[nickydwuk]

We are moving near CHCH in Sept and would like to live in a small village/town within commute of Chch. We have looked at a number of areas but one we keep coming back to is Oxford. I understand this is about 45-50 minute commute to Chch. Can anyone fill me in on shops in the area, buses, what the high school is like etc... and any planned development that might affect the area. Thanks.

[Tim G]

Hi,

When we we're considering Christchurch a while back we too thought about Oxford. I actually did a recce trip a couple of years ago and found the place lovely. From what I remember though there's hardly anything there.

I will try and attach some photo's of the school, BMX park, and yes swimming pool. The pool was pristine, brand new and deserted, in fact I was the only person there and never saw another sole.

Depends what you're after? It can be rather quiet.

Tim.

[nippa&pippa]

If you are going to work in chch city, then oxford might be tooi long, long way to commute :exit
Nicky, you are better to wait till you get here in chch before start touring around the place to get the true ideas of travelling distances and where do you want to live after many questions about locations. Like I said to others, it is down to yourself on do I like this areas? Is I am prepare to travelling to work with high kms mean petrol bill per week will be huge especially with increasing cost of petrol?
I spent 6 months most of weekend after we arrived, visiting all the places before we finally brought the house. We didn't go to Oxford because by the time we reach west eyreton, we felt it is too far to go furthur from chch with distances, petrol and it will take my OH to get to work..likely to be 1 hour plus from west eyrton.
Have you really been to NZ? for reccie trip? or holiday?
HTH

[nickydwuk]

We have never been to NZ hence all the questions. We feel the sooner we get settled the better. I also need to get my 14 year old into school ASAP so we need to get a rental or buy a property as soon as we can. But I don't want to get a rental for 6 months, get my son into school and then want to move to another area so if I can ask as many questions before we arrive then at least I have a better idea of the good and bad points about an area. As you say it is all about personal preference. I have thought about the distance to work etc... but here in the UK I used to travel 45 - 50 minutes to work and it was never a problem. I love driving but I understand what you mean about the petrol costs and factoring these in. We like the appeal of a smaller, quiet town - this is one of the reasons for moving to NZ. Guess we will have to continue collating our info and have a good drive round in our first week.

Thanks for the pictures Tim :nice1

[Danny & Julie]

We visited Oxford 2 years ago when we came on our first visit looking at areas & jobs ect. Oxford is a tiny little place with a small supermarket & a playground. We visited the school which was lovely it covered all ages from 5 -18.
It was too far from town for us, at least a 45 min drive and I felt it would be too isolated for the kids. Mainly because we like to go into town for the cinema, dinner ect & we have 2 teenagers.
We've settled in Hamilton & still live in the country but only 20 mins from town which we love but are still taxis for the 2 older kids (thank goodness hubby has a work fuel card)
My advise would be when you visit nz check out all the areas that appeal to you and see what fits your family.
Good luck:)

[Moorf]

Oxford is 18km from me and we go there regularly, I like it and would consider living there too, it's the commute that puts hubby off as he's the one that has to travel.

It's a small "village" but it's grown tremendously since we got here 4yrs ago and has well and truly put itself on the map.

It now has Jo Seagar's Cookschool and Cafe - extremely popular, even with North Islanders.

It also has a growing number of craft and gift shops, including Emmas and Cafe 51. The supermarket is great although you'd want to go in to Rangiora (35 mins trip or so) to the big supermarkets there. The Oxford butcher is extremely well thought of locally and very good value with lots of choice. There's a pub but it's not great, and a Working Mens Club that does great cheap meals. There's a wee library and post office - not sure about medical centre as we use Darfield.

Oxford has recently subdivided a huge swathe of land which used to be the old coal yards and stock yards - these are being developed for residential house sites and are selling FAST.... Property in Oxford has risen in price but still is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the areas.

Oxford also has a very wee farmers market at the weekend.

Lisa, on this forum (membername Lisa) lives in Oxford and has done for over 2 years. Might be worth dropping them a line.

As NippaPippa says, the commute is the only bugbear - it can be quite long and straight, but it's not a terrible commute by any stretch of the imagination. You probablly want to have a job on the north or west of Chch to make the commute as short as possible.

Can't help on schools I'm afraid - Lisa has kids and may be able to help - PM her I'm sure she won't mind. :nice1

If Oxford interests you but the commute sounds daunting then you could consider Darfield - larger township but with a village feel. OH uses approximately $50 of petrol a week to do our commute from Waddington to Chch which is around 55km and takes him 45 mins to get to work.

Hope that helps
Moorf

[DB]

Oxford is an hour from Chch. Anyone who tells you less wants to have a conversation with those chaps and chapesses who drive around in vehicles with red and blue flashing lights on top.

Oxford is now, thanks to Seagars cook school, a destination town, and has gone from quiet sleepyville to somewhere quite busy some days.

This is the last bit of the drive to Oxford

http://www.davidbuckley.name/pix/oxford0.jpg

This what the township was like pre-Seagars

http://www.davidbuckley.name/pix/oxford1.jpg

And of course, how could one forget the social centre, where movies get shown about every other week in winter, on a saturday night...

http://www.davidbuckley.name/pix/townhall.jpg

Finally, check out our weather on wunderground (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=INORTHCA1). We're not that far from Rangi or Chch, but we get different weather due to the proximity of those mountainous things, we're usually hotter, and often drier, and we get good wind!

http://www.davidbuckley.name/weather/gizmo.gif

Oh yeah, the school: Oxford Area School (http://www.oxford.school.nz). Its an area school, so it goes from ages 5 to 18. It may not be the best school, with the best teachers, but a good school, and it's hard to overstate the value of having class sizes of three to nine in some subjects at secondary level. You can't buy that pupil teacher ratio! With area schools, they tend to be resource limited in general things like classrooms, but are richly provided in areas like science and engineering, as you cant teach these subjects at all without having the right facilities. The head is a great bloke, the school is integrated into the community, and even has its own observatory! It served our kids well.