I pity the people living near them (especially the first hump near Hoddle Street), they must constantly hear the sound of tearing metal as another engine is seperated from a car.

12 Minutes

12 minutes. That’s how long it takes to catch the express train from Clifton Hill railway station and reach the CBD. Now that might seem a strange thing to write about as the first post in this blog, but as someone who hates commuting, this was one of the first things that made me think ‘This is a good suburb to live in!’

Being located at the junction of the Epping and Hurstbridge lines, Clifton Hill is serviced by twice the number of trains as a ‘normal’ station and being the start of the limited express service, there is only one other stop during peak hours before you reach the CBD.

Complaining about the state of public transport in Melbourne is a favourite past time, but at Clifton Hill I can honestly say that there is little to improve – fast, generally on-time, few cancellations and safe.