Where to live in perth for expat
Living in Perth vs Living in Sydney | Expat Life | Say Hello
hey everybody okay so today I want to talk about the differences between
living in Perth and Sydney and I know it's different to talk about Sydney and
London that I thought it might be useful to some of you so anyway yeah so
obviously Perth and Sydney are very different places to live and one is on the east
coast of Australia one is on the west coast of Australia, and apologies also
for my damp hair, it hasn't dried properly yet I I don't dry my hair
I tend to just leave it so it's the morning here I've still I still it still
hasn't dried yet anyway so the differences between Perth and Sydney and
so I'm going to start off by talking about the beaches because to me that is the
most important difference between the two, which sounds a little bit crazy
because they both have beaches it's Australia the beaches are amazing everywhere
in Australia, but they're very very different. okay so personally I think
that Perth has better beaches and they are a lot quieter, you literally you go
to a beach in Perth and there's like no one there, there might be maybe a couple
of other people but generally they're pretty empty
in Sydney you go to Bondi or Bronte or Coogee or any beach here and it's
literally packed with people. I'm talking about you know in England so I'm talking
for example so if you go to like Bournemouth beach on a sunny day in
England in the summer and it's like wall-to-wall people, that's what the Sydney
beaches are like
like it really shocked me when I moved to Sydney and I went to Bondi Beach and
that was just what this wall of people I was like oh my god so then I went to
some other beaches like Bronte and Coogee to see if that was any different they
all like that and manly to it and even Shelly Beach, Shelly Beach has like this
small little beach that a lot of tourists don't tend to go to even that
all the beaches here wall-to-wall people like lined up on their Beach blankets
Perth you do not have that issue, Perth you can choose anywhere on the beach and
it will be quiet and also the Perth beaches the sand is a lot whiter it's a
lot softer the beaches tend to be bigger I think I guess because Perth is
basically just one Long Beach or down the coast where as Sydney is very broken
up, Sydney the coastal area is a lot more Mediterranean and very kind of rocky
hilly cliffs whereas Perth is just flat beaches the I
guess the place that most reminds me of Perth beaches is Florida and if
you've been to Florida the Perth beaches are like Florida beaches - you've got that
pure white soft sand and then this stunning clear pale blue water in front
of you, um whereas Sydney is definitely more Mediterranean the kind of green
blue ocean and then more golden sands. Um, but anyway I prefer Perth beaches
some people might not agree with me or might think that Sydney ones are nicer
but it just depends what kind of beaches you like I guess whether you're more of a
Mediterranean, rocky, mountainous scenery person or more of a Florida
Caribbean-y type of person, so yeah okay. Um, the second thing I'm gonna talk about is all
about is housing, so Perth's houses are literally half the price of Sydney
whether you're buying or renting they're half the price. If you want like
a one, no not even a one bedroom, if you want like a studio apartment or unit in
Perth in a really nice area near the beach so for example Cottesloe or
Claremont you can get one for like $300 a week. In Sydney the same like a similar
unit studio decent size near the beach that's gonna cost you like six to seven
hundred dollars a week - that's double the price
sometimes more than double and it's literally crazy, and also in Perth the
houses you still have like terraces and units and apartments, but the houses
they're a lot more spread out, so in Sydney obviously because it's a big
city it's basically the Australian equivalent of London you've got a lot of
terraced houses the houses are all quite close together I live in a terraced
house with like houses either side of me, this is first time I've ever lived in
a house where I've got houses so close to me because I'm from the countryside in
England and even when I lived in Perth we lived in a house that was detached and
the houses in Perth you tend to get a lot more, like, just bigger houses that are
spread out detached, um so yeah, that's the house and city and then next up I'm
going to talk about the all-important job situation, so I well so when I first
moved back to Australia from London I actually went back to Perth first to stay
with my aunt and uncle see my friends hang out there for a few weeks while I
sorted myself out and found a job in Sydney, um so in Perth the main reason that
I came to Sydney was because there are no jobs for me and what I do in Perth so
I work in digital marketing and for a major agency and although we have a...
...a Perth office and I've worked in that Perth office just for like a few days
over Easter, um, it's the opportunities in Perth my industry in particular aren't
particularly good. Perth is very much a mining city a lot of the big oil and gas
companies have their head offices in perth a lot of the jobs are all to do
with the mining industry and like the fly-in fly-out
fifo industry and also obviously there are loads of hospitality jobs there
because there are so many restaurants and bars and stuff whereas in Sydney the
job opportunity is just a lot better especially for what I do and if you're
in media at all Sydney is the place to go and obviously
cuz it's Sydney it's like the major main city - it's not the capital, the capital is
Canberra but but it's like the unofficial capital city of Australia so you get a
lot of Australian head offices in Sydney and so yeah there's just a lot more job options
a lot more job opportunities in Sydney if you're not in the mining industry or
the hospitality industry. Um, okay, and then so moving on to kind of the more fun
stuff away from the housing, jobs, boring shit, um restaurants-wise I actually
similar to the beaches I think Perth has better restaurants and this is a
controversial one because Sydneysiders are very passionate about their food and
their restaurants and are very supportive of their restaurants and, but coming
from London and then moving and obviously having lived in Perth in the
past when I was younger and going back to Perth for six weeks and then coming
to Sydney and living in Sydney for the past year I do think the Perth
restaurants are better. Please no one in Sydney hate me but just from my personal
opinion I think that the Perth restaurants the food is a much higher quality it's a lot
fresher the seafood and the meat and fruit and veg it's a lot fresher I just
prefer the restaurants over there you've got, obviously because it's smaller
you've got like less variety and less choice even though there is still
loads of choice in Perth they're like thousands of restaurants and cafes
but I just think Sydney has so many restaurants and cafes a lot of them
aren't that great and because there is so much competition here, people, like the
prices in Sydney are really expensive for what you get
whereas in Perth - I dunno - I just feel like the Perth restaurants are way
better and I much prefer eating out in Perth than to Sydney and I find
Perth restaurants a lot cheaper, um, but the thing is you get a better quality of
you get better quality food in Perth restaurants for a cheaper price than you
do in Sydney so yeah but sorry Sydney. Umm, and, then also but bars and nightlife
Sydney is obviously far better if anyone has ever been to Perth you will know I
don't know what word to describe it the dullness the dull the dull nightlife in
Perth dull and dodgy, that is how I would describe Perth nightlife
very dull very dodgy not a lot there and they have gotten better, like when I
was 16 and I had a fake ID my friends and I would use our fake IDs and go to like
some of the clubs and stuff in Freo. Um at the time we thought they were amazing
because we did not know any different and those were the only clubs that we had
ever been to, but obviously now having gone to night clubs around the world and
having lived in London for five years while I was a student and then working
at, not five years, eight years, that's scary okay anyways the Perth nightclubs
are shit the bars have gotten better so when I I like so I left Perth
when I was seventeen to move back to London, umm, I used to go back every year
to visit my friends and my now ex-boyfriend because they still lived
there and I've seen it slowly change over the years
and slowly they have gotten better bars and a lot more bars and it's very much a
kind of hipstery scene there it's similar to Newtown in Sydney and like
Shoreditch in London where the bars are very hipster and unique, each of them has
their own little quirky personality they are a lot of fun but not many people go
to them they're always quite empty and they stop serving shots and what else no
shots it's just no shots after midnight which I mean they do that all over
Australia in Sydney too but it's just stupid why would you stop selling shots
after and after midnight and they also close really early and and the
nightclubs in Perth, there aren't many nightclubs but the ones that are there are
dodgy, very very dodgy and so yeah but Sydney, Sydney has great nightclubs, great
bars, umm obviously the nightclubs here aren't
really on par London and New York or Dubai or any of the other major cities
um, mainly because it's just not really the culture here and the culture in
Sydney and Australia in general is very much you go to a bar and that bar will
then turn into kind of a clubby type of thing later in the evening um sort of
like have a dancefloor and everyone will just go to this bar after like dinner
and move on to drinks and then the dancefloor and DJ will be there, and you
just stay there. Sydney has lockout laws so all of the clubs tend to close about
2:00 a.m. there are very few that are open later than that and they tend to be
the gay clubs and yeah Sydney has a better nightlife so Sydney
I'll give you that. Okay so when it comes to like the layout and the style of each
city, um, Perth is very spread out so Sydney is like your typical city major
city is city-style there's a CBD there are kind
of suburbs around it but even suburbs around it even the suburbs further out
don't have a lot of space so obviously but like I said earlier you've got
terraced houses a lot of apartments not many big homes, and Perth is the complete
opposite you've literally got three main roads in the CBD in Perth and then
that's it that's the city, the rest of Perth is suburbs and you have to have,
you really have to have a car in Perth it's very difficult to get around on
public transport and just because everything's so spread out and I mean
when I lived there I lived in a place called City Beach and then my friends
lived in like Mosman Park, Claremont, Dalkeith, Swanborne, and you had to drive to those
places because there was no train line in City Beach there's only really like a
train line through the main river route so like the suburbs that go along the
river and then you've got the Train line up to Joondalup and train going south but all
the suburbs in between those have no train line and the buses are shit, the
buses are very infrequent yeah you have to have a car in Perth. But I actually
really love driving and I love having a car and having that freedom to
drive and so for me I love the layout of Perth because I love how spacious
everything is how spread out it all is how you can just get in a car drive up
the coast road and yeah I I literally I love going back to Perth just to get in
a car and just drive on these big empty roads where there are hardly any cars
and yeah I love the layout I love Perth as always I am so biased
towards Perth because it's always been my second home I've always like I've
gone there most years since I was seven and lived there for two years and so I am
very biased I'm sorry if I'm like favoring Perth
massively in this video but anyway but the good thing about this about Sydney
as a city is it is a city as a proper city Perth does not feel like a city at
all Sydney, for me Sydney is the perfect
in-between of Perth and London, um so I was like fed up with London it was too busy
too frantic too many tourists but Perth is just too quiet for me to live in now
like at my age I feel like it's a perfect place to grow up in the perfect
place to settle down with kids but in terms of being a young adult wanting to
go out and do things it's not that exciting and so Sydney is that perfect
in-between, but the city is a lot more cramped than Perth when comparing the two
um also in Perth parking is free pretty much everywhere apart from the city and
Fremantle and the bigger suburbs like Subiaco, parking is free like everywhere
you can just park on the side of the road anywhere you want and it doesn't
matter you're not gonna get a ticket whereas in Sydney even on like my road
you have to have a residence permit or even in the outer suburbs you have to pay for
parking or have a residents permit and in Perth you don't need that there's so much
space and so little people you can just park wherever you want it's amazing I love it
I miss it so much yeah that's another great thing about Perth
So, in terms of the overall lifestyle as you can probably gather from this video so
far Perth is the perfect place if you want to be super laid back super chilled
out very easygoing, Sydney is a city it's a big city
well no that's a lie it is not a big city but it is a bigger city than Perth
it's a proper City and therefore it has the busyness it has a franticness
it has a lot of tourists that don't know where they're going stop at the top of
escalators and you know it it has that fast-paced lifestyle it is look it's
still quieter than London you know it's like London is a whole
other level but Sydney is still pretty busy and also Perth lifestyle it's kind
of all about the beaches and the river as soon as there's any kind of Sun even
through the winter people on the beaches people are going swimming people are
going sailing and although Sydney has a lot of that as
well there's a lot more variety in Sydney so there's more things to do
you've got more choice of things to do so because Perth only really has that
sounds bad because it really only has the beaches and the river and not a lot
else there, everybody focuses their lifestyle on the river and the beach or
if you live out in the middle of nowhere then it's all about 4-wheel driving like
driving through the bush and everything up in the hills
Sydney there's just so much more going on I've just found that there's less of a
focus on going to the beach or going sailing or going out on the water but
don't get me wrong, there is still massive ocean lifestyle here
obviously you've got all that outdoor pools as well like all of the ocean pools or
whereas Perth you don't have the ocean pools because I don't actually know why
In terms of places to travel to outside of the city, umm Perth is one of
the most isolated cities in the world and it's quicker get to Bali than
Sydney from Perth but Western Australia is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful
places I've ever been to in my life I've travelled a lot of Western Australia
you've got places like Margaret River, Bussleton, Esperance where you've got
the pink lake and the Kangaroos that go on Lucky bay and then up north you've
also got Monkey Mia, Exmouth, Coral Bay, the Kimberley but
Perth is all about road tripping because there aren't you don't really get many
internal flights within Western Australia if you do they're very
expensive so everyone just loves a road trip you just go on a road trip to all
these places Sydney is obviously a lot easier
to get to other places on the East Coast every flight within the East Coast is like
two hours and it only cost like 200 $250 return but in terms of, also in Perth you
have rottnest island which is one of my favorite places in the whole world
I rave about it to absolutely everybody it's literally this tiny paradise island a 40
minute ferry ride from Perth and it's just like nowhere else it's like the
Caribbean, seriously, and it's 40 minutes from Perth it's like the Caribbean it's
amazing and you have the Quokkas there where you can take a Quokka selfie with
and but in terms of like flying overseas Perth it's only three hours to Bali and five to
Singapore and Malaysia, and it's also closer to Europe so it's like four to five
hours closer to Europe than Sydney in the East Coast um Sydney-wise when I
moved to Sydney I was so excited because I thought that it would be super easy
and super cheap to go to the South Pacific Islands and New Zealand and
actually it's not it's like 800 dollars return to get to Fiji or Vanuatu or even
my New Zealand flights cost me $900. I was not impressed um and yeah and like the
flights aren't easy because with the South Pacific Islands you don't have
daily flights you only have like two to three flights per week to each Island
maybe sometimes I think once or twice a week which makes it very difficult to
pop over for a weekend or a long weekend because you can't the flights were like
Tuesdays and Thursdays like what the fuck even though they're like a to two
to three hour flight away and also loads of them even though they were only like
a two-hour direct flight away there they only offer in-direct flights and yeah
it's difficult it's a lot harder than I thought it would be and even to get to
Asia from Sydney it's like eight hours to Singapore
whereas Perth's five and then going home to London and it took me like 30 hours flying
or something instead of 24 25 from Perth so yeah actually travel-wise
I found it's easier to get to places but obviously on the East Coast you've got
more cities and more places within Australia that you can get to very
easily. Yeah, anyway so those are just my opinions and thoughts on the difference
between living in Perth vs. Sydney I hope it's been somewhat useful even
though I feel like I've been super biased um I mean I dunno, I just really
love Perth. I love Sydney too, but Perth is just so
chilled out so laid back the beaches are so good the food is so good oh I really
miss that but Sydney is awesome for the bars and nightlife and things going on
and events happening and just it it just suits me in my current life stage right
now far better than Perth does, so I hope that helps and is useful. Let me know in
the comments if you agree disagree with anything um or if you have any requests
for any other videos yeah thanks for watching and remember to SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE!
