More Australians are fleeing metropolitan areas and embracing long work commutes for a taste of home ownership.
The average work commute in Australia is 48 minutes per day, but some workers have quadrupled this time in transit due to skyrocketing prices.
PR consultant Megan Burton, 23, lives on the Sunshine Coast and makes a four-hour trek to her job in Brisbane’s CBD.
Burton once had a glorious 15-minute bus ride to work but gave it up for a “brutal” commute so she and her partner could afford a house.
“We’re first-home buyers and we were looking under $700,000, and there wasn’t a whole lot to pick from in Brissy,” Burton told 9news.con.au.
“It all happened very quickly, it was like, ‘we don’t have a choice, we’re going to have to commute’.
“We fell in love with the area and we’re close to the beach. It’s an absolutely brutal commute but to get into the property market at our age, that’s pretty good.”
Metro to regional relocations have spiked after a post-COVID dip, the Regional Australia Institute found.
It’s mostly millennials – aged 28 to 43 – leading the charge of people moving away from capital cities.
Burton drives 30 minutes to the train station and takes a 1.5-hour train to get to work in Brisbane.
When she made the move 104km away, Burton asked her boss if she could work some days from home.
Luckily, her boss was lenient and she now works remotely two days per week.
Like Burton, Dr Aleisha Davis, chief executive at The Shephard Centre in Sydney, decided on a tree change from a capital city.
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Davis, her husband and three sons moved from Sydney to Bowral to steer clear of the “rat race”.
Now, she regularly drives 96km into work in the Sydney suburb of Newtown.
“It was incredibly difficult, we were dropping the kids off at seven in the morning and picking them up at six at night and it was just a constant rat race,” David explained.
“There was no way we were going to be able to afford anywhere with space, we’re on good salaries but it’s just impossible.
“We just thought, ‘what are we doing?’ so we moved down to Bowral. Best thing we ever did.”
Davis often drives into Sydney’s Inner West five days a week – an hour-and-20-minute journey from the Southern Highlands.
Her job, which involves helping children with hearing loss, requires front-facing work but she doesn’t mind the long drive.
She said the drive is sometimes equal to her old traffic-laden commute in Sydney.
“It’s a definite change, I’d choose it over the chaos of Sydney any day,” Davis said.
Adelaide journalist and podcast host Bevan Jones faces a three-hour round trip from his home in Morphettville to work in Murray Bridge.
Jones has no choice other than to drive as the commute would take a minimum of three buses.
“I didn’t have much of a choice (other than to drive). Thankfully we don’t have any tolls,” he explained.
“You’re collecting a fair bit of petrol, the petrol prices are all over the place – sometimes it’s really good and other times it’s shocking.”
Jones said he uses the time in the car to plan his podcast Legends with Bevo and stops for a coffee break along the way.
He told 9news.com.au he’s happy to sacrifice a short commute to live somewhere he loves and work a job he enjoys.
The 2025 McGrath Report predicted more Aussies will make a sea change next year to coastal locations.
