Future Gold Coast: Ribaldone family moves to Gold Coast from Sydney in search of better lifestyle
Life was a “constant battle” for this Sydney family. In search of fun, sun and a better lifestyle, they quickly landed on the Gold Coast — and haven’t looked back.
Future Gold Coast
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IN search of sun, fun and a better lifestyle, the Ribaldone family moved to the Gold Coast after becoming fed up with the “constant battle” of life in Sydney.
Emily Ribaldone and husband Damien had been thinking about leaving their home in Wahroonga, on Sydney’s north shore for a few years as school fees, mortgages and work-life balance took its toll.
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“I woke up one morning and thought to myself, ‘Why are we doing this?’” she said. “I’d gotten to the point in my life where I wanted a great lifestyle and I didn’t have it. Every day was a constant battle and I thought we might as well be fighting this battle in London, not in Sydney.”
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She said as their three children got older — Luca, 10, India, 8, and Lyla, 5 — they were looking to move closer to their schools.
“We were at the point where we wanted to move closer to the school and it was a case of spending a million dollars more for a house I didn’t really like,” she said. “We came up to the Gold Coast and saw big lovely modern houses on huge blocks, with so much space.
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“Our son has ADHD so it was a constant battle to keep him off screens in Sydney and while we could do things outside, it was just harder to make that happen.”
The family rented in Biggera Waters before recently buying a waterfront home in Benowa.
Mr Ribaldone is in management in the mining industry, a role which often takes him to various locations around the country including Sydney, Brisbane and Newcastle.
“His job gives us the flexibility of being able to choose where we wanted to live, so why wouldn’t we choose somewhere like the Gold Coast?” she said.
Mrs Ribaldone worked in the mortgage industry in Sydney but was concentrating on settling the children into their school.
“The schools up here have exceeded all expectations.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Gold Coast had the highest interstate net migration gain of all places in Australia in 2017-18 of 7,700 people. It also had a total net migration of 15,975 people or 2.6 per cent compared to 1.6 per cent for the rest of the country for the same period.