by Ray Clancy on August 26, 2013 in Jobs in Australia
The lifestyle in the Australian city of Gold Coast is so attractive that people living there are willing to commute all the way to Brisbane and Sydney, a new study has found. Gold Coast is famous for giving Australia the idea of a retirement lifestyle by the beach then it pioneered the idea of having a beach house down the coast, now it is leading the way in a new craze called extreme commuting.
People love the lifestyle in the city so much that they are prepared to commute extraordinary lengths, according to a study by KPMG demographer Bernard Salt. ‘Whatever it is that the Gold Coast has to offer must be pretty good because extreme commuters are growing faster than in any of the 10 largest cities in Australia,’ said Salt.
The report points out that Australians have long demonstrated their preference for a beach lifestyle which is why the Gold Coast is now this nation’s sixth largest city. Indeed, its habitants are now the biggest intercity commuters in Australia with 26,000 workers commuting each day to Brisbane easily outpacing second placed Wollongong with 17,000 daily commuters to Sydney. However, the extreme commuting trend goes further. Over the five years to 2011 the number of long distance commuters in Australia jumped 37% to 214,000 where a long distance commuter is defined as someone who travels more than 100 kilometres to work. It is also interesting to see that the number of long distance commuters living on the Gold Coast jumped 92% to 6,700 over this period.
Other long distance commuting resident workforce statistics show an estimated 13,800 for Brisbane, 14,300 for Melbourne, 16,500 for Sydney and 24,800 for Perth. The Gold Coast contains about half the population of Adelaide, about 577,000 residents versus 1.2 million. But according to the KPMG study the long distance commuter population is more or less the same in each city with 6,700 on the Gold Coast versus 6,800 in Adelaide. Many are Fly In, Fly out (FIFO) workers in the mining industry.
The difference is that Adelaide’s FIFO workforce serving the mining industry can fly in and out of Adelaide’s airport. But the Gold Coast’s FIFO workforce serving the mining industry must commute through Brisbane airport when they have a perfectly operational airport in their own back yard.
According to the study the most popular long distance commutes from the Gold Coast in 2011 were to Sydney (980 workers) and to the Bowen Basin (540 workers). Long distance commuters are also present in other non-capital cities such as the Sunshine Coast (4,100), Newcastle (5,500) and Mackay (3,800). The study also shows that the Gold Coast punches above its weight in the long distance-commuter stakes no doubt because of this city’s unique lifestyle appeal.
The purpose of the report was to measure and compare the scale of the long distance commuter population living on the Gold Coast with other benchmark cities including Brisbane, Mackay and Newcastle. The report draws on published and unpublished census data.