Soldiers Hill, VIC 3350

We moved to Soldiers Hill from Richmond in late 2019. The suburb is a short walk to Ballarat's major shopping precincts and train station. Its streets are pocketed with beautiful parks and amenities, and full of wonderful Victorian and Edwardian homes, most of which remain relatively inexpensive. We are a two minute walk to three pubs, four historic churches, a cafe, hairdressers, and school. The weather does get cold in winter, but with central gas heating and a slow combustion wood fire the house remains warm year round. I have commuted to work a few times and can get to Southern Cross station in 1hr 30 on an express service. Driving in peak hour is about 2hrs each way, depending on Melbourne traffic (especially the Western Gate bridge). Ballarat is a short drive through rolling hills and farms to some wonderful national parks and several beautiful towns full of history and character, including Clunes, Creswick, and Castlemaine.

Moved to Soldiers Hill from Hawthorn and absolutely love it. Easy enough to commute by train to Melbourne and Soldiers Hill has fantastic cafes, restaurants and everything you need within 10 minutes walk. Neighbours are really friendly, I live on a beautiful tree lined street in a quiet neighbourhood in a nice house that I couldnt afford in Melbourne. Its been such a great decision, I love it here.

Bought myself a gorgeous 2 bedroom cottage home on top of a hill over looking Soldiers Hill. I have cool neighbours on each side of me and they are both in their late 30’s with young families. I walk to the station every morning and traveling to Melbourne for work everyday doesn’t bother me. Only on the odd occasion where the trains delayed, it gets a little annoying. This has happened twice for me in 6 mths so that isn’t bad at all!

There’s so many hip and cool cafes and gorgeous restaurants to eat at.

I paid under 300k for my gorgeous cottage home and I love coming home to it every day!

My wife and I took the plunge and uprooted from Essendon in late 2016. We were planning on having kids and the thought of raising them in our two bedroom flat was frightening. Having spent a few weekends attending house openings we settled on Soldiers Hill owing to its beautiful old homes, tree lined streets and proximity to CBD.

What we found in Soldiers Hill were people our age (Mid/Late 30s), excellent cafes and stunning streetscapes that we fell in love with.

We bought a renovated miners cottage on a tree lined street for considerably less than what we would have paid for either a tiny flat within the city ring or around what a McMansion costs in Melton/Bacchus Marsh.

Soldiers Hill delivers 100MBS fibre to the home internet, neighbours who know your name (if you want them to), good schools and a wow factor that has every visitor from Melbourne second guessing why they stay there.

Commuting via train is doable while not particularly pleasant but compares to Frankston or Ferntree Gully. I'd normally take the 7:20am and hit my office around 8:40am. If you had to drive into the CBD for a 9am start everyday then its 2 hours of pain so keep that in mind.

Yeah its cold in winter but the locals dont even mention it. Buy a down jacket and head on out for some great, limited but growing food and night life.

House prices in Soldiers Hill are up 8.2% in Q1 2017 which is pleasing. http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/4642874/boom-time-for-ballarat-suburb/?cs=62

PS First child is due in a few weeks!

I only stumbled upon Soldiers Hill after I moved from Melbourne for employment and feel like I've won the lottery. The heritage street scapes, grand victorian houses, avenues of mature elm trees and bluestone kurbs, access to public transport and walking distance to shops theatres and cafes reminded me of Melbourne's inner suburbs. I over look the Eastern oval and the most common sounds I hear are cricket and fooball matches as the traffic is largely diverted to other surrounding suburbs. If I need to visit Melbourne, I have a choice of driving or walking 5 mins to the Train Station which has me in Melb CBD in around 90mins. My kids can walk to a variety of primary and secodary public & private schools as well as two uni's and a tafe. Basically I've got the convenience of inner city living without the pitfalls, for the price lower than the outer suburbs of Melb.

Soldiers Hill really is 'the Carlton of Ballarat'. We moved here after many years in Fitzroy and it's such a refreshing change, we love it. We felt pushed out of Melbourne by rapid gentrification and were open to a regional life style change after having kids. Soldiers Hill has such beautiful old world homes, wide streets and you can walk to everything. If you're commuting like us, it is a nice 10m walk from the station. So far the commute has been fine, annoying at times when the train is delayed, but you can spend just as long trying to get to the city from west preston on the tram in peak hour and we get lots of reading done. Will be even better when regional rail link is complete.

Ballarat is a great environment to bring up kids, it has excellent schools, the lake, botanical gardens, fantastic community infrastructure and such a grand history. It's so close to gorgeous regional towns like Buningyong, Maldon, Creswick and Dayelsford, we feel like we've gone to the country for a short weekend holiday every weekend.

Oh, I forgot to say that we have cable internet which is heaps faster than than the ADSL 2+ that we had in Fitzroy AND the NBN should ready any week now!

I've lived in lots of places around Melbourne but this is the first time that I've known all of my neighbours on a first name basis - and my neighbours neighbors as well. Lots of smart, educated folk and lots of lovely families. There are plenty of good quality schools and kindergartens in the area. it's an easy walk into the town centre and around 10 minute walk to the train, although there are plenty of buses if you can't be bothered. I commute to Melbourne for work and the train is always on time leaving, and the express service is fantastic. A great place for the refugees from the Melbourne housing market, we didn't think we would last more than 6 months in the 'rat but 2.5. years later there is really no reason for us to move back because everything we want - infrastructure and services- is so so local for us in Soldiers Hill.