Phil Taylor was backpacking around the world when he stumbled upon the seaside paradise of Byron Bay.
“For a kid from rural New Zealand, the country was a dream come true.”
He eventually put down his roots in the surf town and took over a local institution – the Byron Bay General Store.
“Byron had this beautiful undercurrent as a solid, working-class town in a sense that it had this magic about the place – people were always coming and going, and there was all this fun, live music and new people,” he said.
Mr Taylor spent years enjoying surf holidays that were kept as closely guarded secrets by the locals, and it wasn’t until two decades later that he began to feel a difference.
The Seventies atmosphere that had attracted him was faltering as the characters – those who, according to Mr Taylor, brought color and life to the city – were slowly leaving the city.
Instead, Hollywood players — including Zac Efron, who briefly dated a waitress at his store — began frequenting his business.
Experts had warned of the impact of gentrification on small regional towns before the pandemic, but the global crisis saw internal migration figures rise.
Many Australians were selling homes in capital cities and moving to the country in a bid to cut costs, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics found regional Australia had bucked the trend since the peak of the pandemic.
In the last financial year alone, regional Australia grew by 117,300 people, or 1.4 per cent.
While many councils welcomed the population growth, for locals like Mr Taylor, there was a price to pay.
Mr Taylor said he watched as house prices began to rise, the cost of doing business escalated and the vibrant city he knew changed irreparably.
“It was a slow, gradual process, but it eventually accelerated with the COVID pandemic,” Mr Taylor said.
“That was the nail in the coffin, for the end of an era.”
“These people were moving and the hardest thing was you couldn’t blame them,” he said.
“The problem was that they had such an abundance of financial capacity, and of course, they just steamrolled the locals; all working class people.
“They were the people who really brought the energy and vibe.”
Mr Taylor said when he recognized Byron Bay had become a shadow of the community he once loved, he decided it was time to leave.
“I actually sold the business and left completely because the reason I lived in that town and loved it was because it had been an oasis where I thought the sense of community and the beach would remain forever.
“I saw that it was changing and I realized that I don’t want to be a part of that.
“Change is an unfortunate constant, and I don’t want to be that guy who complains about how good it used to be, so I quit.”
He returned to the coast over the next few years, to the most expensive capital in the country.
However, rather than being forced to pay more to be closer to Sydney, Mr Taylor found his living expenses – including moving into a rental – had been significantly cut.
The illusion of affordability
Dr Tony Matthews from Griffith University said it was no longer accurate to say that living in the region was the economic choice it once was.
“You can have what might be considered a relatively affordable property market in an inappropriate regional location and then that location becomes popular for one reason or another,” he said.
“That drives up property prices and in turn rental prices, and suddenly all the people who were previously able to afford to live there, now can’t afford to live there anymore.”
Research from the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) has found the number of people moving from cities to regional Australia has hit a 12-month high, boosting property prices across the country.
“Regional living continues to have an impact, with around 24.2 per cent more people moving from cities to regions than the other way around, in the March 2024 quarter,” the report said.
“This compares to an average prevalence of 21.9 percent in the two years before COVID.”
Along with housing, the cost of living in regional Australia is also at a high with an increase in natural disasters driving up insurance and freight costs, which in turn has increased the price of groceries in some parts of the country. .
While the figures continue to show significant movement into the regions, it remains unknown how many regional Australians have moved in recent years due to the ongoing flow of internal migration.
The average rental price across regional Australia according to CoreLogic is $544 per week.
In northern WA, which includes resort towns and mining regions, the average rental price is $881 per week in the town of Broome.
On the east coast, Mornington Peninsula rent is around $675 and $770 on the Sunshine Coast.
In Australia’s prime wine region of Margaret River, it’s about $634.
In Taylor’s old town of Byron Bay, rent can go up to $1,200 a week.
The average house price peaks on the Sunshine Coast, at $1,044,279, followed by the Illawarra, Richmond and Tweed, and the Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven.
The regional median house value in Australia is $627,872.
Dr Matthews is an urban planner who predicted gentrification in parts of the Sunshine Coast during the height of the pandemic and said it was clear that parts of the Sunshine Coast, regional Western Australia and the north coast of New South Wales had changed in recent years.
He said an increasingly mobile workforce meant capital city revenues were flowing to regional city centers and rewarding long-term residents.
Dr Matthews said this exposed some councils for failing to adapt to the rising trend of internal migration.
“This partly gives people reason to reconsider regional life as well,” he said.
Dr Matthews said proactive planning for gentrification – filling service gaps in health and education for a larger population – would be key to protecting the fabric of communities in the future.
While some councils were proactive in addressing ballooning populations, a rising cost of living and gentrification, Dr Matthews said it was important regional Australia remained vigilant.
“I guess gentrification is one of these things that’s either good or bad, depending on your point of view,” he said.
“You can understand that there will be an increase in the quality of places and [services].
“But [gentrification] it is also an inevitable consequence of the movement of more people into the regions.”
Mr Taylor said while he was happy with his choice, he remained hopeful that parts of Australia affected by the changes he saw over the pandemic would find their way.
“We saw it when we slipped from [NSW] the floods … it was brutal,” he said.
“But what it did do was bring the original community together.
“I witnessed and experienced a sense of community that I thought was lost in that city – but it showed me that people were still there and everyone was feeling the same way I was.
“You know, they just needed a reason to do something good again.
“It made me realize how lucky I was to be part of that community.”