LYNDARUM/AURORA/SUMMERHILL ESTATES: Epping, Victoria

Does any one know whats happening on the public transport corridor parallel to Brunswick drive? I saw a lot of work going on there today morning.

See here: http://www.aurora.asn.au/forum/viewtopi ... 0a97b#p128

Thanks a lot aurorafrog.

ourhome - maybe ask on the Aurora Facebook page - someone there might know?

I have rang the land sales office and they advised its just landscaping, no roads or train line is coming at this stage.

The govt flipped on their rail decision ages ago so don't hold your breath for a train line...that's not going to happen and if it does, it's at least 25 years away

Thanks a lot guys. Ha ha ha we have to fight for our kids for the train lines. Hopefully the grandchildren will then be able to reap the benefits.

just wondering anyone here from eucalypt estate wollert, which is up the road im just struggling to get any internet connection ahh

Hi Everyone..
I have been following this forum.for 2-3 months now .. was part of my research for suitable land.. Now almost decided on Aurora. Bit concerned about few things:-
How is Internet here.. I know Iinet & iprimus are only supplier but how is connectivity? what is cost?
Can I connect my router and get wireless connection- with all this drama about fibre owned by vicurban and "no acess to box" in my garage as i will not be provided keys to box?
How long does it take to drive to city in peak hours?
Is parking avialbe in epping sattion say till 8.15 in morning or all slots have already gone by this time?
I will appercaite comments from all fellow forum members.
Thanks in advance

The connectivity via fibre optic is done through VicUrban/Places Victoria (or whatever they are called now). You apply with the ISP that you choose to go with for fibre connection, and they communicate with VU/PV to get your connection sorted. You then get a phone call from VU/PV to organise a time for someone to come and connect you. You need to be at home to let them into your garage and in the cabinet to hook up all the hardware.


You are not given keys to the box. So if something happens with the router (if you're with iPrimus) or something with the other hardware (like TV modulator for example), you need to contact VU/PV and organise a time for someone to come to your house, open the cabinet and reset/repair.

iPrimus offers a router that goes into the cabinet (locked by VU/PV) and you don't have access to it - not even the password to get into the router software. iiNet give you a BoB (or you can provide your own router – this is what I did) that sits in your house. Mine is in my study. BoB has wifi built in, or if you provide your own router you can choose to have wifi as well. BoB comes with a built in phone, but as I am using my own router I am using a Panasonic cordless phone connected to my router.

I'm not sure if iPrimus router has wifi built in, if it does it's rather poor as the coverage of your house for wifi would not be good if the router is in the garage, in a metal cabinet. You can most probably get a wifi router anyway and just connect it into one of the wall jacks (something like Apple's Airport is a good example).

Also note that if you are going to use your own router (wifi or not) you really need to make sure that it can handle the high speed internet that you are going to be getting on the network. Try and find a router that is NBN-friendly. I am personally using a Draytek Vigor2130, which has gigabit ethernet ports and 2 VOIP ports, and I am also using an Apple Airport Extreme for my wifi - both of these devices have been proven to withstand high speed data transfer (go to http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ if you don't believe me). If you have some cheap $100 router / wifi combination unit it would most probably not be able to cope with high speed data transfer - wired or wireless.


I'm not sure, I catch the train during peak hours. Never have driven to the city before during peak time. On the weekend it would take me about 45 minutes or so.


I would say that it's all taken by then - even much earlier. I drive to Lalor and then catch the train from there into the city every weekday - most if not all parking in the parking bays have been taken at Lalor at around 7.30am, but there is street parking as well with no restrictions that you can park at, you would just need to walk. The car park at Epping station is quite small and I don't think there is much street parking you can use.

Hope I have answered your questions SunnyDays, feel free to ask more and if you are seriously considering living in Aurora, you might be interested to know that there is a residential association here called the Aurora Community Association, their website is at http://www.aurora.asn.au/ and have more information about the estate and surrounding areas.

Just to mention that once South Morang station is open, which is at the plenty Westfield shopping centre, there are 300+ parking spaces, so I guess if you are late, you can always find a parking there.

Thanks acherion and aurora frog..
Because iprimus and Innet are having virtual monoply in Aurora so should i expect "unreseanable high" prices for internet.
How long does it take to reach lalor sation in peak hours in morning by car?
what is frequency of bus service to epping?
As i presume the propsed transport corridor and propsed train sation is in cold storage for now... so my questions are more related to transport..
apart from internet and public tranport .any other issuse i should be really concerned for?
Design Guidelines looks fine to me... any issuses with that ?
I am will appercaite if you can share your experinces

Also can you park in epping plaza or there are parking restrictions there?

I can't answer all your questions SunnyDays, as I don't know the answers to some of them, but here goes.


No. iiNet and iPrimus standardise their FTTH plans across all fibre locations that they offer their services to. You won't find the price of a fibre plan in Aurora with iiNet, for example, to be any different to a fibre plan at the same tier at Aspect estate in Officer, or Alamanda estate in Point Cook.

I can't say for iPrimus as I am not an iPrimus customer, but iiNet recently revised their fibre plans to match dollar for dollar and feature for feature with their NBN plans. Before this, there was a large discrepancy in plans for no real reason.

I am currently paying $75 a month for 200GB of data (split in on/off peak) at 50Mbit/s downlink, 20Mbit/s uplink + $10 a month for VoiP phone connection. There are smaller plans than this, and larger ones too, at different price points. All prices are on iPrimus or iiNet website, all you need to do is go to their website and have a look. Note that iiNet count both downloads and uploads as part of your quota, but iPrimus only count downloads.

Before iiNet and iPrimus came along, there was only one provider in the Aurora estate called Arise. Arise is a small company that ran the network and charged you to access it. They were very expensive and you didn't get much in terms of speed (at the end of the month, everything slowed down) and value (they charged a lot of money for not a lot of service). Their customer service was also sub-par. Arise was a classic example of a monopoly because the only other option other than Arise is to use 3G mobile data or satellite internet connection, both options not really viable for the average family living in Aurora.

Sure there isn't a thousand providers in Aurora, but the two that do service the estate are quite good and other than the network being offline for half a day a few months back, I haven't really had any problems. Especially compared to Arise problems - at one stage, this thread had nothing else other than complaints about them.


I leave my house at 7am and arrive at Lalor at 7.10-7.15, depending on traffic on High St. A train from Lalor should reach Flinders St (it won't go through the loop) in about 35-40 minutes.


There are small issues that almost every estate / residential area gets from time to time. I don't think I've ever seen the council even sweep my street during the 10 months I have been living here, although I did see a crew on the weekend pick up rubbish in the meridian strip on Edgars Rd.

Traffic can be an issue at times. Avoid High St / O'Herns Rd roundabout during peak times - it will easily add another half an hour to your travel time. It is a huge bottle neck that the council nor VicRoads wants to touch. I use Millers Rd almost exclusively and it's okay.

Most of the other issues are from other people / residents - things like doing a U-turn on Edgars road through the garden beds, people not mowing their front lawn and leaving it overgrown with weeds, or people driving down the wrong side of the road. I had 4 of my garden lights stolen about a week ago, but they didn't take the plastic stakes that go into the ground so they're a bit useless to them - annoying. Because there are still houses being constructed in the area that I live, sometimes you get the odd tradie that's driving weird or just plain stupid. I guess all these things aren't really restricted to the estate only though.


I had a flick through it in my land contract but there isn't any real way of negotiating or getting some guidelines changed just for you. So it doesn't really matter if you have an issue with a point in the guidelines or not, because you can't really do anything to get it changed.

There are parking restrictions at Epping Plaza. If I recall correctly, 4 hour limit. There is also parking restrictions at Bunnings but I don't think it is heavily enforced.

If you want to catch the train, it is a million times easier and better to go to Lalor and park there for free, rather than risk it at Epping and get a fine. Driving to Lalor will probably cost you a few dollars extra in petrol, compared to possibly > $100 in parking fines at Epping.

As mentioned by aurorafrog, there will be parking at South Morang when it opens too if you want to drive there (I think Lalor is still closer though), I think they have a car park to hold 300 cars there.

is there any side streets to park near epping station or is it that bad, how far will new south morang station be from epping

You will just need to look up google map or nearmap to find out . Like I mentioned before, the South Morang station is next to Plenty Westfield (http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.649654,1 ... d=20120215).

I am not sure peak hour, but other times the traffic to Plenty Westfield is quite good. Sure it is further 5-10 minutes imo since you might need to use the high street roundabout.

I just did a quick measure on Google Maps, from the Great Bromme Ave / O'Herns Rd intersection to Lalor train station is 3.5km, whereas to South Morang station it is 4.8km. Take into account that you have to use the High St / Findon Rd roundabout to get to South Morang (to Lalor you don't have to), and I would say it's safe to assume it will take longer to get to South Morang station by car rather than Lalor.

I agree with you Acherion. I would dream about that the council and VIcRoad replace the roundabout with traffic light with slip lanes in the future, but sure it won't happen any time soon. I wonder if this change has been put in Aurora Community Association public transport campaign group's agenda.

Edit: Surprise that I don't seem to find it on the website http://www.aurora.asn.au/working-groups ... ing-group/ I think I'll forward the thoughts to Cara.

Edit: Tony from the campaign group mentioned that it's actually on page 9 of the ACA's infrastructure submission last December
(ref. http://www.aurora.asn.au/wp-content/plu ... -12-11.pdf)
there is mention of putting in traffic lights at the High St / Findon Rd roundabout ie
Hundreds of Epping North residents have signed a petition for duplication of Epping Road,
and traffic lights for the intersection of Epping, Findon and O’Herns Road – to improve
safety and ease congestion for drivers and families in Epping. This petition was tabled in state
parliament in early November 2011. An article in the local Whittlesea Leader newspaper of
18 May 2010 features a nearby resident referring to the above intersection in terms of
numerous accidents, near misses and rear-end crashes; a CFA captain mentions delays to
CFA fire trucks caused by drivers not paying attention to these trucks exiting the fire station
next to this intersection. Elsewhere it has been reported that between July 2009 and June
2010 there were 205 call-outs to Epping fire station and the station failed to meet time targets
almost 30 times; congestion had hampered volunteers getting to the station. The new road
connection between nearby Miller Street and O’Herns Road may only partially relieve this
intersection congestion for a relatively short period of time.

You do not have to go through the High St./Findon Rd roundabout to get to South Morang. The quickest way is to drive up Lyndarum Drive towards epping Road, go straight across at the traffic lights (cross over Epping Road) into the Hayston Valley estate (other side of the road to Woolworths)...turn right at first roundabout, follow road around to the left, turn right at next roundabout, turn right at first street (Maserati Drive), turn left at Findon Road...turn right at Civic Drive roundabout and you're at the new station. Hardly any traffic at all - used to drive my son to school every morning in Mill Park this way.

Re the wireless router: we have a wireless router with iprimus. Our cabinet is not in our garage it is under our stairs and we have very good wireless coverage from anywhere in our home.
Acherion is right though - I think most homes have it in the garage now, but maybe you can ask to have it elsewhere in the house (?) You can get a key to your locked cabinet by asking a locksmith to cut you one. Each lock has a number on it - just tell the locksmith that number and they can cut you a key. You didn't hear this from me though.

Re the traffic lights. I would much rather see traffic lights at Craigieburn Road/Epping road intersection first. That is a deathtrap. I see accidents there almost on a weekly basis. The quickest way to drive to the CBD is to drive north along Epping Road (avoid Epping altogether), turn left onto Craigiburn Road, left onto Hume Fwy, onto Western Ring Road, onto Tulla Fwy. Having said this, I drive to St. Kilda for work slightly off peak (I leave around 8.30am and get to work between 9.30 and 10am depending on traffic). I've tried driving High St/Hoddle Street and this is not any quicker.