GC_Girl

I recently moved to the Gold Coast and I can't recommend Miami highly enough.

On most evenings it's so quiet that I can leave my back door open and hear the ocean, but it only takes 10-15 minutes to drive to the bustling heart of Surfer's Paradise. Even though it's closer to the airport that the northern suburbs I never hear any air traffic. As a young woman I'm usually super paranoid about my safety but I feel completely at ease walking to the shopping complex at night alone, I've never had reason to believe anything untoward is happening in the streets around my house.

The two shopping complexes I visit have pretty much anything you could need in terms of groceries and cafes, and a few other conveniences like a post office at Miami One and a surgery down at the smaller shops on Dawn Pde. Miami's also really close to Burleigh Stocklands (I LOVE Burleigh Stocklands!), Robina town centre, and Pacific Fair (take Sunshine boulevard, avoid the traffic on the GCH).

The beach itself tends to be a bit quiet (and always colder than Burleigh!), it's always patrolled but there's hardly ever anyone there swimming or surfing. But, up over the knoll into North Burleigh things pick up, with the Miami Tavern and the surf club and it's quite an achievable stroll to the National Park if nature's your thing. Miami pretty much has the benefits of living in Burleigh heads without the price tag.

There's a really big sporting complex and a golf course which I hear is quite good, and a few parks and things to check out. Miami is quite cool in that it feels like it's on the outskirts of suburbia when really it's very close to the centre of a major city.

I don't see many young kids on any of the streets near me, I think it's mostly older couples, childless families, and young people sharing houses like me. But, my street is mostly duplexes and when I walk around the more inland streets of Miami there are older traditional style houses which look like they would be more suited to families with kids.

Really theres only two critisisms I could fairly give this suburb. One thing is that cars tend to travel up my 60km/hr street at about 80kms. It's a flat suburb with straight, parallel streets so I think people must think it's okay to speed; and on street parking is a major drama in some of the streets, watch for that if you're thinking of renting a house with no carport/garage. Such a trivial thing I know! The second thing is that it's SUCH a pain to get from Miami to the M1, so if you're having guests it's hard to explain how to get to the suburb unless they come on the Gold Coast Hwy. Youre kinda stuck between four M1 exits/entries which are all ridiculously out of the way.

Everything else in Miami is amazing, if I had the money I would definately be buying here rather than renting.