​​My suburb’s name sounds like a royal retreat. Given local house prices, that’s not misleading

April 13, 2026 — 4:59am

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Balmoral. The name conjures a remote Scottish bolthole for British royals escaping the bustle, spectacle and scrutiny of London life.

Or it could denote a smallish, largely unremarkable suburb in Brisbane’s inner-middle ring, about as far from London as it gets, in every way.

I moved to Balmoral at the beginning of 2012, having just returned from 15 years interstate and overseas, on my hip a baby born in snowy Boston. My thinking was that he should have the same safe, sedate upbringing I’d had as a child in Bulimba, just across the hill from Balmoral and about a kilometre as the crow flies from where we now live.

To this day, Balmoral has few distinguishing features as Brisbane suburbs go. No high street – and few low ones, either, given it sits atop a hill. There is little public infrastructure to note, just a couple of public schools, including Balmoral State High, and the local bowlo called, oddly enough, the Bulimba Bowls Club.

Confusingly, Balmoral itself sits within the “Parish of Bulimba”........

© Brisbane Times