Sea Change

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Two legends of Australian television, Sigrid Thornton (above) and John Howard (below), are reprising their roles as Laura Gibson and Bob Jelly in the beloved 1998 drama series, SeaChange.  
It will be on Channel Nine, not the ABC like last time.
Some twenty years on, Laura (Thornton) returns to the supposed beachside paradise of Pearl Bay.
However, it seems that this time around the script has its as Pearl Bay needing Laura just as much as she needs it.
Its original creator and head writer, Deb Cox, returns as executive producer alongside Sigrid Thornton, Fiona Eager and David Mott. 
SeaChange will commence production in 2019. 
<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/c_scale,w_580,q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/po.images/2018/10/17/howard.jpg" alt="">
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be returning to Pearl Bay. Time has passed and the world has changed, so as we revisit this rich and strange place I trust we’ll all delight in the chance to explore how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go," Sigrid Thornton said.
"I can hardly wait,” she said.
Andy Ryan, Nine’s co-head of drama, said it was two decades ago that SeaChange changed the face of Australian drama.
"Pearl Bay is still a hotbed of romance, mateship and community spirit. With plenty of fresh faces the new challenges, SeaChange is perfect family entertainment.”
SeaChange is produced by ITV and Every Cloud Productions for Nine.
Initially the comedy/drama series was made by Steve Vizard and Andrew Knight's Artist Services as a co-production with the ABC.
The 13-part series featured Thornton as Laura Gibson, a corporate lawyer who, after two decades of juggling career, marriage and motherhood, reaches a turning point when her snaky businessman husband is jailed.
She picks up her life, packs up her belongings and takes her two children to the quiet seaside town of Pearl Bay, where she accepts a job as the local magistrate.
The ferry operator and cafe proprietor Bob Jelly was played by John Howard), the progress-minded mayor. William McInnes is also back.
"Just keen to be working with the old gang again," McInnes, who played Max Connors between episodes 16 to 39, tweeted.
The original cast of characters included Diver Dan, played by David Wenham who is not on the latest cast.
The 1988 production saw filming around Melbourne and at the Victorian coastal town of Barwon Heads.
The first use of the term, seachange was by Shakespeare in The Tempest; referring to a paradigm shift in thinking.
In the modern context the term Seachange was popularised after the 1998 show by demographer Bernard Salt.
"I then unashamedly commandeered the term in my first book The Big Shift, published in 2001, to describe the shift by the Australian people to the coast." Treechange emerged in 2003. 
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Sigrid Thornton and John Howard back at SeaChange's Pearl Bay, but no David Wenham

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GUEST OBSERVATION
No longer pegged as one of the retirement villages of Australia, recent demographic data and interest in Tasmania suggest a change in the air. The seachange phenomenon, once linked to retirees, now involves younger groups, including young families. They are choosing lifestyle advantages associated with regional, coastal locations in a phenomenon that’s not isolated to Tasmania.
Certainly, places such as the Sunbelt Coast around Byron Bay in northern New South Wales have been similar to Tasmania in attracting baby-boomer retirees in search of a seachange. Our research, however, exposes some fundamental changes to this profile. The three largest age groups moving recently to these areas are all under 35. This raises the question: who are the seachangers really?
In addition to the population-related pressures of housing affordability and congestion, Australia is experiencing an ageing population and uneven distributions of people movements around the country. State and federal governments are talking about policies to redistribute people away from rapidly growing places like Sydney and Melbourne towards places experiencing decline or stagnation like South Australia and, until recently, Tasmania. Despite recent announcements of a redistribution strategy to ease big city congestion, without a comprehensive population policy much of the political rhetoric has remained exactly that.
Partly there is little understanding, beyond aggregate data, about how people are responding to population changes and deciding to move. What we do know is that people are moving in ways that our current assumptions about internal migration cannot adequately explain.
Goodbye Sydney, hello Tassie
In Tasmania, the reversal of interstate migration trends and the fastest population growth in almost a decade for the year to March 2018 are getting media attention. However, from a national perspective, the high level of migration out of Australia’s two biggest cities to coastal, regional locations suggests something else is at play.
Sydney is also receiving considerable media coverage of an increase in actual and planned migration from the city. Of the five substate regions (known as SA4s) in Australia with the highest net internal migration losses, four are in Sydney: the Inner South West, Eastern Suburbs, Paramatta and the Inner West.
Housing affordability, traffic and other forms of congestion that affect lifestyle and amenity are often cited as reasons for leaving. While Barnaby Joyce sees migration to places like Tamworth as the solution to crowded cities, it is coastal regions – places like the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Geelong – that are attracting more Australians than any other area.
Tasmania previously had a reputation for attracting retiring baby boomers with greater housing affordability, lower cost of living and the state’s natural and culinary environment for those seeking an active retirement. Yet a brain drain of youth to the opportunities offered by metropolitan cities had counteracted this trend. The “Mona effect” has changed Tasmania.
Of course, this is not a unique trend. Researchers internationally have explored the counter-urbanisation movement for many decades. Elsewhere, as with Australia, people have long sought to escape stressful and complicated city lives for simpler ones in rural or coastal places.
Internationally, we have seen a rise in so-called lifestyle migration of the middle classes seeking a better way of life. Often they choose non-urban spaces such as rural France and recently climate change “boltholes” for the super rich in places like New Zealand.
Australian seachangers are increasingly young
So who are the recent seachangers in Australia? Using ABS Census of Population and Housing data for 2016, we developed profiles of those who did not live in Tasmania or in the Sunbelt area one year prior.
The largest age group moving to Tasmania was those aged 25 to 29 years (14.0% of all movers), followed by those aged 20 to 24 (11.8%) and then 30 to 34 (10.3%).
Just like Tasmania, the largest age group moving to the Sunbelt was those aged 25 to 29 (12.9%), followed by those aged 20 to 24 (10.5%) and then 30 to 34 (10.2%).
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="">
Seachangers’ age structure for Tasmania and the Sunbelt. Author calculation using ABS Census of Population and Housing data
The difference between Tasmania and the Sunbelt is the place of origin of these migrants. Both attract a large proportion from overseas (27.0% and 16.2% respectively). For Tasmania, the next biggest groupings relocate from Greater Melbourne (13.8%) or the rest of Queensland (12.6%). For the Sunbelt, large proportions of recent migrants previously lived in Greater Sydney (23.7%), the rest of New South Wales (22.3%), or the rest of Queensland (12.7%).
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="">
Seachangers’ place of origin. Author calculations using ABS Census of Population and Housing 2016 data
What’s attracting the new seachangers?
The next important question is why are people moving to places that lack resources and employment? In research we have conducted over a decade now, it is clear no one variable dominates.
The most important factors often repeated to us involve both economic and aesthetic concerns. These include obvious issues like housing affordability, debt (via mortgage), stress and overwork. Other important concerns include risk perceptions of living in the city, bringing up children in simpler settings, experiencing increased quality time due to shorter commutes, and the imagined peacefulness of living in less populated and more aesthetically pleasing environments.
As we shift into a climate-changed environment, we could increasingly see movement for climate reasons. We are mindful that coastal development itself is at odds with this, with houses being built in highly vulnerable areas.
Importantly, with the appointment of a federal minister for cities, urban infrastructure and population and continued talk about overcrowded cities and how to alleviate this, we might want to examine those who are already making a seachange. Despite a recent Grattan Institute study finding that the major cities are “coping” and “adapting” and that much of the counter-narratives are overblown, there is too much anecdotal evidence to ignore that, at the very least, coping is not what people aspire to for their living and work environments. Finding a way to include these accounts in the current debate is crucial to our inevitable transformation into a bigger Australia.
Lisa Denny, Research Fellow - Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of Tasmania
Felicity Picken, Lecturer in Social Sciences, Western Sydney University
Nick Osbaldiston, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, James Cook University
This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-new-seachangers-now-its-younger-australians-moving-out-of-the-big-cities-103762" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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Meet the new seachangers: now it’s younger Australians moving out of the big cities

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It is tempting to think that life becomes idealic once you've made the sea or tree change, but the reality is often far from that.
And possibly a decision you and the family will regret.
It was recently suggested the once popular sea and tree change relocation phenomenon - which was lead by retirees over a decade ago - is showing signs of a return.
The sea and tree change represents a major life change which has often been based on a long held dream about retirement.
But the data suggests it is now being led by young families rather than retirees.
The population data shows that the shift is being fuelled by those aged 0-14 years and those between 25 and 64 years.
"This would seemingly indicate that migration within these coastal and lifestyle markets is being driven by young families," Cameron Kusher said.
For these young families it could be seeking life out of the fast lane or maybe tired of all the time spent in the traffic. 
“Sea and tree change have been the long forgotten buzzwords for the migration of people to coastal and lifestyle markets," CoreLogic RP Data analyst Cameron Kusher recently said.
"This trend was particularly strong before the financial crisis hit in 2008," he said, noting many lifestyle markets had since underperformed when compared to the capital cities.
The regions now attracting migration attention in New South Wales included the Shoalhaven, the mid North Cost, Central Coast, the Southern Highlands, Shoalhaven, the Blue Mountains and Illawarra.
"Recently we’ve started to see values rise in many of these regions.
"This supports the increased demand for housing (with migration as a source) which in turn, often leads to increases in home values.
“Another factor contributing to this migration is likely to be the recent home values increases in capital cities which has resulted in a deterioration of affordability and forced many younger families to look for alternatives to living in the capital cities," he said.
The need for employment is the key aspect to consider as even affordable housing needs income to pay off the mortgage.
According to the ABS, the rate of unemployment in most regional and coastal locations is significantly higher than in Sydney. It is crucial to put together a financial plan, remembering that wages may be lower and some costs will be higher.
The need for proximity to educational facilities is crucial too, from kindergarten to university.
For retirees access to health care is crucial, along with the issue of finding new friends and keeping intouch with old friends and the family.
Kusher analysed the top 25 national statistical area regions for internal migration over the 2008-09 and the 2014-15 financial years from the latest ABS Migration Statistics.
Outside of NSW, the busy lifestyle regions included the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Geelong, Mornington Peninsula, Bunbury and Mandurah.
Don’t think it silly to rent and try before you buy, suggests buyers agent Veronica Morgan from the television series Relocation Relocation.
"It seems like a massive upheaval to do this but it’s nothing compared to the stress associated with having to sell a short time after buying if it doesn’t work out.
"No amount of research and planning will prepare you better than actually living the dream," she suggests.
Morgan also warns not to overpay through having a city mentality.
The good news for potential changers is growth in city house prices has significantly outperformed regional prices, so there will be a tidy kitty.
But be warned buying back in Sydney might be an issue once you've departed the big smoke for a few years.
This article was first published in the Saturday Daily Telegraph. 
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