We just moved from chch to petone. Lived here before and cant fault it except the traffic city bound from 730am on and 430pm back. I have also lived in the hills and prefer living lower as hate driving up hills.
My advice would be to take the wahine for a drive on a nice day and decide what looks good to you. Woburn, alicetown, kelson would be my picks but I would happily live any where.