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The death knell for the love affair sounded from a neighbour's open toilet window three doors down.
A hacking cough. Several grunts followed by a satisfied "Aaah". Then the flush.
I remember that sticky summer morning well. It was the moment I knew I could no longer live in the city. It took a neighbour's bowel movement, heard from the barely liveable two-up, two-down terrace I shared - a slum by any measure - to finally extinguish my affection for Sydney. This was not the life I wanted to live. The sea change came soon after. I was 40.
Fast forward a quarter of a century and people aged between 30 and 40 are bailing out of Sydney in record numbers. According to NSW Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat, twice as many millennials who arrived between 2016 and 2021 left. All up, 70,000 have fled to more affordable cities or the regions. Buying or renting a place to live in Sydney had become too expensive.
Terrible news, we were told. A city without grandchildren lies ahead if something isn't done about the exodus.
But I wonder if there isn't good news in a mass movement of young people to regional towns and cities which had been ageing faster than the big cities.
Perhaps this long-overdue reversal of our national obsession with big-city living is a positive thing - even if it does come with pain in the short-term as it pushes up regional housing costs and puts a strain on services. New blood means new energy for the regions, long neglected by city-centric governments.
Could millennials be the leading edge of a decentralisation so many governments have pushed for but failed to deliver? The vanguard of a move to finally wean ourselves off the big smoke?
A city whose soulless CBD streets are now lined with homeless encampments, whose shining new spaghetti junctions have brought motorways to a standstill, whose expensive new apartment blocks are riddled with defects, whose parks and schools are laced with asbestos, is a hard sell, especially to young families.
And as I learned all those years ago, Sydney's attractions - its harbour and beaches, the nightlife, the food and retail offerings - are in reality the province of the very rich or tourists. For locals on the wrong side of the latte line, which runs northwest from Sydney Airport to Parramatta and beyond, dividing the wealthy from the rest of us, the things that make Sydney attractive are rarely, if ever, glimpsed.
It's with some smug amusement I watch as the city airs its neuroses at the news the millennials are leaving in droves.
One notably ludicrous opinion piece suggested raising a family in an apartment was entirely possible, if not easy - before revealing the unit in question was in the beachside suburb of Coogee (where NSW Premier Bob Carr, who in 2000 declared Sydney was full, recently shelled out $8.8 million on a penthouse). And right at the end, the author let slip she'd ended up buying a larger house.
Another claimed those selfish boomers who bought into Balmain back in the 1970s when it was cheap and undesirable, full of factories and container terminals, had ruined the place by growing old and staying there.
What really had me laughing, though, was an outing last week by the NSW Premier Chris Minns. He dragged a clutch of friendly mayors to the Harold Park unit development in Forest Lodge to pitch his vision for higher density. The missing middle, he proclaimed, exactly what Sydney needed, but he failed to mention a family sized unit in any of those blocks - even if one were available - would cost at least $2 million.
No wonder the millennials are leaving for greener pastures.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Have you noticed more young families moving into your region? Is this a good thing? Was Bob Carr right all those years when he said Sydney was full? Should more attention be paid to providing housing in regional areas? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Victoria's devastating storms have shone a spotlight on the need for more backup power to telecommunication towers, Premier Jacinta Allan says. About 33,000 homes and premises across the state were still disconnected from the electricity network as of Friday morning, Ms Allan confirmed.
- An immigration detainee who is refusing to co-operate with authorities on his deportation is attempting to use a High Court judgment that freed 149 immigration detainees, ruling it was illegal to keep them locked up if there was no prospect of deporting them. The detainee wants the ruling expanded to cover people indefinitely detained who refuse to co-operate with authorities on their deportation.
- A doctor has had his medical registration cancelled over a series of demeaning and conspiracy-laden social media posts. GP Michael Ellis made dozens of Facebook posts between 2017 and 2020 attacking "gaydom", "moslems", "big pharma", vaccines, and his own colleagues.
THEY SAID IT: "Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvellous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space." - Susan Orlean
YOU SAID IT: Garry says the word "sorry" has been devalued by inauthentic corporate mea culpas.
Lee writes: "One of the things I hate about the way a corporate person has provided a number of apologies to me is to say 'I'm sorry you feel that way' and 'I'm sorry that is the message you got/the way you took what I said.' What they are really saying is: 'I am not sorry about what I did/said, just how you perceived it.'"
"There are none so contrite as elite sportsfolk who misbehave. I believe every word that is written for them," writes John.
Jennifer writes: "An apology is only meaningful when the person understands the harm done and works really hard at ensuring further harm does not occur. Compensation (in whatever form is relevant) helps in acknowledging that the harm done requires more concrete action to both acknowledge its significance and help to support the person in dealing with it."
"Saying sorry without a full confession and true repentance is as worthless as the Argentinian peso, as you said," writes Tony. "For 'sorry' to have any meaning it has to be heartfelt and sincere. The amount of sincerity in a corporate apology cannot be seen by an electron microscope! I believe a sincere apology deserves forgiveness, corporate apologies do not. I'm sorry."
An apology to Erik, whose comment in Friday's Echidna was scrambled with someone else's. "Erik, I'm very sorry," writes John, while Erik offers this thought on Galileo: "He got himself into that pickle. Cardinal Bellarmine, responsible for the church's policies on science, was happy for him to pursue his heliocentric model as a theory. But Galileo wrote a book in which he portrayed the Pope as a simpleton. That's what got him into trouble, and the heliocentric model was just the pretext for his punishment. Nevertheless, an apology was probably warranted."
Kel writes: "I'm learning to say sorry in a timely fashion and my partner has taught me a lot about that. Once she said, 'You always think you're right' - I don't, but I saw her point, I used to be someone who would rather try to argue and debate my way out of an apology until I realised it's not about who's right or wrong, it's about who feels wronged and when you hurt someone you love, it doesn't matter whether you intended to or not - if you love and respect them, you should say sorry. I think you hit it on the head, Garry - it takes humility and perhaps bravery too because there's no guarantee the apology will be accepted and that uncertainty is what can keep people from even attempting."
"Thanks for the article - great work," writes Paul. "I just wanted to apologise for whatever offence I caused to Echidna that has meant my comments are seemingly no longer published. I am sincerely and deeply apologetic for not seeing how sensitive Echidnas are beneath that apparent spiky exterior, and that I should have been more attentive to ego stroking in my responses. I hope that you can accept this most sincere and heartfelt apology and that we can resume normal relations."
Here's Paul's comment on Barnaby Joyce we overlooked (so sorry, Paul): "The thing that struck me about the latest Barnaby saga was that the first thought of the person walking past was to pull out their camera and not their sympathy for a fellow human being in possible distress. Adam Bandt implied Barnaby had gotten off lightly compared to a woman politician in the same situation. I beg to differ. I think people would have been more sympathetic and even speculated on bullying from male colleagues for a brain fade involving mixing medication and alcohol. I would also think the passerby would have offered help, not filmed the incident."