Wade Kingsley.
I’m lucky to live in a place most people dream of.
With just 300 metres from our front door to the beach, it’s wonderful to live and work in a place outside the stress and noise of our nearest major capital city.
What comes with that is we are a haven for tourism. If you’re from Melbourne you’d know that right now (from Boxing Day to the end of January) both the Mornington Peninsula and the Surf Coast have a population boom. It seems most of the city and suburbs flock our way to enjoy what summer has to offer.
Last week NAB released retail spending figures for ‘summer hotspots’ which revealed locations from Burleigh Heads to Busselton had massive growth in spending. This came from many categories including food, groceries, and entertainment.
But what’s harder to see for people who live in major cities is that where I live is booming all year round. It’s really an ‘always on’ boom.
Population growth to regional areas has increased to 9.8 million over the past 12 months[i] – and this is not just a post-COVID thing. It continues to grow to all regional areas of Australia year on year and there are no signs of it slowing down. The results of a nation-wide survey[ii] have revealed that 40% of capital city residents are considering a regional move. That means two in five city dwellers are considering a move to regional – a result that has doubled in the past 18 months.
Younger professionals and their families (like mine) are choosing to relieve themselves of cost-of-living pressures like inner-city mortgages and finding more affordable housing, utilities and the like.
Demographer Bernard Salt says that this is causing a “dynamic shift” and that regional Australia is the market that will “surge and blossom in the next 10 years”.
And when I look around my suburb, I don’t see tractors or farmers. In fact, farmers only represent 2.4% of all people[iii] in regional Australia (It’s worth noting that farmers have a gross average income of $537k per annum).
Instead, I see white collar workers, tradies, school teachers, nurses, doctors, and engineers - all spending their higher levels of discretionary income on things that matter to them.
And if you think that online retail purchases are just for time poor, inner-city people, think again. Every day at our place parcels arrive from one of the four internet savvy spenders under my roof.
In fact, Australia Post data[iv] shows that Queensland’s Toowoomba is in the top five postcodes for online shopping deliveries in the whole of Australia. And that online shopping in regional is outpacing metro online spending.
So, as you settle back into work after the summer break – don’t just think of locations outside the major capital cities as where city people go on holidays. Where I live it’s an ‘always on’ boom and smart brands are already spending their media budgets in a more effective way by suggesting to us what products we should buy. And we’re doing that in droves.
Wade Kingsley, The Creative Coach
[i] Regional Movers Index March 2024
[ii] Regional Australia Institute: Year 2 Progress Report on the Regionalisation Ambition 2024
[iii] Snapshot of Australia’s Agricultural Workforce. agriculture.gov.au, October 2023
[iv] Australia Post "2024 Inside Australian Online Shopping eCommerce Industry Report"