WITHIN weeks of moving to Berry, Melissa Aicken found she was part of a wave of young families moving into the pretty Shoalhaven village.
Melissa joined the local playgroup and struck up friendships with four other mums who had moved into the area in the hope of giving their children a relaxed upbringing in one of the South Coast’s prettiest villages.
The village had been on the list of favoured places for Melissa and her husband Martin, to live ever since they were married there six years ago.
“I just always loved it and always wanted to live down here,” she says.
The couple had been living in Brisbane for 12 months but when the opportunity came to move back to NSW, Berry was an obvious choice because Martin’s job involves a large amount of travel.
Melissa says it makes more sense to be in Berry than Sydney given she often has to spend time alone.
The couple moved to the area a year ago, arriving in town one day and buying a house the next.
“We’d been looking on the web for a couple of years,” Melissa says. “I just narrowed it down and bought it.”
Although the couple doesn’t have family in the area, Melissa has formed strong friendships with four other young mums. Between them, the woman have eight children under five.
One of the women is a photographer, while another has opened a restaurant in town. The group meets once a week so their children can play together and they have just enrolled their sons in a dance class for toddlers. The mums also take a private weekly yoga class without their kids.
“You take a risk with moving.” Melissa says. “Are you going to meet nice people? Are you going to fit in? And what are you going to do?
“But I love it. I really, really love it. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It is like a little piece of the city but tucked away. All the locals have been really fantastic. You go to some places where local people don’t like it when new people move into town but this is absolutely not the case.”
While Berry might have an image of being an older person’s village, there are plenty of young families, Melissa says.
Berry is 143 kilometres from Sydney and about 4100 people live in the village an its surrounds.
The principle of Harcourts Berry, Michael O’Gorman, says properties less that $1 million are selling well but anything above that is “having a tough time”