Moving to Two Rocks: What British Families Should Know

Two Rocks gets lumped in with the Yanchep growth corridor, and it is a different kind of place entirely.

It was built as a marina town in the late seventies and early eighties, not as a modern estate, and the Atlantis Marine Park that was meant to anchor it closed in 1990. The King Neptune statue is still standing in the dunes, which tells you most of what you need to know about how the plan went.

What is left is a small, quiet, slightly weathered coastal town with a marina, forty years of history and no train. People who love it love it for exactly those reasons. People who arrive expecting Alkimos with a sea view are in the wrong suburb.

There is no station in Two Rocks. The Yanchep line terminates one suburb south, so every commute starts with a drive or a bus to Yanchep station.

That is the single biggest practical difference between here and the three suburbs below it, and it is the one most likely to be glossed over in a listing that mentions the new railway.

Budget for it honestly before you buy, particularly if two people need to be somewhere at the same time.

Small and genuinely quiet. Under four thousand people, a marina, a shopping centre you can walk across in a minute, and a long stretch of coast with very little on it.

The median household income is just over fifteen hundred dollars a week, the lowest of the northern suburbs here, and housing is cheaper to match. For a family on one income or for somebody retiring, that arithmetic is the point.

Thirteen per cent of residents were born in England, which is lower than Yanchep or Eglinton but still well above the Greater Perth figure of about eight per cent.

Provision is limited by the size of the place, and older children travel, most often south towards Yanchep.

If you have teenagers, settle the high school question before you settle the street. It is a longer journey from here than from anywhere else on this list.

The Australian school year starts in late January and finishes in December. It does not run September to July. If you are arriving mid year your children will be joining part way through, and if you are timing your move around schooling you are aiming at January rather than September.

No train, the fewest services of any suburb here, and an hour to the city on a good run. Those are real costs and they are paid every working day.

In exchange you get the cheapest coastal housing on this list, a marina, and a town that is not a building site.

It suits people who have already decided that quiet is worth a commute. It does not suit anybody who needs to be in the city often, and it is an expensive mistake to discover that after moving.