Lets start

I live in Stanmore (Annandale side, not Newtown/Marrickville side)! And I grew up at Summer Hill hahahahah...

I lived in Canberra and Queanbeyan NSW a while.

Canberrans couldn't get their heads around travelling from Queanbeyan every day. Even though it is only 20 minutes from the CBD of Canberra

I'm about 15mins walk (so practically in, though it doesn't technically start until about 2 streets over) from the middle of what passes for a CBD in Gosford - aka "Mt. Druitt by the water".

It's still mostly derelict buildings and daytime wandering junkies, but it's gentrifying (with emphasis on the "ing"). Property is actually still affordable here, though that's changing rapidly as more and more people are moving up from Sydney to buy their first home.

I moved up here (yeah, to buy property and get off the rental treadmill) back in 2012-ish. Sydney prices are so outrageous that my budget only really left me with few financially comfortable options - Gosford, way out Western Sydney (past Emu Plains), or way out South West Sydney (past Macarthur). Gosford had the better climate, cheapest and nicest properties (and I didn't have to buy in a suburb of endless rows of identical houses - I could buy near amenities and public transport AND still own a car), best transport links and fastest commute (with a quite fun little mountain pass), and is geographically quite pretty - so it was a bit of a no brainer.

The only real downside that I didn't account for was that it's mostly young families and couples buying places up here... there really aren't many people like me in this neck of the woods. So that kinda sucks, but hey - more time and money for video games, vape stuff, and other hobbies so *shrug* win some lose some .

Oh, and the food here kinda sucks. Most of it hasn't changed since the "catering for white people trying foreign food for the first time" style stuff of the 70's and 80's. But it'll improve as more people come up from Sydney with higher expectations.

Yeah, I know this isn't the "TELL us about where you live" thread... but I figure since a lot of Sydneysiders kinda see anything north of Berowra as "HERE BE DRAGONS" until they hit the Hunter Valley I'd actually confirm that there are in fact people living in no-mans-land .

Woy Woy has certainly changed in the decades since I started going there. I still love it, but it feels like a city now, rather than the sleepy little backwater of my youth.