If one thing has been clearly highlighted of late, it is that people are much less exposed to contracting COVID-19 living in the Goulburn Valley than they are living in the cities. To date, there have only been 30 cases in the shires of Campaspe, Greater Shepparton, Moira and Strathbogie as compared to a total of 1836 cases across the state.
To that end, people in the cities are making the ‘tree change’ and were moving to the regions before the pandemic.
This month’s Regional Australia Institute (RAI) report The Big Movers: Understanding Population Mobility in Regional Australia, found that more than 1.2 million people moved to or within regional Australia between 2011 and 2016 – while 80 of Australians living in country Australia said they had no intention of leaving.
In the regional centres, you can buy a large home with a big backyard and get to work in less than 10 minutes for the same price as a one-bedroom unit in a capital city.
COVID-19 has unshackled workers from city CBDs, with major businesses now recognising that you can work from home while achieving a productivity boost at the same time. Simply put, working from home is here to stay and there is no reason why it must be limited to the suburbs of the big cities
Talented employees aren’t just in big cities, they can be found all over regional Australia.
In Greater Shepparton, the population forecast is that it will grow from 69,000 in 2020 to 83,000 over the next fifteen years.
According to the Federal Minister for Decentralisation and Regional Education, Andrew Gee “Regional Australia offers an unbeatable quality of life, so we’d love to see more of our city cousins making the move. They’ll get a big warm country welcome when they do.”
