Buyer's Guide to Casuarina (NSW)
Lorna Savage moved to Casuarina from Southern California in 2002 with her family and has been servicing the area for five years.
It's a quiet, boutiquey little town
Despite increases in traffic as Casuarina and Seaside etc have all developed and grown, it’s still nothing like Sydney traffic, it's very much just residential traffic and it's still really quiet and considered a lovely boutiquey little town.
Casuarina’s not huge, it’s quite a small neighbourhood, I walk from one end to the other every morning, and it's a half an hour round trip.
Diverse mix of new rather than local residents
I feel as if Salt and Casuarina didn’t really exist for people at first, we had Kingscliff and we had Cabarita, two old, gorgeous little beach towns with very established communities and then this huge area in the middle (Casuarina) started, so the owners and residents of Cabba and Kingscliff initially didn't move into Salt or Casuarina.
So most of people that moved into these new areas came from Sydney, Melbourne, and we’ve had quite a few from Coffs Harbour, and then as well from out of the country, we’ve seen a lot of expats move back into this town.
I would say we’re a real blend, which I think has been the success of Salt and Casuarina, because we all moved here from somewhere else and needed to re-establish roots.
It’s quite a good blend of professionals mixed in with a with a blue and white collar mix, it’s pretty even I would say through Casuarina, it’s a lovely blend, the common denominator is we’re all quite family orientated whether retirees or younger families.
Appeals to the gay community and fly in fly out workers
We have quite a large gay community, they love living in Casuarina.
I’ve sold to quite a few gay couples, so we do have a few dual income earners, we’ve also got quite a few couples where one of the partners gets on the flight at 8am to Sydney, 6am to Sydney, in the office by 8am and maybe flies home on a Wednesday and then the other partner stays home to look after kids or just stays at home and enjoys the beach.
People are migrating here from Byron Bay
We’re seeing a transition of a lot of people moving from Byron Bay up our way in the last 12 months.
Quite a few of the Byron clients are people who are struggling with traffic issues in Byron, still absolutely loving Byron, I’m not bagging on it at all, I love it, I frequent it, in fact people living in Casuarina and Salt love the fact that half an hour down the track we are in Newrybar or Byron and we enjoy that for restaurants etc.
I think the traffic and maybe the backpacking element coming through there has driven people who want more of a lifestyle up into our area, where they can access the airport easier, they don’t have to drive through manic traffic to get in and out of Byron, and we have a little bit more variety in schools as well in our area, we’re also closer to larger hospitals without having to go to Lismore or Ballina.
High-end restaurant and cafe culture
Initially when we moved here we really had to tap into the Kingscliff cafe scene, and we still do, there’s some cafes there that we still go to that have been in existence for ages and are really successful.
There's also some great restaurants and particularly fantastic thai food in Cabba, a lovely noodle, Japanese hole in the wall venue that's doing fantastically, there's also a great fish and chips place and all that kind of good stuff, all done really nicely.
In Casuarina and Salt itself we’ve got Osteria and Black Oak, both of which are very viable, good cafes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, both are licensed, and then in the Salt Village you’ve got Fins which is a highly touted restaurant with an award winning owner who used to run Finns at The Byron Beach Hotel.
New land releases and infrastructure additions
There’s still going to be some new releases of land, there’s talk of Kings Forest opening up another huge neighbourhood behind the Salt, Kingscliff area, as well as a few bits and pieces around the new town centre that are about to be released and established near where the new Coles has just been opened, so across the road from there.
Now there’s talk of a surf life saving club and a few more retails outlets and some more high density, mixed with beautiful, green open areas, so that's all coming, which we’re looking forward to.
As far as taking homes and subdividing, we’re pretty strict on height limits, when you’re on the beach you don’t want to look back and see tall buildings, we won’t get high rises, so three to four storey houses would be the limit.
Those four storey houses are literally only surrounding the Coles and then you’re only allowed two on the beachfront and any third story that you see behind is generally a little pop up, the council are really stringent on that, but it seems for good reason.
Lots of renovations going on
There’s quite a few renovations taking place, because most of the homes are now 10 -14 yrs old, so even if it's just cosmetic, I’m noticing cosmetic changes are starting to happen to a few of the homes to keep up with the times, particularly as the newer homes are looking really new in comparison.
I haven’t seen many granny flat additions, I think most of the homes were built quite large to begin with, they’re all pretty substantial and there’s a handful of homes that have granny flat but generally your block needs to be 900 square meters in order to build a granny flat.
Some people are doing internal renovations to accommodate their granny, but it’s not necessarily a granny flat per se.
The kids are staying in the area after finishing High School
Our kids are sort of spreading themselves out after High School as you would expect but my 25 and 22 yr olds are both still very much focusing their life on our area.
So I feel that with the internet and the Pacific Highway improvements a lot of these younger folks are wearing those distances between work and their home base.
The Gold Coast is also literally 20 minutes off our door step, 15-20 minutes.
It does depend on what industry they get into, obviously the tradies are just cranking because there’s so much work to be had with construction, especially with the talk of Kings Forest opening up another huge neighbourhood behind Salt, Kingscliff area.
All the tradesmen are just in heaven and for the professional folk, the internet has made running businesses from home very viable.
A new school could be on the cards
The closest junior school is Boganbar Junior in Cabarita, then you have Kingscliff Junior in Kingscliff, and this needs to be qualified but I believe when Kings Forest comes in there will be a school there.
Then you’ve got Kingscliff High which feeds the area and I think there’s 12-15 hundred students in that school.
I think the need for another high school is definitely on the cards.
Then you’ve got all the private schools in Kingscliff, you’ve got the Lindisfarne Anglican school up in Terranora that feeds a large part of our community, St Patrick's is the other one.
We have buses that come right through our neighbourhood, we even have a bus that comes from St Hilda's and TFC and drops the kids off, just at the corner of the freeway and at the entrance into us here, so even quite a few kids go to Somerset, because mum and dad maybe work in Burleigh or Brisbane.