Star Weekly journalist Sibanegi Dube and his family recently made the move from Canberra to Melbourne’s west. He shares his first impressions of Melbourne.
My transition to the busy concrete jungle of Melbourne’s west, from our laid-back Canberra home, was triggered by our son, Nkazimulo’s relocation to Victoria without notice in December 2021.
Our teenage son visited Melbourne for a Christmas holiday and never returned home.
Instead, the young Dube called us to announce that he landed himself a good job with a mobile service provider, in Melbourne and was moving in with family members in Taylor Lakes.
The cyber-security graduate excitedly narrated how Melbourne was full of both energy and opportunities. As if that was not enough loss, our daughter Monalissa, followed a few months down the line. We only approved the transfer when she assured us that she will remain a full-time student and work part-time. She enrolled for studies at a tertiary institution and moved in with her brother.
Our four bedroom house in the upmarket suburb of Crace turned into a ghost home overnight by the exodus of the duo. Three bedrooms lay empty, and silence instantly enveloped a home that has been bustling with laughter and activities for the past 15 years. My wife Essy and I felt empty and lonely.
Even though we had been to Melbourne West many times before to attend weddings, graduations, and family Christmas holidays, the thought of abandoning our ACT home for Victoria never crossed our minds.
A 10 -minute discussion with Essy was enough for us to finalise the decision to move. Before I knew it, my wife, a registered nurse, was serving a notice period at the hospital she worked for 17 years.
The following weeks saw us applying for both rental homes and jobs in Melbourne, with the assistance of family members staying in the western suburbs. Everything started conniving with our desires to move to Melbourne. Everything fell into place so fast.
We had not yet even secured accommodation by the time we relocated. Neither had we acquired employment. None of that delayed our relocation to Victoria. We were confident of getting employment upon landing in Melbourne. And that is exactly what happened. We both secured our first jobs in Melbourne a few days before moving to Victoria. Armed with determination to move to a big city, we raced our way from the sleepy town of Canberra through M31 highway and landed in Truganina, where we briefly stayed at a relative’s house before moving to our current home in Rockbank.
Victoria is completely different from ACT. There is life in Melbourne. A lot of exciting activities continue into the late hours of the nights, unlike Canberra where the streets would be completely empty by midnight. Only a few selected outlets in Canberra town would be open during the late hours of the night. People ‘rock and roll’ until the early hours of the next morning in Caroline Springs next to my home.
Although Rockbank is inhabited mainly by new home seekers from diverse backgrounds with very little in common but some of our new neighbours stopped to welcome us as we were moving in. Our children have settled well in their respective jobs and schools.
I found the cost of living in Melbourne to be cheaper than Canberra. There are more grocery, furniture and clothing shops for us to choose from and their prices are lower than Canberra. The same applies to accommodation. Tenants renting our home in Canberra pay more than what our new bigger Rockbank home costs us in rentals. Canberra motorists pay more for fuel as compared to their Melbourne counterparts.
