KerryM

We moved here from Mordialloc (which we loved but couldn't afford to buy in) a year ago.
We love:
- the space, size and quality house we could get for our money
- the friendly people (see the Lynbrook Residents Association website for the awesome community events, usually at Banjo Paterson Reserve, and the Lynbrook Social Facebook page)
- the convenience of walking through beautiful parks and past the lake to the train station, a lovely way to start the day, or easy car parking if it's raining.
- the safety of the train station and area in general
- the schools - excellent primary schools in Lynbrook and lots of local low fee private schools for great high school options. Also the local state high schools seem to be improving.
- plenty of choice for childcare, great kindergarten, parks and play equipment
- we had heard there might be a smell from the Hampton Park tip sometimes, but it's been much better than we expected... Only a very slight smell when there's a strong easterly wind, which happens about once every couple of months, usually for a couple of days in a row, then no smell again for ages. Surprisingly it's much better than the seaweed smell from the beach and Clayton tip smell we used to get in Parkdale/Mordialloc.
- Fountain Gate is almost as good as Southland (Cheltenham) for shopping... I'm missing Country Road and David Jones, but that's all ;)
- in Lynbrook we get a local Melbourne landline number, e.g. 03 9.... Rather than the annoying 03 59... In some parts of Lyndhurst and all of Cranbourne I think?
- the new community centre that just opened at Lynbrook Village shops
- Lynbrook Pizza and Pasta do awesome pizza and the charcoal chicken place do Gluten Free chips. Suburban Grind cafe also does fantastic food and drinks. Shame they're not allowed to open in evenings.
- the huge, grand, old, protected gum trees. Apparently the area used to be an aboriginal settlement. They're maintained by Casey Council.

We we haven't loved:
- the traffic on the South Gippsland Hwy in peak hour... We take the train into town so it only effects us when not working and needing to go out at those times
- the single line train track between Dandenong and Cranbourne. So even with the upgrade in the train lines, the number of trains cannot increase very much. The local Greens MP has it on his agenda to duplicate the track at least... Who knows!
- at the moment we can only get ADSL 2+ internet which is slower than what we were used to from other areas where we had cable internet.
- the Lynbrook hotel and local restaurants are the only nightlife.
- the council rates are higher than Kingston, Frankston and Bayside in my experience. We pay $1800pa inc green waste, and we have a 15yo 3bed2bath house on 700sqm.

General Notes:
We have found that using the Western Port Hwy then coming off at Northey Rd exit is a great way to avoid the South Gippsland Hwy madness.
Marriott Waters in Lyndhurst has a great Woolworths and other shopping options (great Gluten Free butcher and Aldi).

There are heaps of buses which will be handy when the kids are teenagers... To Fountain Gate or the newly renovated Cranbourne Park Shopping Centre which has good places to eat now too.
We love our new area and we love having a bigger block of land than what we could get for the same price with a house and land package much further out, away from the city in Berwick or Cranbourne East etc... Also, I don't think those areas would have as nice a community village feel as we do here :) ??
Hope this helps!