Dovey

I grew up in sunshine, in the heritage listed area, in a house on graham St, about 20 years ago. my mother still have the same house, I'm there regularly, and honestly, it's quite a good little place.
I disagree that child care is an issue, my daughter is in a child care centre in sunshine that is good and they have plenty of vacancies, as well as lots of family day care operators. Schools are also not an issue, and sunshine primary has a good after school and holiday care program.
There are questionable folk and areas of sunshine, however you can live a pretty harmonious life here if you know your place. What I mean by that is that yes, there are junkies, but there are also junkies in fitzroy which is almost smack bang in the cbd, and as long as you don't walk right up to them and call them junkies to their face, they leave you alone.
There is a little pocket of middle aged to older alcoholics that hang outside the bottle shop near the derrimut pub. They are harmless and one of the older males is actually quite a gentleman, escorted me to my house very late one night, to ensure I got home safely and asked for nothing in return. We chatted very amicably along the way and he was happy enough to wander away after I'd left his company.
This place has amazing food, perhaps not an astounding variation of it, but some of the food you find here is some of the best in the western suburbs.
Being so close to the city, night life is really not a huge deal. There is there derrimut hotel which does pub meals, the cinemas and mambo's cafe right near it which are open late and are amazing. But with night life also attracts negative attention and people so that's a bit of a plus to me to not have much going on at night.
House values are rising in the area, and heritage overlay is expanding, however I am not to question the councils knowledge of the heritage condition of some houses, as I know that they are easily led in that place.
The suburb is quite beautiful in its own rough and tumble way. With pricier housing comes a more sophisticated (at least, less drug fuelled) crowd so patiently biding your time will pay off in this suburb.