I LOOK out of the News office and across busy Old Northern Road into the Castle Hill piazza, and I smile. It's Friday at 4pm and there are people eating a late lunch or enjoying afternoon tea as the last rays of a weak July sun stream in between the twin towers of the mega-centre.

Kids in school uniforms are striding indoors to meet friends. Mums with groceries are listing to port under weight as they meander towards the council car park, jaws gritted grimly. South-bound traffic lanes are building up and north-bound are all but empty.

That will reverse in an hour when our offices begin to clear for the weekend.

It's the best place I've worked in 39 years in journalism and my colleagues are even nicer. None of us earns a fortune, but we're mostly locals who have sacrificed the big dollars of the city for a Garden Shire lifestyle.

Alita and I have lived happily here since 1977, though as a kid raised on a beach I sometimes wonder how I ended up so far from the sea. We moved from a stone workman's cottage I restored on a double block of land on the Rozelle foreshores when the Redhead was expecting my son David.

In hindsight, it was a financial disaster.

We traded homes to get away from drugs and drunks and congestion to raise our kids (Jane came later) in a leafy environment. Inner-city prices then went through the roof while home prices in the Hills moved slower than a wet winter's day. At least until the M2 was hacked through the gum forests a decade ago, halving city journey time and adding almost $50,000 to every home. But that's life.

When we arrived, the Hills were alive with the sound of nature. Cows grazed on a farm at the end of the next street (now a walled community).

You could buy a house on acres at Dural for the same cost as a brick-veneer on a quarter-acre in ‘‘town'' - Carso. We didn't because Alita taught school and I worked for the SMH at Blacktown. We weren't interested in travelling long distances running kids to sport and getting to and from work.

I look around now and see a thriving, cosmopolitan growth centre that only lacks a railway station to enjoy mini-city status. Step out of the office and there's no service, no exclusive goodies you can't find in a short walk.

No real need to travel to Sydney for anything. And we seldom do. Life's a breeze in the Hills.