How to make regional areas more appealing for people

You presented your opinion as a a fact

You just didn’t like other people on the forum that happily live and raised families in regional Australia expressing the opposing view.

Absolutely right!
In north Queensland we get massively saturated with southerners each winter and then they buy up here just to sell out and move back the first summer. We like it just like it is thanks. They block up the boat ramps, saturate the highways with caravans, fill all our car parks near beaches, load their freezers up and go home.

1 Like

Selfishly I agree with you. Its nicer, safer and more connected in a small rural community. If I need to, its OK to spend a few hours driving into town for stuff, usually medical and its a relief to leave again.

That said it may be that we as a community need to do more to make big cities nicer places. My suspicion is that proper planning and appropriate infrastructure spending have given way to growth at any cost. You know, that our Australian national economy is a Ponzi Scheme in that we need a continually growing population to pay off the debt they/we incur today.

3 Likes

I agree and I find that some people forget to build communities even if it is the big smoke. That’s a large part of the issue. I am sure you know who to trust and who not to in your community and respond to those “triggers”. But if someone new moves in there is some hesitancy until that person or family is “sussed out”.

Cities become somewhat emotionless entities as too many people pass by you and not many will remain a constant in your lives. But in a workplace or a neighbourhood that sense of belonging can and does get built up. It’s just too many forget to spend a little time getting to know one another by having a chat, or giving assistance. I know and value my neighbours, I know and value my local store people, I know and value my community even though I live in a built up urban area.

4 Likes

I live in the burbs and had three tiger snakes in the backyard in 2015, one wandering through in 2017 - which left of its own accord - and one in the compost bin this January. It costs me in snake removalists’ fees and I’ll now have to reconstruct the compost bin to do a better job of snake-proofing than I did when I first assembled it! However, one needs to share habitat with wildlife and am not particularly troubled by the various backyard visitors. None of these snakes posed an imminent threat and they’d clearly prefer to avoid people than to attack them.

3 Likes

Towns close to the big cities seem to be trending that way as well - I lived 70k out of Melbourne for some years in what you could call a “rural town” but I’d hardly call it regional and certainly not remote. The city was still completely accessible, and given the relentless march of suburbia I’m concerned it will be essentially suburbs to 100k from Melbourne within a decade or two, at least in the growth corridors. People say it can’t happen, and yes, it can’t, just like it hasn’t in the past :wink:

I lived in a similar context prior to that, where the locals had the lovely term “dormitory suburb” to describe the people who lived in the hills but worked in the city - I remember at a volunteer fire service meeting one night a longer term local complaining that they couldn’t get a crew during the day because everyone was in the city working. I reflected on the long period of time where the brigade couldn’t get a crew at night either, but now they had no trouble. It’s often quite amusing how closed peoples minds are and how facts can be completely optional in their ‘understanding’ and ‘logic’.

That said, in very remote areas that ‘constant in your lives’ also takes on a less than happy meaning. The lure of the big city, for whatever it is, work, family connection, sense of home - seems to so often bring peoples time in the sticks to an end, and those of us happy to be here in the long term make and lose friends as time rolls on, and its easy to become jaded when the town seems more like a revolving door …

I can also understand comments made here about the more itinerant population, from FIFO work forces to seasonal tourists - with town centre car parks taken up 6 spaces at a time by Winnebagos to following no less than 14 Britz campers on the open road one after the other home from work one afternoon with scarcely a car length between them, as I did a couple of weeks ago.

I wonder if we need to make regional areas more appealing to people? Isn’t it enough to let some kind of natural selection take place to decide who is committed to the sticks and who will just be a temporary resident? With the variables and regions so diverse, it’s hard to imagine a simple answer …

5 Likes

Thanks Obbigttam for the topic. Diversity in the discussion to date so far is more than enlightening.

It serves to illustrate many of the choices we make in adopting a less urban environment. And that there are many variations in rural environment from communities in central Australia to the urban fringes of the big Capitals.

The rewards and challenges of every day life outside the large cities encourage a different mind set. It’s clear from our many moves around NSW and QLD you will not survive long there if you keep you big city outlook.

It also says that the members of CHOICE who have made the “choice” to live outside seek different solutions to most of our every day problems.

It’s easy to appreciate that with 10 million of our 24.5 millions living in Melbourne and Sydney alone CHOICE will prioritise it’s direction accordingly. I’m not suggesting what CHOICE delivers does not serve also the minority of us in the rural environment. I would suggest it could do more.

It would suit me as a member to see CHOICE as a consumer organisation enable rural members to better connect. This could serve to identify the issues that are highest priority to those members in difference to the majority.

CHOICE’s product reviews are a boon to short cutting the shopping trips whether you live an hour or 10 hours drive from the retailers. But there are many other consumer issues that are more unique.

In rural areas there are fewer options, limited support and often no local services.
Rural customers often purchase different types and classes of products .
While price is important, reliability, ease of repair or service is also important. “Judge a tool on it’s manual and parts supply.”

Effective personal relationships are a major factor as others have said in the more remote and smaller communities. There are also the “please leave me alone types” who live nearer the cities who value isolation, or more select relationships. They may think a shut gate is a message to stay away. I see it as closed to keep the cattle in. Diversity?

I also do not share the guilt of a city dweller who has no trees or bush. For them to be guilt free I will not spend my time and my money following their environmental rules. What I do on my acres for the environment I do for my benefit and for the benefit of the rat patrol (Mr Brown and Mr Black and Mr Python).

I would appreciate CHOICE enabling us like minded members to better connect. It may not encourage a change to the towns and bush. It might make it that bit easier. And we can share our thoughts on composting toilets and the best way to dispose of cane toads or government policy written in the cities about how city folk would like us to live.

5 Likes