Comment on Discussion Thread đ Friday 17 April 2026
RustyRaven@aussie.zone â¨3⊠â¨weeks⊠agoVicmap also has the overlays for flood, bushfire etc. and Iâve 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.
Itâs 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 Unfortunately street view here is quite out of date for most areas - plus when the car last went through in 2010 a leaf got stuck to the camera and the entire area has the centre of the frame blocked out by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 Iâve 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 donât have any connection to the area and just denegrate it because its a lower socio-economic area.
melbaboutown@aussie.zone â¨3⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
You might want to look at the lead/heavy metal contamination map too if the gardening is edible!
researchgate.net/âŚ/Map-of-soil-lead-concentrationâŚ
One advantage of LSE areas is that they havenât 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 â¨3⊠â¨weeks⊠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. Iâm 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 â¨3⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Yeah, you can even send off soil samples directly if youâre worried.
Envious, NQR has some pretty mint stuff