Comment on Discussion Thread 😛 Friday 17 April 2026
Seagoon_@aussie.zone 1 day agoI look at crime maps, public transport and facilities maps. Go visit the area in person. Look at online house sites. Looks at Google maps street view
One thing I really like about Australia is I have never heard anyone ask if a city or suburb was decent to live in. This is white people code for “are there any black or mexican people living there”
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Vicmap also has the overlays for flood, bushfire etc. and I’ve also been looking at maps of the soil type in various areas (as having a garden is a major thing for me). Ballarat also has the bonus issue of a major gold mine right in town, which adds issues like underground blasting, tailings dams and possible toxic dust/water runnof, plus there are unmarked underground tunnels which occassionally lead to surprise sinkholes.
It’s quite challenging pulling all the information together. Unfortunately street view here is quite out of date for most areas - plus when the car last went through in 2010 a leaf got stuck to the camera and the entire area has the centre of the frame blocked out by that. It is on my way to work though, so I’ve been trying to drive down a different street every time to get a better feel for the area. I plan to take Mr Woof over there and spend some time walking it as well.
As far as I can tell most of the negative stuff is just prejudice from people who don’t have any connection to the area and just denegrate it because its a lower socio-economic area.
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 day ago
You might want to look at the lead/heavy metal contamination map too if the gardening is edible!
researchgate.net/…/Map-of-soil-lead-concentration…
One advantage of LSE areas is that they haven’t gentrified yet which may mean more affordable grocery prices and cheaper more practical shops. And sometimes the thieves go more afield to rob the richer suburbs. But you definitely can still get interpersonal and property crimes for sure
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 1 day ago
The other one here is arsenic which is high in some areas due to the gold mining. I found some maps from the GardenSafe program where you can send in your soil samples for free testing and was able to identify that the areas of the inner east in Ballarat are the ones to watch out for - which coincides with the soil types I was looking at on another map. I’m likely avoiding that area because of that, as well as it being a bit more hilly - but it does have some beautiful leafy areas filled with historic homes that would make it a bit nice to live in too.
There are definitely some cheaper shops - multiple op shops, NQR etc feature prominently which is definitiely the sorts of shops I appreciate. The biggest crimes around here seem to be theft from/of cars that are parked outside, but that is happening everywhere.
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Yeah, you can even send off soil samples directly if you’re worried.
Envious, NQR has some pretty mint stuff