I’ve moved into a three-bedroom unit in the Adelaide suburb of Mile End and start my new job on Monday.
I drove up from Mount Gambier today with a car load of gear. I’ll return the car to Juliet tomorrow and fly back to Adelaide on Sunday.
Mile End is half way between the City of Adelaide and the Airport, about 3km to each from my residence in King Street.
The main routes to the city are via Henley Beach Road and, in my case, Sir Donald Bradman Drive. Busy South Road intersects the suburb.
According to the local government authority, the City of West Torrens, Mile End was laid out by the South Australia Company around 1860.
The council’s historical overview goes on to say:
The town is situated approximately one mile from the centre of Adelaide. Construction of the Adelaide to Nairne railway began in 1879, but the Mile End station was not included until a suburban service to Mitcham began in 1898. The original Mile End was in Britain, one mile east of the Aldgate pump on the edge of the City of London. A further subdivision occurred on 26 January 1884. This included Hughes Street to Gladstone Road from Railway Terrace to Fisher Terrace (now South Road). The suburb was bounded by Henley Beach Road, Fisher Terrace (South Road), Hilton Road (now Sir Donald Bradman Drive) and the Holdfast Bay railway line (Railway Terrace). It now extends further west to include what was formerly the Thebarton Racecourse.
Wikipedia says Mile End had a population of 3918 people at the 2006 census.
Adelaide suburbs are much smaller than they are in Melbourne, just a collection of streets really. I doubt if many Melbourne suburbs have a population under 15,000.
According to the census, because of the area’s short distance from major business districts, a larger proportion (5.6pc) walk to work, while a slightly smaller number (2.7pc) use a bike. Good connections to Adelaide’s public transport network mean that 13.5pc take the bus to work.
I plan to walk. I can’t afford to buy a car while we’re paying the Mount Gambier mortgage in addition to rent here.
That’s why I wanted to live close to the city. It’s 3.2km to the office in Victoria Square. It should take only 40 minutes to get there, allowing for traffic lights.
On rainy days or +30-degree days (more likely in Adelaide than rain), I’ll take the bus.
I explored the area a little today.
There is a large home-makers’ centre, where I bought a bed and fridge last week, which were both delivered on time today.
I found Woolworths today about 2km down Sir Donald Bradman Drive towards the Airport, where I stocked up on heavy groceries while I had the car.
The suburb is mostly light industrial and bulky goods down this end, but I think there are restaurants and more retail businesses along Henley Beach Road, which I will explore next weekend.
Hunting for rental accommodation was an interesting experience after so many years of owning my own home.
I’ll write separately about that later.
I’m not far from Richmond Oval, so I plan to barrack for West Adelaide in the SANFL and watch games when they play there while I’m in town.
I might have supported the Eagles if they still played at Thebarton Oval, but they don’t. West Torrens appears to have lost their local identity to Woodville.
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It’s good to hear that you’re settling in well up in Adelaide.
Mile End is a very nice area, close to the city and with good access to public transport.
Michael said:’I found Woolworths today about 2km down Sir Donald Bradman Drive towards the Airport, where I stocked up on heavy groceries while I had the car.’
I’m not sure if you’ve found this, but one thing I don’t like about living in the city (at least in the inner-city), is the lack of large supermarkets with a wide range of product lines, that you find in large regional towns/cities, such as Mount Gambier.
In the inner-city, there are far too many small and medium-sized supermarkets very close to each other and they don’ have the space to stop a very large variety of product lines.
You only find large supermarkets, like we have in Mount Gambier, if you go out to outer-suburban shopping centres, such as Modbury Plaza and Tea Tree Plaza.
Michael said: ‘Hunting for rental accommodation was an interesting experience after so many years of owning my own home.
I’ll write separately about that later.’
I have heard it is highly competitive to secure rental accommodation in good inner-city suburb such as Mile End.
I find it interesting, how even when comparing regional towns/cities, some have better rental markets than others.
For instance, Mount Gambier has a very good rental market, at low prices, whereas in Warrnambool, Victoria, I have heard it is quite difficult to find suitable accommodation and what is available is expensive (I assume at least some of this would be the extra demand caused by students from the Deakin University campus there).