Why these Australians left the city for life in the regions

It’s been eight months since Nadine Mannering moved from Melbourne to the regional city of Ballarat, and so far, she’s “absolutely loving it”.

Mannering says, “there’s always lots going on” in the area, known for its thriving food scene and well-preserved architecture built from gold rush prosperity.

“Best of all”, she says, are the locals, who are “so, so nice”.

Moving to the country was a big change for Mannering, who previously rented in inner-city Fitzroy. But the marketing professional wanted to own her own home.

“It occurred to me that if I wanted to buy alone, I could never afford to buy in inner Melbourne – no chance,” she says. “Even if I scraped in somewhere, I’d never be able to afford a place with a garden, or a study, or a big kitchen.”

She narrowed down the regional possibilities by factoring in a possible commute to Melbourne and decided Ballarat (110 kilometres north-west) “seemed like an obvious choice”.

Mannering bought an “odd-shaped piece of land” in central Ballarat and enlisted her architect sister to design a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home that fitted on the block.

Her new home has also become her office as her employer supports flexible working arrangements, but Mannering travels the state too for her side gig as a marriage celebrant. The combination suits her. “I honestly don’t know if I could go back to working in the city every day,” she says.

She has found plenty to explore in Ballarat’s charming streets and the “amazing artisan food and home products” of the markets in nearby Daylesford, Creswick and Talbot.

Being the new person in town can be hard, she concedes, but her concerns were allayed by “the small-town charm and the feeling of a country community” of her adopted home, “where people say good morning to you if you pass them on the street and where your neighbours want to know you”.

And of course, she has space to invite them all over now – “a house and a garden and a big kitchen and everything I wanted, and I can afford it on my own”.

Lara Flanagan loves her country home too, but small-town life wasn’t part of her game plan. She was “struck by a fairy wand or something” when she first drove into Tenterfield, a town of around 4000 people in regional New South Wales.

That was back in 2012 when Flanagan was a pastry chef living on the Gold Coast and just visiting Tenterfield to work at a function. But her first impression of the town, surrounded by national parks and mountain ranges, is still vivid.

“I just fell in love,” she says. “I thought it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen in my life.”

Six weeks after that visit, Flanagan and her four-year-old twins moved to the town. Her boss on the Gold Coast kept her job open for her, but the country lifestyle soon had the little family hooked.

Flanagan had “been a city girl all my life” but loved that “things aren’t so frantic here”.

“I ended up buying a little cottage, which I would never have been able to afford to do on my own on the Gold Coast,” she says.

The freedom that came with a lower mortgage meant other career avenues opened up. Over time, Flanagan has become a photographer, social media manager and freelance writer, “a bit of a Jill-of-all-trades”.

She’s loved watching her kids Larissa and Archie, now 13, “fall in love with nature and simplicity, and [learn] that they can have a really beautiful life, really simply. I think that’s some of the life lessons of the country”.

The three of them often go for a dip together at a swimming hole in the afternoons.

Flanagan describes Tenterfield as a town where shops still close on Sundays, “but it’s very cosmopolitan as well”.

She’s added to that richness too, recently opening her own photography gallery – an opportunity she attributes to the “knock-on effect” of the lower cost of living that regional life enables.

“I would never have been able to afford to pursue my dream of photography,” she says, “and to open my own little place in the city. It would have been completely beyond me.”