Up with the birds

By Alex May

Big blocks, big houses, big cars ... but the one thing Dural isn't is big-city - and that's why people go there.

Birds sing, cicadas whirr and humble fruit and vegetable stalls dot the roadside. Dural feels like a suburb beyond the limits of the city. And that's exactly why people pay millions of dollars to live there.
The houses become more spread out, the trees seem taller and the entry gates to properties become grander as you drive deeper and deeper into semi-rural Dural, which was once made up of small farms and market gardens.
And the number of cars with personalised number plates seems to increase as the birdsong becomes louder. My car is parked between a Commodore with WAYIAM plates and a Vectra with FLY IN.

"About three out of every four cars has personalised plates," explains Richardson & Wrench Dural agent Meg Clark. "We know people by their number plates. Everyone drives BMW X5s and the only way to tell the difference between people is by what the plates say."
With a mix of residential houses in suburban subdivisions and acreage properties, the suburb has a comparatively low median house price of $584,000 - but that won't buy you anything on acreage.

The record house price was for a 3.7 hectare property at 17 Vineys Lane that sold last year for $5.45 million, according to Australian Property Monitors. The large rural blocks within a 45-minute drive of the city attract prestige buyers to the area, with quality acreages starting at about $1.5 million for allotments that range between 4050 sq m and two hectares. The prestige streets are Langford and Davey streets and Jane Place - all are close to the village facilities but surrounded by private acreage.
Dave Denton, of Denton Homes, says the suburb is noted for unpretentious wealth. "It's the kind of place you can raise the kids and give them all the benefits of the country close to the city," he says.

Plenty of self-made entrepreneurs call Dural home, including yellow Wiggle Greg Page, who is building a 2800 sq m house on acreage in the district. Harvey Norman chairman Gerry Harvey lives in nearby middle Dural.
Dural District Real Estate principal Philip Callow says buyers come to the area for a range of reasons - usually to do with horses, privacy or space. "Every buyer wants something different," he says. "The quality of a property will depend on whether it is arable or bush, whether it has power lines through it, whether it's on the low side of the street and what the surrounding houses are like."
Meg Clark says the average-sized house on an acreage would be 100 squares (930 sq m). "Everything in Dural is big. The land, the houses, the cars," she says.