Victoria. What does it do differently?

One thing I have always wondered about Victoria is why there are so many large regional centres opposed to other states.

Towns like Mildura, Ballart, Bendigo, Warrnambool, Horsham, Hamilton, Echuca, Shepparton, Wodonga, seem to be quite progressive, virbrant and thriving.

What are peoples thoughts on why these towns seem to do so well, especially when compared to regional areas of other states.

Catch
Patrick
 
One thing I have always wondered about Victoria is why there are so many large regional centres opposed to other states.

That's an interesting observation.... I thought NSW had some seriously big regional centres....Newcastle, Wollongong....

The Y-man
 
I always thought it was QLD with the big regionals.
Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Rocky, Townsville and Cairns?

Isn't QLD the only state with more people out of the capital city than in it?

See ya's.
 
Agree that all of the other states have large towns(and larger than Vic towns), I guess the question I was asking is what drives the growth in these towns, or what where they founded upon. Most of Australia lives near the coast or a capital city, but allot of the regional towns in Victoria are inland, defying this trend.

Toowoomba could be another example.


This question arose when I was comparing similar towns and trying to identify the driving differences.
Naracoorte/ Bordertown v Horsham
Deniliquin v Echuca/ Griffith
Renmark (Riverland) v Mildura (Sunraysia)
 
One thing I have always wondered about Victoria is why there are so many large regional centres opposed to other states.


Pat,


Given belu's comprehensive list, I'd say your opening statement is patently false.


The list is totally bereft of any Victorian large regional centres.


Big city Melbourne at 4m, just around the corner Geelong, about to be swallowed up at only 175K and then nothing else in the whole state unless you go looking under 100K.


I'd agree with TC, Queensland is the state with the attributes you allude to.
 
We were discussing this today at work. I think its because VIC is such a geographically small state, with a reasonable sized population. So, regional roads and other infrastructure is generally better than other states which are more spread out. (I was shocked when I drove SYD-MEL a few years ago.. the quality of the roads improved dramatically when I crossed the border)

I have no idea whether the regional areas are stronger economically in VIC than other states, but I know in our business, we have larger distributors in many more regional areas than in other states. They are easier to service and they have better potential for strong sales.

Pen
 
That's an interesting observation.... I thought NSW had some seriously big regional centres....Newcastle, Wollongong....

The Y-man

My mate from western NSW tells me that NSW stands for Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong.

As for Victoria; Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton and the Latrobe Valley (Traralgon & Morwell) are all within 150 Km of Melbourne, The Bracks government did slightly support these areas as 'provincial Victoria' with the fast trains, and other measures.
 
Agree that all of the other states have large towns(and larger than Vic towns), I guess the question I was asking is what drives the growth in these towns, or what where they founded upon. Most of Australia lives near the coast or a capital city, but allot of the regional towns in Victoria are inland, defying this trend.

Toowoomba could be another example.


This question arose when I was comparing similar towns and trying to identify the driving differences.
Naracoorte/ Bordertown v Horsham
Deniliquin v Echuca/ Griffith
Renmark (Riverland) v Mildura (Sunraysia)

I just wrote out my reply and lost the lot!!

Okay, to recap, I think I get what you are curious about, many of the Vic towns were settled as gold towns, some went on and thrived, some died..

some of the river cities and town ports were established as the means of transportation, eg Echuca, a river port.

Bothe Bendigo and Ballarat were gold towns, also Maryborough, Castlemaine, Ararat, Stawell, Creswick was too but notice it died down to what is left now.

Victoria is a relatively 'small' state but relatively a large population, from north to south of the state it's 'around' a 6 hour road trip, Mildura to Melbourne. Even if you live in Horsham you are almost midway b/w adelaide and Melb, and a few hours from Great Ocean Road, or coastal towns...

Each 'section'? of vic has it's hub centres, Bernard Salt the demographer likes to call 'sponge cities' they are what I call 'catchment cities' surrounding towns, smaller places population can shift into, but also remember it's more complex than that too. the great inter migration is actually b/w reg. cities to towns and cities, eg Ballarat residents may relocate to Horsham, or Bendigo for example.

Regional Victoria has been the place I have chosen to invest, my reason of part is that I've lived in many of the cities/towns, have observed them over time and am comfortable (at the moment) to park my money where my mouth is. Regional Vic investing has been kind to me, plus I have bought well.

It suits my wants and needs at the moment.

Some reading for you, I find of interest, but does not beat on the ground due diligence and knowledge:

Wikipedia does a basic history of each town and city of Australia, seems to have most places, kind of a good overview if interested in it's whatnots. Just google the town/city name along with wikipedia next to it.

Internal Migration within Victoria

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...+catchment+sponge+regional+cities&hl=en&gl=au

Internal migration in Victoria


Intrastate movement


This section looks at migration trends within Victoria, with particular emphasis on the period 2001–06. At this level of geography, the only reliable source of data is the Census of Population and Housing.



Intrastate movements comprise the bulk of all moves and many of these are over short distances. Of the 1.7 million movers in Victoria over the period 2001–06, 28% stayed within the same SLA, and a further 51% moved elsewhere in the State. This relates to familiarity with an area – research has consistently shown that people are more likely to move to an area with which they have some knowledge. Moving short distances also minimises disruptions to education, employment, and social networks, and may also reflect a desire to improve one’s position in the housing market.

Migration flows between Melbourne and regional Victoria


Despite Melbourne’s dominance in Victoria’s urban geography, it tends to lose population to regional Victoria. As the chart below shows, this trend has been occurring since at least the early 1980s but the volume has been volatile. Between 1981 and 1986, the net loss of persons from Melbourne to regional Victoria was approximately 21,510 persons, a volume that has not been recorded since. This was an era when rural living, and the subsequent migration out of all Australian cities, was at its peak. During the 1990s, net migration loss from Melbourne to regional Victoria in each intercensal period was less than 2,000 persons, but between 2001 and 2006, the net loss increased sharply. This was due to a large decline in the number of persons moving from regional Victoria to Melbourne, while the flow in the opposite direction remained relatively steady.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...vztLgz&sig=AHIEtbRtqgA7xL_eGQA3FTcsxCu0uiIibA

An older report case study:
Migration to (and from) "sponge cities":Dubbo and Wagga Wagga as case studies

Shane Nugent

------------------------------------------------

Bernard Salt (demographer) sometimes has some interesting books, articles:

http://www.bernardsalt.com.au/publications/the-big-shift/press-releases
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State of Australian Cities

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&source=www.google.com.au
--------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/regional_australia.html

Regional australia
-------------------------------------------------------

http://www.dpcd.vic.gov.au/home/pub...orias-regional-centres-a-generation-of-change

Victoria's Regional Centres
------------------------------------------------------------

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...nds+for+regional+victorian+cities&hl=en&gl=au

-Regional VictoriaTrends and Prospects

Fiona McKenzie and Jennifer Frieden,

Spatial Analysis and Research Branch,Strategic Policy, Research and Forecasting Division March 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apologies for sloppy arrangement of information, I was neater the first write up...:p I don't know that much about the interstate towns/cities, but no doubt they offer some nice investing too, it's just that I like to play in my own backyard at the moment.
 
The emoticon face on Dubbo is an accident, I'm not game to go back in and edit in case I lose my post again.......:confused: shall leave it all as is...
 
Side point: I also share some of PennyK's sentiments about some infrastructure, I never realised how good we had it (pre floods) here in vic intil I got up into queensland, the streets and roads...Victoria is fortunate, (generally speaking around the areas I am familiar with).
 
One thing I have always wondered about Victoria is why there are so many large regional centres opposed to other states.

Towns like Mildura, Ballart, Bendigo, Warrnambool, Horsham, Hamilton, Echuca, Shepparton, Wodonga, seem to be quite progressive, virbrant and thriving.

What are peoples thoughts on why these towns seem to do so well, especially when compared to regional areas of other states.

There are several ways to measure the extent of regional living.

One can look at the proportion of the state's population living in the capital city. Vic, SA and WA are the highest (70% plus). Qld and Tas are the lowest.

But how you draw the boundaries can change things - eg Perth's overflow spills into Mandurah, Brisbane's into the Gold and Sunshine coast, Sydney's into the Central Coast and Melbourne's into the Mornington Peninsula. Are these places counted as metropolitan or not?

Or one can look at the size of the largest regional city relative to the capital. Perth is something like 20 times Bunbury, ditto for Melbourne and Geelong. Whereas Launceston is half Hobart's size, and even Devonport and Burnie are reasonable proportions. In between is Sydney which is 10 times Newcastle's size.

Then there's dispersion. Victoria being a small state has most of its largest regionals within 2 hours of Melbourne. It's Latrobe Valley though is unusual - it has a European style constellation of small cities near each other. Nothing else like it in Australia.

WA's big regionals, except Bunbury are 400 - 600km from Perth, and Queensland's are even more dispersed. WA has only a handful of regional cities between 2000 and 20 000. They're either small towns or regional cities - little in between.

An oddity about Victoria is that all its biggest regionals (except Geelong) are inland. Whereas in WA they're all on the coast (except Kalgoorlie). NSW's biggest regionals are coastal as are Queensland's. The only two big Queensland cities that are inland are Toowoomba and Mt Isa.

The Murray is the only area where the river has greatly increased inland population density (with cities like Mildura, Albury, Wodonga etc), though most big coastal cities are on river mouths.

The four largest states have coastal development conurbations - Gold Coast - Sunshine Coast, Newcastle - Wollongong, Mebourne - Sorrento and Perth - Dunsborough.

The main differences is that in the case of NSW and WA the outlying centres were typically ports, industrial or farming centres before the lifstyle crowd discovered them. Whereas those in Vic had a long history of holiday resorts, while Queensland's were built more recently for that purpose, with only tiny settlements before.

I don't agree that Victoria does things differently, though I suspect that its earlier rural colonisation and huge inland populations due to gold may have had an impact. Being on important highways (to Sydney and Adelaide) may have helped. And in some areas its wetter climate allowed smaller more intensive farming than lower rainfall places further inland. Irrigation is also a factor that encourages closer settlement and horticulture (especially if there are large metropolitan markets a few hours away) as opposed to more extensive cropping and livestock grazing.
 
*snip*
Then there's dispersion. Victoria being a small state has most of its largest regionals within 2 hours of Melbourne. It's Latrobe Valley though is unusual - it has a European style constellation of small cities near each other. Nothing else like it in Australia.
*snip*
And in some areas its wetter climate allowed smaller more intensive farming than lower rainfall places further inland. Irrigation is also a factor that encourages closer settlement and horticulture (especially if there are large metropolitan markets a few hours away) as opposed to more extensive cropping and livestock grazing.

FWIW, I believe that a lot of the towns in Latrobe Valley are a day's-horse ride between each other. So that's how they started. IMO.

The reason they've remained and not dispersed is for the 2nd reason - good farming conditions which meant even as the population grew, there was a) enough production to feed everyone and b) the production was strong enough to be financially viable for a relatively larger population.
 
Our Obsession, Thanks for that very detailed and informed response. That pretty much satisfies my curiosity.
 
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