<
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/reality-bites-for-covid-tree-changers-called-back-to-city-offices-20231205-p5ep6x.html>
"Sydney had just endured the great lockdown of 2021 when Stephen Mudd and his
family packed up their inner Sydney lives, handed back the keys to their
two-bedroom rental apartment and hit the highway for Newcastle, where a house
with a garden, close to the grandparents, awaited them.
Fast forward two years and the communications manager now gets up at 4.20am to
commute to St Leonards once a week – a train trip that takes him just over two
hours.
“You couldn’t do it every day, it’s just too long,” he said. “I get up that
early that I don’t see my wife and son at all in the morning, unless I’m noisy
and wake them up. Then I get an hour or so with them both in the evening. You
get to 7 to 7.30pm, and you’re a bit of a zombie.”
City dwellers drove migration to regional Australia during the COVID-19
pandemic. While the rate of population growth has since slowed, it is still
about 0.9 per cent a year – faster than Sydney’s – and the exodus of often
younger people to capital cities has dropped off.
NSW Regional Transport Minister Jenny Aitchison said former Sydneysiders called
back to the office were among those contributing to higher passenger numbers on
regional trains. Patronage on long distance regional services was now greater
than before the pandemic, although she said most travel was leisure-related.
More than 1 million journeys have been carried out on TrainLink long-distance
regional services this year, she said, with some services recording up to a 47
per cent increase in passenger numbers compared with 2022. Overall patronage is
now 3 per cent higher than in 2019."
Via
Guardian Australia.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
