Cumberland Park, SA 5041

If like me, you find the sound of barking dogs a real pain, then Cumberland Park is not for you. I've lived in the family home in this suburb on and off for decades, but I now no longer wish to ever live there...

The area has filled up with wannabees who can't afford Unley or Malvern and so flop here, who all gut the lovely compact bungalows and add on massive rear-of-house extensions and same-same front yard treatments.. and 3 out of 4 of them own dogs, dogs that seem never to have been trained not to bark, and so go on and on, their owners inside, down the other end of their bloated extensions, uncaring that their mutt is for whatever reason perpetually barking... And of course no one says boo, the dog owners not complaining about the other dog owners, lest it provoke payback.. So the dogs bark at birds, at cars, other dogs, at you, some just during the day, some are like the guard dogs you see in car yards, barking at night as well as by day, attacking the fence... You may as well shack up at the RSPCA kennels.

Otherwise : my car parked on the street at night has been pillaged at least once a year, every year, the wannabees all seem to have kiddies that love to roam about at night, tagging poles or walls or cars, more than one stolen car has ended up on fire in the side street across the way..

Internet speeds are severely limited by Telstra's decaying copper wiring and junction boxes- recently my download speed is around dial-up speed despite paying for ADSL2+.. the amount of traffic is unreal given this is a suburban street, all zipping between Goodwood Road and Winston Ave/South Road.. termites are out and about here, as are rats and mice.. forget about growing your own fruit - hoardes of parrots come every summer and ravage the trees at dawn until the fruit is all pecked onto the ground.. the street trees in this street - 'Goldenrain' are horrible, drop hundreds of pods containing thousands of hard black berries that get into everything and produce thousands of little trees in your lawns and gardens..

The 'new' residents also resurrect the wood fires in the bungalows, blanketing the suburb in choking smoke every winter and spring - and as per the dogs, nobody says boo...

Once upon a time, Cumberland Park was an upper working class / lower middle class area with a good mix of friendly old folks and younger families, with few barking dogs and mostly electric and gas heating. Big back yards yielding buckets of fruit to share. Crisp clean night air over the winter. Quiet nights allowing easy sleep, distant sounds of cars on the main roads.

Now it is a bland collection of tissied-up 1920s bungalows extended almost to the back fence, irritating incessently barking dogs and stifling smoky open fires, someone else's children doing burnouts past your house... true to the culture generally perhaps - they're OK, bugger you Jack ?

I've lived in Doncaster Vic, Surry Hills NSW, Maylands WA, and other places. I've never struck the amount of uncaring neighbour type noise as in Cumberland Park.

Cumberland park has become a ‘super suburb’ and listings that are marketed correctly will not be available for long at all.

Average time on market is short as it is an extremely suitable suburb for families.

The leafy streets are easy to navigate and when theres not enough room for two cars to squeeze past each other you can be assured someone will pull aside to let you through.

10/10 for the best suburb in the area.

I love the leafy avenues and the houses - full of character and still affordable.