Are all the cool kids leaving the city?
Holly Berckelman is a Sydney-based writer and content producer working predominantly with Stellar and Body+Soul Magazines. Holly is the epitome of city chic and often spends her days with the rich and famous in her role as a down right fabulous journo. When she’s not investigating the newest bars and restaurants (with a camera and margarita in hand), you’ll find her eyeing off her next pair of shoes, with a book by the water, or planning her next trip overseas. Throughout this piece Holly shares with us her perspective on the rising popularity of choosing regional life over high-rises and traffic jams.
Article by Holly Berckelman
I was out for lunch on George street in the heart of Sydney’s CBD the other day when it dawned on me just how busy the city has become. A seemingly obvious statement, yes. But I haven’t seen this level of occupancy in years – since before ‘those’ times.
Kerbs are teeming with pedestrians, foot traffic rivalling only the bumper-to-bumper tessellation on the roads. People dart across the streets, zipping between taxis approaching amber lights, and frog-marching down the centre of the bustling mall in packs, urgently hopping between meetings, shops and lattes.
Everyone has somewhere to be, and each destination is deemed more important than the other. Even lunch breaks are fraught with frenetic energy – a competition for seats, or an errant ray of sunshine sneaking through a gap between skyscrapers.
Ads are plastered across every available surface, as if in some kind of Warhol-inspired dystopia, and it’s effectively impossible to park. Nothing new for this particular business district, but with road closures and building development, it’s the norm for begrudging commuters to account for at least a 20 minute delay on every trip.
The city is synonymous with relentlessness: crowds that never thin, and lines that never cease. And even when the light fades, and the city goes quiet – fun confined to basements and rooftops, rendering the streets eerie and echoey – there’s an unmistakable hum that’s impossible to drown out.
It’s pretty much the opposite to how I imagine daily life to be in regional Australia: peaceful, inviting and mostly not smelling like petrol. It’s for that reason that the siren call of the city is fading, and slaves to the concrete jungle can hear the country cooing their names.
Last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed the number of people living in capital cities had dropped for the first time in any of our lifetimes. Former city-slickers were calling time on the suburbs they grew up in, and skipping town in exchange for grassier plains or sandier shores. The kind at least an hour or two away.
But why the mass exodus? The most obvious answer is space. But not the ‘wide open spaces’ kind, rather the sort that gives our minds space.
When we came out of Covid lockdown in 2020, and then again in 2021, there was much discussion about learning to socialise again. We were reminded it could be difficult to converse for extended periods of time, that catching up with much-loved friends may feel draining rather than rejuvenating as it once was. Despite craving the physical closeness of other humans, we’d been conditioned to abstain, and the thought of spooning fellow travellers on a crowded train carriage for 34 minutes every morning was unbearable.
The city suddenly felt more overwhelming than it ever had before, suffocating even. But with that suffocation came a desire to choke: many of us wanted to participate in society again, to feel part of a community once more, but found the one they were in unfeasible. Or at the very least, not quite as sweet as they once were.
And while we’d leant on technology to keep us connected during forced time apart, when the borders dropped and we emerged from our quiet hibernation, we were more contactable than we’d ever intended, and it was deafening.
I read recently that on average, a human brain in the city is exposed to more stimuli in one day than it would’ve been in an entire lifetime, just 100 years ago. Keeping in mind that biological evolution happens much, much slower than that of technology; our brains are quite literally not engineered for life in the epicentres of our country.
The city has always been a busy place, but the digital space wasn’t always as loud. And now that it’s caught up with and exceeded the hubbub of the brick and mortar, something’s gotta give.
For many, the answer is what I like to call ‘cuspy country’. Areas like the South Coast, Southern Highlands, or Central Coast give residents breathing room away from the metropolis, without ever feeling remote. In fact, I’ll bet these towns and regions have more of a closeness and sense of community than most suburbs in the centre of Sydney.
Influencer Phoebe Burgess is just one of the notable names who have relocated down South, while editor and entrepreneur Eleanor Pendleton moved to a cottage near the beach on the Central Coast with her family. Both women commute to and from Sydney for work, yet have a safe haven in their homes well out of the fringes of the city.
While I’m reluctant to use the word ‘thankful’ in the same sentence as ‘Covid’, if the lockdowns had one plus side, it was that we suddenly had the freedom to unchain ourselves from our desks and search for balance. Rather than two days at home, and the rest of the week in an office, on the flip side of the pandemic, many of us found it was in reverse.
Suddenly habitation didn’t hinge on its proximity to an inner-city trainline, and abandoning the suburbs wasn’t only an option for retirees, but a consideration of wider lifestyle choices. With blended working in full swing, many people have no need to go to an office at all, so are instead spending time seeking a home that suits a wider set of requirements – namely, a place they can rest and recharge. There’s no longer the choice between our lives as we know them or a treechange – now people can incorporate a move into that same life, without giving up a thing.
Conversely, others have chosen to forgo the in-and-out of the city altogether, and set up shop in the country, literally. Interior designer Steve Cordony relocated to Orange in the Central Tablelands of NSW well before it became fashionable, and has seemingly never looked back. In 2017, he and his partner bought and restored the heritage estate Rosedale Farm (which is now a much-sought-after weekender), along with running his eponymous design business. How’s that for the perfect set up? Sydney’s just three and a half hours away, but may as well be a distant memory.
Then I suppose we must turn our attention to literal space. For the first time, the formerly-coveted, inner-city apartments with neither a garden nor a window in the bathroom have lost their appeal. And why? Because if lockdowns made anything blisteringly apparent, it’s that there is no point living in a prestigious, cosmopolitan suburb when you’re confined to your own four walls. Especially when those four walls equate to the price of a small organ – per week.
I love the shoebox I reside in, but I’ll be the first to admit that every single day of our long lockdown I wished I’d fled the scene the second cases spiked and camped out in a van on a remote beach in South Australia. Not for the creature comforts of course, but for breathing room, fresh air, and more than three steps between my housemate’s bedroom and the loo.
Older Australians may smirk knowingly from their verandah, overlooking a neat herbaceous border and white picket fence. After all, there’s a reason that very home was at the heart of the ‘Australian dream’ for so long. But Covid served as the ultimate, cruellest reminder for every generation: that space is the hottest commodity of all.
And all of this isn’t to discredit the plights of the country – one’s many are more than familiar with. Decades of drought, bushfires, mice plagues, human plagues, supply chain shut down, and mass flooding – hardship that city folk can barely comprehend.
Regional Australia is no doubt an intense place. And sometimes an intensely lonely, isolating place. But from the point of view of a disillusioned urban warrior, while it’s harsh and unrelenting, it can also be close-knit and neighbourly, and rely on a relationship with the land and its occupants that’s more intrinsic than we in the city have ever experienced.
So, I would expect to see more of us coming your way soon – hopeful for a life that’s quieter in the mind, and kinder to the soul. I ask you to welcome us, like an aunt or a grandfather, with gentle arms and a knowing introduction. After all, we’re just catching up on something you learnt long ago.
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