VJzoo

My Gran lived in Ocean Waters Retirement Village on Kalinda Drive for several years.

You couldn't ask for a better spot for a retirement home - still close enough to the city for relatives to be able to visit easily, yet a quiet area with a beautiful beach nearby where we could take her for lunch and to watch the sun set over the ocean.

The nearby Floreat Beach is great for families too, with a playground, restaurant and snackbar.

Another great thing about this area is the Bold Park Reserve nearby - a fairly big tract of natural bushland (if you're into nature, that is). There's also the great Bold Park Pool, a golf course and the Quarry Ampitheatre nearby.

The services in the area aren't great - the nearest supermarket is very small, I think you'd have to go to Floreat Forum or Scarborough for most things, and there certainly weren't many good restaurants around. But then, this is a quiet, outdoorsy sort of area where people walk their dogs and take their kids to the park after work.

Personally, I'm more of an urban inner-city person, but for retirees and people with families, I think this would be an excellent suburb to live in - if you can afford it!

My in-laws live here and it's a beautiful street with lovely old houses and a very convenient location, apart from one thing... Fremantle Hospital

Living across the road from the largest hospital in the area and also a psychiatric unit, makes for noisy neighbours, a lot of traffic and strange people climbing into the yard in the middle of the night!

Apart from that, this is a great area to live. It's only a 5 minute walk to the centre of Freo, South St has many shops and restaurants and both the beach and river aren't too far away.

As you can see from the aerial map here, there are a lot of trees in this immediate area, which seem to absorb a lot of noise. In my in-laws backyard, it's hard to believe you're so close to the busy heart of Fremantle, hidden behind the buffer of the old gaol as they are.

The Monument is nearby, which is a great place to take a walk and has the best 360 degree view you could hope for in such a built-up area.

Probably one of the biggest drawbacks to living in this area is parking. Even at night, the street parking is paid on Alma St, and residents only get a permit for one car. In neighbouring streets with the very old attached workers cottages, there isn't even room on the street for one car per household as the frontages are so narrow. This can make the small streets quite hazardous as there's barely room for one car to drive down them and very few places to pull over to let someone pass in the opposite direction.

My grandparents lived on this street for more than 60 years, so I spent a lot of time there as a kid. It's a very steep street with narrow frontages - so not much room for on-street parking, although many of the houses have a rear laneway and parking at the back of their property.

The West Leederville Primary School located on this street includes such ex-students as Bob Hawke :) Having a primary school on your street can be very noisy though - so I'd prefer the northern end of the street which runs down to the beautiful Lake Monger, famous for it's black swans and other waterbirds.

At the southern end of the street is West Leederville train station, and many buses run along Cambridge St so this is a very convenient neighbourhood for public transport.

Many medical facilities are nearby - although the aging population in this area are being replaced by professional couples at a rapid rate, so I wouldn't really suggest it for retirees.

West Leederville is a lovely old character suburb very close to West Perth and the City, so it's no wonder it's so popular with professionals. Property prices in this area have been going up very quickly, and I think will continue to do so. Building densities are also increasing, with many battle-axe developments in the backyards of the old houses, but with Lake Monger so nearby, who needs a yard anyway?

Clark St is a quiet little street very near the University of Western Australia campus. This means that a lot of academic staff and students live in this area. It's also an old and well-established area with lots of renovated 1920's houses.

On the university side there are small blocks of Art Deco apartments filled to the brim with students, but toward the other end of the street it's mostly professional couples and families.

One of the bad things about this area is parking, as there is nowhere near enough parking on UWA for all the students and staff who drive to work. As a result, for many years the neighbouring streets were clogged with cars. Clark St is now limited to 1-2hr parking, so if you have visitors you need to be able to fit their cars in your driveway!

Nedlands is a very leafy, pretty suburb. The Swan River is nearby, and the UWA campus is wonderful to stroll around. There's a lot of heavy traffic on Stirling Highway, Broadway and the other main streets but due to the number of well-established trees, the traffic noise isn't much of a bother once you're a street or two back from the main roads. There are many quiet little streets like Clark St in this area.

For some reason, it's not the friendliest of neighbourhoods though. Maybe because there are a lot of professionals working long hours? High fences/walls on all sides are typical, and I lived there for years without having much to do with any of the neighbours. Still, that means it's great for privacy! You can certainly be left alone to enjoy your property in peace and quiet here.

As a kid, you really had to go down to UWA or the river to play - there's not many small public parks or open spaces in this immediate area. And that means crossing some busy roads (eg Broadway). So maybe not the most ideal neighbourhood for families, unless you prefer to keep your kids at home behind a high brick wall....

I lived on this street for many years as a child - it was very working-class back then, like most of Mosman Park. It's now been well and truly yuppified, the posh neighbourhood of Peppermint Grove has spread it's influence into this eastern side of 'Mossie Park' making it very unlike the high-rise apartment living of the western end of the suburb.

McEwan Crescent flanks a small park with a children's playground and is within close walking distance of some very good state and private schools (Cottesloe Primary, St Hilda's and PLC).

A lovely area to bring up a family if you can afford it, nestled between the river and the ocean.

Two streets from the beautiful Hyde Park, Grosvenor Rd is very convenient and yet a surprisingly quiet street. Just 15 mins walk to Northbridge or the CBD, and yet this is a friendly, family-oriented community. We're renters, but the majority of the street are owner-occupiers, mostly families with kids.

The yuppification of this area has well and truly started, with tradespeoples' vans on every second verge and in the five years or so I've lived here, I've seen a number of old weatherboard houses demolished to make way for new houses. There are still pockets of European migrant retirees though, with their vege patches proudly tended.

Grosvenor Rd has the advantage over some neighbouring streets of having wide verges, so most people park their cars on the verge instead of the street, the result being that there's usually room for two-way traffic unlike Chelmsford Rd.

Best local food: Saowanee's Place claims to be the best Thai in Perth, and South Sea China Restaurant on Fitzgerald St is excellent quality for the price. There's also good Turkish, upmarket Mexican and the award winning Stones Pizza nearby as well.

Grocery shopping can be done at the nearby North Perth Plaza (Coles) or I really recommend the Continental Supermarket on the corner of James St and Fitzgerald in nearby Northbridge. Mt Lawley Fresh Provisions is one of the few places in Perth you can buy food and groceries 24 hours a day. In fact, the trendy Mt Lawley cafe strip is only a short walk away, depending on which end of Grosvenor Rd you are.

My insurance company said there's a high property-crime rate here in North Perth, but having lived here for 5 years I feel it's a pretty safe neighbourhood.

If I could afford to buy here, I certainly would. I'm very lucky to be renting one of the few remaining non-renovated properties in the area and think it's a great area to live in.