youngcouple02

It depends where you live in Carlingford. If you live closer to Carlingford Court, you land in the Hornsby Council. If you land closer to North Rocks and on the train station side of Pennant Hills Rd, you get The Hills Shire Council (one of the richest council's in NSW) and if you end up on the other side of Pennant Hills Rd closer to Telopea, you end up with Parramatta Council. If you get Hornsby or the Hills Shire Council, you're in the sweet. Streets are well maintained, no rubbish on the road, great customer service when you need hedges or trees trimmed, renovation approvals, excellent schools (Tara is the most exclusive and expensive girls private school in NSW and further down you've got James Ruse Selective School and The Kings School), shopping centre (Carlingford Court & Village) and well maintained library. And best of all there are NO COUNCIL PICK UP DAYS! You can call the Hills Shire Council and they've got an On Call Kerbside cleanup! So no unsightly garbage dumped on the road near your place which causes pest issues. However, if you get Parramatta council then it's the complete opposite, lots of rubbish, and badly maintained public areas. And Carlingford overall has been re-zoned to medium density, there are a lot of apartments going up. It's starting to look like Unit City. Another issue is street parking is getting ridiculous. Sure you get a garage with your apartment but what happens to your partners car or when friends come over? And you definitely will need a second car as public transport is ridiculous with Carlingford train station being absolutely useless. To get to the city you have to catch the train to Clyde and change platforms to get to the city and in peak hour, you're lucky to get a standing spot. Did I mention trains come once every hour? So because of that, traffic is insane on Pennant Hills Road with bottlenecks happening at Carlingford Rd, Marsden Rd and further up at the motorway (which causes buses to run late if you're trying to get to Epping station to go to the city) cause everyone gives up with public transport and drives every where. Another issue is because of the amount of schools in the area, traffic crawls during school hours. Another thing to keep in mind is that Telopea and Dundas which are suburbs located around the corner and on the same train line is full of housing commissions which means there are "interesting" sounds at night. Other than traffic, it's a really quiet area with lots of families but strangely and unfortunately no childcare centers in the suburb. I haven't heard of any major crimes in the area so it's quite safe. The Fitness First at Carlingford Court is excellent and has an attached swimming pool if you're into fitness. Has several excellent medical centers in the area with x-ray, pathology, optometrists, chemist, physiotherpists and dental care all in walking distance of each other. If you want more than just grocery shopping, there's hours of shopping at Parramatta Westfield, Macquarie Centre, North Rocks Westfield and Castle Towers that is no more than a 20 minute drive. So like every suburb there's good and bad sides but what council you end up with does make a difference. And yes, there are a lot of Asian families in the area who are attracted by the schools, close by universities, large Asian community which means you can get by day to day with knowing limited English and a good quiet suburb which means buying or renting a place in the area is really really overpriced but it does mean cost of living is quite cheap because Asians are cheap when it comes to having to pay for groceries and clothes etc. I know this is a fact, cause I'm Asian. :-)