Paul,
Your thinking exactly matches mine from 6-7 years ago.
We bought the investment property in Seymour then.... with a plan to convert it to our future residence, then sell the house in Melbourne and live on that for the following 10 years.. hopefully.
Unfortunatelly, my future Seymour neighbour also had his own plans.. and his newly built "super shed" above our northern fence last year ruined all my hopes for an observatory in the backyard, and with this the prospects of life in that house, so we decided to sell it.
See here:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...Seymour&page=2, post #28
Kilmore is a good pick regarding LP for now... but Seymour is generally better IMO (because ih has more urban facilities.. it has everything - shops, banks, coffee.. hospital... even graveyard
You can expect Melbourne to spread to the north in the next couple od decades, so the LP there will get worse with time.
Perhaps Ballarat and surounding area is the next best option?
Daylesford area is quite dark (but expensive and considered as farming land.. so subdivision is difficult and I don't need/want the whole farm). I am considering this area at the moment, a friend of mine has a farm there and sometimes I spent evenings imaging from his property.. very dark indeed.