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Executive summary

The ‘sea change’ phenomenon is driven by social processes and affects Australian communities, economies and the environment. It describes the depopulation of the bush and migration from many inland regional centres to coastal environs. While Australian capital cities continue to grow, the ‘sea change’ phenomenon is also fuelled to a lesser extent by the population migration from those capital cities to coastal regions.

Both anthropogenic pressures such as population migration and tourism (for example, through greater demands on existing infrastructure), and natural pressures such as coastal erosion and flooding are affecting ‘sea change’ communities. Furthermore, both the anthropogenic and natural pressures are on the increase. Despite these trends, there is little research on the actual state of ‘sea change’ environments.

While all tiers of government have acknowledged some of the problems associated with the phenomenon, infrastructure pressures over the last few decades, along with changing community expectations, have forced local governments in particular to confront the ‘sea change’ challenge. It would be naive to assume that one tier of government in isolation could respond to the ‘sea change’ phenomenon.

But perhaps the reasons that people move to the coast are not unique. The population shifts may well be driven by the same factors that drove people to the suburbs of Australia’s capital cities, yet with the quality of life in Australia’s city suburbs in decline, along with economic decline in other regional centres and the bush, where else does the dream of utopia lie?

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