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

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” – but don’t tell those who have paid an exorbitant premium to live within Bulimba “proper”. Much of Bulimba’s appeal seems tied to the ever-persuasive real estate industry, which sells a luxury lifestyle pinned to the presumptuously named Oxford Street and access to the river and its CityCats.

Balmoral sits quite literally above this trendy fray, a two-minute drive or 10-minute stroll from the cinemas, bars, burger joints, boutiques and alarmingly expensive dessert stops. In the evenings, denizens can retreat to the hill.

Back when I lived in Bulimba Street, Bulimba, the whole area looked very different: full of wharfies and other blue-collar folks, and not a poorly parked Maserati in sight.

What is now the Oxford 152 pub in Oxford Street was the Balmoral Hotel, although locals preferred its hard-earned nickname, the Balmongrel.

It certainly felt a lot “safer” to us than the mean streets of Balmoral – a no-go zone if you valued your Malvern Star and personal safety. How things change!

A defining feature of Balmoral today is the larger block size of its comfortably proportioned homes. Residents tend not to leave very often, with older generations occupying DIY-renovated postwar houses, stubbornly refusing to downsize and let the developers win – and good on them!

Mornings begin with a soundtrack of birdsong, punctuated by the rumble and metallic whine of passing jets.

Balmoral is everything Bulimba isn’t: leafy, spread out and quietly domestic. And unlike Bulimba, which sits on a peninsula with only a couple of congested roads out, residents here have several escape routes to the rest of the city.

Younger families occasionally inherit or snag an unrenovated “bargain”, sending their kids off to one of the now ubiquitous local nurseries.

Those who aren’t packed off to private schools by the time they score their first DiroDi end up in Bulimba or Morningside State School, or else Saints Peter and Paul’s Catholic primary (which claims to be situated in Bulimba even though it sits half a block inside the suburb marker for Balmoral).

Greenery is a distinguishing feature of Balmoral. Mornings begin with a soundtrack of birdsong – rainbow lorikeets, magpies, magpie larks and butcher birds – punctuated only by the rumble and metallic whine of passing jets. By afternoon, competing kookaburra clans stage a neighbourhood laugh-off from the treetops.

At night, tawny frogmouths perch silently in the trees and on telephone wires that double as possum superhighways. Run-off channels form small creeks that attract green frogs, water dragons and the occasional sizeable but shy python.

There are horses, too. The animals graze quietly in low-lying fields next to the high school. Until recently, a small pony club operated out of one of the surrounding backstreets before the site became a frozen-storage warehouse. The sight of ponies wandering those paddocks lends the suburb an oddly pastoral feel, barely six kilometres from the CBD.

Balmoral has its inconveniences. Plane noise has intensified since Brisbane Airport began routing aircraft over the hill, skimming rooftops from dawn until well after dusk. Facebook groups would have us believe that young criminals roam the streets nightly looking for weak spots in home defences, but anecdotal evidence suggests they prefer the richer pickings of Bulimba and Hawthorne.

Actually, few outsiders can confidently say where one suburb ends and the next begins, although to those who live there the distinctions feel profound. Balmoral residents can enjoy all the same cinemas, bars, eateries and alarmingly popular dessert stops without the 24/7 noise or hoi polloi.

Consider Balmoral a convenient bolthole from the bustle, spectacle and scrutiny of Bulimba life.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.