Bob Beale While politicians and planners argue about how to solve the growing environmental and social problems of the urban sprawl, some Sydneysiders are finding their own solutions by going bush. To get Gary Andrews to return to Sydney, he says you'd practically have to prise him loose with a crowbar and drag him back. Ask his wife, Winnie, whether she'd like to head back south to Australia's biggest city and she almost shudders. "Never," she says quickly. The peace, privacy and relaxed lifestyle they and their children have found at Seaham, 30 km or so from Newcastle, make the thought of living in Sydney seem some-how crazy. Yet Gary and Winnie spent most of their formative years in Sydney - he in Fairfield and she in Canley Heights. They still have good friends in the city and recognise its many attractions. But they also know Sydney was high on hassle and expense and did not satisfy them as a desirable place to live or raise a family. They found such a place when they moved to Seaham in the mid-1980s. Eight hectares of bushland and paddocks surround their spacious modern home. They have two horses, a dog and room for their kids, Ben, Tobi and Emma, to play. Wallabies and brightly coloured parrots can be seen from their living room windows. They see Sydney largely as a bothersome place to be visited when necessary for work or recreation, but otherwise to be avoided. Trevor and Jenny Milne have similar feelings. Both grew up in the northern suburb of Epping, then moved to inner-western Annandale after they married. Fed up with urban life, they craved the countryside and a healthier, more relaxed atmosphere in which to make a home and have children. Since leaving Sydney in late 1984 they have built their own two-storey home on 20 hectares of former dairy farm in beautiful hilly country about 40 km west of Taree. Their two young children, Robbie and Anita, go to "the best school in Australia", says Jenny, who would not think of swapping the warm atmosphere at their tiny three-teacher primary school at nearby Bobin for a big city school. The Milnes chose the area because "it seemed to be the least likely to go ahead" while other northern coastal towns were booming with other "refugees" from Sydney. The past decade has been tough for them but they would not willingly return to Sydney. Between 1981 and 1991 about 400,000 people are estimated to have left Sydney to move elsewhere in NSW (mainly to the North Coast, Hunter and Illawarra regions), interstate (mainly to Queensland) or overseas, according to the latest census figures. Demographers believe "lifestyle" reasons were significant factors. The city's natural increase in population - births minus deaths - tallied just 254,000 in that time. Without an influx of new residents Sydney would have shrunk by about 150,000 during the decade. In fact, the city's population grew during the ‘80s: its net gain in people was also about 400,000, raising the total to 3.7 million. With a 1.1 per cent yearly growth rate, Sydney's population rose a little more slowly than that of NSW as a whole, which in turn was less than the national average population increase. Even so, if Sydney were to keep growing at that rate it would have 5 million residents within 30 years, and within the expected lifetime of a baby born today the city would have 8.5 million people. But the potential for further growth is already in question on environmental grounds. Air and water quality issues have prompted the State Government to halt in the past two years the release of thousands of blocks of residential land on the city fringes and defer indefinitely development of a proposed mini-city to the south-west. As the Planning Minister, Robert Webster, has conceded: "For decades Sydney has been allowed to develop with little thought to air and water-quality issues." Questions hang over the ability of the natural systems of the Sydney basin to sustain further development. Advances in some key technologies (especially in energy sources, waste disposal, transport and communications) might ease the environmental burden, but these can only be hoped for, not counted on. And few Sydneysiders would want their city to simply go on expanding without limit, in area or population size. Private individuals making submissions in Sydney's Future - the new draft planning strategy for the Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong region - were almost unanimous in their calls for Sydney not to become "another New York" or "another Los Angeles". Some asked for a population limit to be set; others thought Sydney already was too large. So, the planners are under pressure to find ways to contain Sydney's urban sprawl and population growth. This in turn has put one focus of inquiry onto why Sydney's population keeps growing and another onto finding ways to encourage people to settle elsewhere. The State Government expects to release its first regional development strategy next month. But large numbers of Sydneysiders have already voted with their feet in recent decades and left the city. Many were around retirement age and took advantage of high house prices to trade their family homes for something more scenic, usually along the coastal strip, says Associate Professor Ian Burnley, of the University of NSW's school of geography. But many were young couples and young single adults. Their reasons for leaving can only be guessed at, but Sydney clearly is Australia's most expensive place to buy a first home or live on a low income. Professor Burnley thinks a "push-pull effect" has been behind the exodus. The push comes from each fresh wave of high immigration into Australia, which increases housing demand (and therefore prices) and social tensions. That increases the incentive for people thinking of leaving Sydney for lifestyle reasons to seize the chance to get a good price for their main asset, their home, while prices elsewhere remain relatively lower. Periods of high economic growth also seem to encourage out-migration from Sydney, he says. As well, he believes a desire among many Sydneysiders for a less material and more "natural" life during the ‘70s and ‘80s fuelled "the pull of the North Coast lifestyle". Many more newcomers arrived in Sydney than left during the 1980s: more than 75,000 people from elsewhere in NSW; interstate migration added 170,000 more; and overseas migration added another 380,000. Now that the Federal Government has sharply cut its immigration intakes, however, Sydney is expected to grow more slowly. At its latest peak, immigration brought 157,000 migrants to Australia in the 1988-89 financial year. Less than half that number came here in 1992-93. The latest projections from the NSW Department of Planning suggest the city's population will not reach 4.5 million until 2021. Sydney's Future was predicated on that total being reached in about 2011. This gives environmental and planning authorities an extra decade of breathing space, Mr Webster says. But as his own department's briefing notes say: "Sydney will gain 10 years but will still have to solve the air and water-quality problems of 4.5 million residents by 2021. There will still be a need for urban consolidation policies to take the pressure off fragile environments such as the Hawkesbury-Nepean (river system)." A key component of the department's growth strategy is to encourage development and population growth elsewhere in NSW. Sydney's Future predicts Sydney will attract another 800,000 people by 2011 (the revised date will now be 2021). It suggests that about 200,000 of these newcomers should be diverted elsewhere, mainly to the Hunter Region. Gary and Winnie Andrews had a strong incentive to go to Newcastle: jobs became available in a newly decentralised branch of the Australian Taxation Office, for which they both work. That new office was the result of a successful piece of lobbying by Newcastle itself. Originally, the office was to be decentralised only as far north as Chatswood. Gary and Winnie thought their dream of "a bit of acreage" had a better chance of flourishing at Newcastle. They checked out housing costs, travelling times, amenities, educational and medical services. It didn't take them long to make up their minds to move. "We could have bought a comparable home in Newcastle and walked in with no mortgage and $30,000 in our pockets," Gary says. They took the opportunity to step up the property ladder. "We ended up with a place that was larger, suited our needs better, has 20 acres and is half an hour from work," Gary says. Newcastle offers many of Sydney's attractions but on a more human scale and at a less frenetic pace. For about the same cost as a modest inner-west terrace house in Sydney, you can buy one of the better detached homes in a Newcastle beachside suburb or one with sweeping water views at nearby Lake Macquarie. DOES Newcastle want Sydney's population over flow? Many Novocastrians fear further growth, believing the city is the east coast's best-kept secret of urban life. When the Sydney metropolitan planning strategy was under review, 31 Lower Hunter organisations - representing a cross-section of views - argued jointly in 1992 that the region's 427,000 people recognised the significant part they could play in reducing Sydney's growth pressures. "The Lower Hunter is an increasingly viable locational alternative to Sydney but more importantly it provides an opportunity to provide uniquely positive and sustainable solutions so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated," they said. Zoned land capable of housing 64,000 people was available: along with planned land releases and urban consolidation projects in Newcastle "the Lower Hunter could ... accommodate some 248,000 additional people within a short period of time - say 10 years - without major planning policy change". A similar but more recent joint submission to the Federal taskforce on regional development described the Hunter as "a region of enormous under-utilised resources and unrealised potential", but one suffering from inadequate investment, community hardship and unemployment above national averages". Therein lies the rub, says Peter Barrack, the secretary of Newcastle Trades Hall Council. The region needs major public and private investment to help the Hunter overcome these problems and position itself to take the expected population growth. "We're not opposed to growth, but it ought to be that the population follows growth," Barrack says. "It ought to be demand-driven, rather than simply to soak up the surplus Sydney growth." Without concurrent regional economic growth, population growth would worsen existing pressures on infrastructure and employment. "An extra 100,000 people on a 500,000 base is quite a significant impact," Barrack says. "I think over time - over a decade - they could be accommodated provided the Government was not seeing the issue merely in a one-dimensional objective, merely shedding people." Associate Professor Frank Stilwell, of Sydney University's department of economics, believes the Hunter Region is arguing along the right lines. He finds it hard to see, however, how the fiscal restraints on the State and Federal Governments can be reconciled with the level of infrastructure spending required. He is critical of Sydney's Future for its lack of detail on these issues and believes Australia suffers a lack of political will to carry out such long-range plans. But he believes Sydney's population exodus will probably continue to gather pace and regions such as the Hunter will grow instead. "If I were to take a punt I'd say it probably will happen but not for the reasons the planners hope," he says. "I think people will leave Sydney because housing will be too expensive and access to things like employment and the goodies of life will be too inequitable, not because of any decentralisation plan. That will almost certainly throw the planning problems onto the favoured coastal strip, and that's just passing the buck." Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1994, p 5.