What's what?

"Fuck that . I don’t want more people and even if there was a genuine economic benefit to more more, more people , there is no amount of money or economics that will ever replace what we’ve lost by signing up to the neo liberal infinite expansionist theory."

Yep.

I think your smart enough to know WA isn't really a typical example.

Mass immigration in my town? From where? And that caused what? Absolute bollocks. Mining boom = mass immigration to my neck of the woods? From where? Interstate?

Infrastructure has improved. No question. Even taking into account ridiculously over-blown council offices. New hospital up the road. New roads up the road. New arts centre and cinema. New skatepark. New primary school.

And there's bad. Shopping centre. Bland main street. BUT is that (non existent) immigrant's faults? Or wonky, shonky governance?

More crowded surf. Fuck, I wish it wasn't so. But from immigrants from OS? For every South American and African, there's a shed-load more from Perth and interstate, and I was part of that problem.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no valid reason we should ruin our home.

“Brought up in a world of changes
Part time cleaner in a holiday flat
I stare out to sea at the ships at night

No anesthesia
I'm going to work on it day to day
No zephyr, no light relief it seems

But maybe it's a dream
I'm lying back in a row of timber cases
Placed out on the dock with nightmare faces looking at me
And I can see now and I wanna be free now

This is my home, this is my sea
Don't paint it with the future of factories
I want to stay, I feel okay
There's nothing else that's perfect
I'll have my way

We're all sinking in our own mud
We're all sinking in our own mud

Brought up in a world of changes
Waste product pedestrian limb from limb
A short changed by the surfing priest again

Two children in the harbor
They play their games, storm water drain
Write their contract in the sand, it'll be gray for life

But you can draw the blind but you can't stop the sun
From shining on and on and getting you there
Tide forever beckons you to leave, something holds you back

It's not the promise of a swell or a girl just
The hope that some day, some way it'll be okay
So you stop and say

This is my home, this is my sea
Don't paint it with the future of factories
This is my life, this is my right
I'll make it what I want to
I'll stay and I'll fight

I'll fight and I'll fight and I'll fight
And I'll fight and I'll fight
I'll fight and I'll fight and I'll fight”

"Just bought a 3 bedroom place on NSW south coast. 150m to a prime reef, a little further to the beach breaks. Walking distance to shops and restaurants. $500,000. Cannot see another house from the back verandah, just a cricket field and Banksia scrub with a stretch of ocean behind it."

Oh to live in a world where downsizing to a $500 seachange seems like a bargain!

Good luck to you blindboy, enjoy it. It appears you've earnt it, but that's some different world shit going on there...

Population of Facto’s town 4410 (2006) to 14000 ( 2016) to present ?

I’d say it’s a quadrupling. Hands up who enjoys that ? And think how many locals bailed elsewhere to escape the crowds.

Now they’re heading even further afield since the places they bailed to are getting busy.

Not Sydney crowds by any stretch, but it’s just the tip of the ice berg for a regional town. Nothing will improve except business.....maybe not wages though.

"And don't come the raw prawn with the false equivalence, moral or otherwise, malarkey."

"ALP/LNP same same."

Bingo!

Bugger, all bets are off regarding you these days. Used to be a nice little earner!!!!

ALP are just as wedded to mass immigration as LNP .

Same same.

Blindboy didn’t earn it.

The influx of immigrants pushed the price of his apartment so high he could’ve moved to a house in virtually any regional town in Australia.

If someone tried moving to Dee Why these days .....that’s what you call having to earn it.

"Hands up who enjoys that ?"

Hands up who's an immigrant?

From overseas or China or some shit...

Facto calling racism already !

You know that’s an open admission of defeat when you strawman the argument with the racist card don’t you ?

Australia is already nearly 50 percent foreign born , bit late to say that it’s racism responsible for people not wanting to see every bit of green space built over.

All everyone wants is a place with a bit of space , just like BB has.....but too bad , you’ve got to shove over cause there’s money to be made in development and selling citizenship.

Ha ha.

Hands up who fits the bill?

Hands up whose 'unconscious racial bias' is off the richter?

Hands up whose twin obsessions are immigration and China?

Strawman.

Imagine being able to visit a place in 10 years from now with even the faintest hope that it hasn’t been ruined or tainted with the hallmarks of more people , more people , more people.

Sad to realise that we all know it would never happen. The place is being jammed to the gills with people for......?

"Blindboy didn’t earn it.

The influx of immigrants pushed the price of his apartment so high he could’ve moved to a house in virtually any regional town in Australia.

If someone tried moving to Dee Why these days .....that’s what you call having to earn it."

Well yeh, but you've gotta humour the old boy.

Joking...well kinda....

Yes there's a lot of the above involved, but blindboy appears to have been a contributor. Yes willing to sell out on the rest of us...but a contributor..

Facto there's heaps of towns like yours, but to be frank, it's only cos the fresh immigrants haven't worked it out yet. They're coming.

I unfortunately recently moved near home due to family illness. Back next door to the shithole I grew up in that no aussies move to. It'll never be super busy there, not that kind of town, but geez its way busier than before. And that ain't internal migration!

Don't worry Facto, even if they were of European stock I'd be dead against 300/400k immigrants rocking up every year.

Actions speak louder than words.

Blindboy ran away from the mass of humanity he wants to inflict on everyone else. No two ways about it.

In a year he’ll be driving home from a visit to Sydney and wondering what he was thinking living there.

Well more to the point I ran away from a $400,000 mortgage. Yeh I should have joined all those Liberal voting negative gearers when I had the chance and I would never have had to leave Abbottworld. Run, run run away.

Doesn't take that long.

Did you own your home before you sold it ?

Or did the mass population increase drive up the price so high that capital gains paid for you to escape the ridiculous crowds of Sydney?

Dramatic stuff! THEY'RE COMING!!!!

Hands up who's on the piss?

Speaking of drama, remember waaaaay back when the 'seachange' phenomenon was all the go? They even made a TV show about it! Where people that lived on the coast for all the right reasons suddenly got invaded by rich fuckers, and the true believers who didn't own a place got priced out of it? Then there was 'treechange'. Same same but different.

Actually, in the inner cities it happened too. Working class suburbs invaded by yuppies. I think it was called gentrification.

"Imagine being able to visit a place in 10 years from now with even the faintest hope that it hasn’t been ruined or tainted with the hallmarks of more people , more people , more people.

Sad to realise that we all know it would never happen."

Anyway, hands up who's been to Crypto's neck of the woods? Actually anywhere on the whole coast?

And I hear Karratha's house prices have dropped somewhat too.

Got the music room set up, some old Dylan thing going round my head

"Someone's got it in for me,
They're planting stories in the press

Something something something

"The idiot wind blowin' every time you move your mouth
Something, something heading south"

Great first line on the chorus.

"Don't worry Facto, even if they were of European stock I'd be dead against 300/400k immigrants rocking up every year."

PM ProMo's 'temporary' work visas = millions of jobs blah blah blah brigade?

English fleeing Brexit?

Great example , Facto.

Karratha - House prices increasing by 1000 percent , town turned into a suburban nightmare in the middle of the desert . Small town vibe destroyed. Unsustainable pressure placed on immediate environment. Fishing fucked. Pristine places ruined.

Reason ?......massive population increase.

You’re not making a very good point for mass immigration, Facto.

Facto, I am actually thinking about Streaky or somewhere on the Eyre P.

I am literally ringed by a massive new housing development.
Any day the bulldozers will show up.

Most of the influx here is white flight from Sydney.

Facto - tries to blame LNP or the people of Australia who do t want their home inundated.

Never the ALP responsible.......literally from the horses mouth https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/02/labor-immigration-extremists-go...

ALP/LNP do not deserve your vote.

Streaky is cool if you can handle the cold. Some nice people there. Maybe a fish or two ......

Mining boom and bust. Wow! Really?

https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/property/2018/09/12/post-mining-boom-pr...

Where's the OVERSEAS immigrants at?

Forget strawman, you're clutching at them...AGAIN...hollow-man.

You don’t think anyone from overseas moved to Karratha and pushed the price of housing up ?

Have you ever been to Karratha ?

Once known as 'seachange' now 'white flight'??

Crikey, Mrs Marsh, it does get in!!!!

Seachange is when people moved to be in a more casual regional environment.

White flight is when people who didn’t grow up in high density crush zones with a high proportion of foreign culture move to an area where they are surrounded by a culture they are comfortable with. You know , that’s why people move to a whitebread town like Margaret River, to be amongst a familiar culture.

Free ride.... U are kidding? bahahaha

Living in the past, with profoundly undemocratic views is really bad for your health. Including your mental health. Small Australia is long gone. It is big and getting bigger all the time and nothing is going to stop that. Yep immigration will slow for a while but the population will still increase so even if the percentage increase stays the same, the absolute increase will be greater. There comes a point where you really are best to go with the flow. Australia is part of a world experiencing the tail end of a population explosion. Some demographers are reducing their maximum population levels from 11 billion to 9 billion and bringing the date forward to the 2050s so presumably some of you will live long enough to see a global population decline. Until then maybe go visit some places that have suffered from under-development ........ and then complain. Yeh yeh yeh, I know, heard that all before 500 times in this thread alone but Australian exceptionalism is just a slightly less toxic version of the US strain ........ middle class expectations, nostalgia for a world that never was and an abdication of any sense of a common global humanity. Disappointed that you haven't got a Trump wannabe to vote for? Ha ha

Yes I've been to Cryptoland, on work survey, I think I saw 6 surfers in a whole week constantly peeking into the coast between sites. It seemed beautiful and hardcore.

BB congrats on the new place, at the end of the mining boom phase 1 we did similar (health reasons also nuked my traditional career path after a very flat tack period where I never said no to new work, but hey it's good to be alive). What have we seen 12 years into it?
1. Fish & chips went from $75 a family in boomtown instantly to $26. Nice.
2. It was quiet. Development happened slowly, then as mining went off and RE went on, it got turbo charged, to the extent that the place is now very different. Some consolation is the cities have generally gone into hyper-crowdmash, so in relative terms, it's still 'quieter'.
3. Over time a part in the new community is found, and that is nice.
4. If you are older, or need medical care, you will look for proximity to this. That has remained good.
5. New work evolved, and I remember the moment I realised "Hey, I could actually do this and follow it as a path." Again, nice.
6. Being on the coast, there's an explosion of consciousness for it and surfing. A get away, a space to breathe, etc. If you are into new age stuff, you might say its a reconnection of spirit or to the global heartbeat or similar. This manifests in crowds, people wanting to learn, people progressing, people just crusing on logs, people forming businesses that take care of everything from surf equipment to cleaning accomodation.
7. Everything is connected, so a good swell means attention, just as Instagram does. From my own travels, I'd say proximity to major population centres has a direct correlation to the amount of attention of said events. For example, driving between Sydney and Brisbane it was pretty crewed initially, then (censored) then by the time we got to Broken head it was mental nuts crowded, and continued to be so.
8. The RE cycle has now turned. We will see how it all pans out in terms of the crush loading of the cities and the spilling out of ex-city residents. Or will, once the work/black market economy runs out of cash, we see the crush loading reverse? The only constant is change itself. Enjoy the NSW south coast, it's the only coast of Oz I haven't really had a decent look at. (Checks the S NSW Swellnet forecaster notes haha)
9. There is time to smell the roses, and give back in whatever capacity you can. That also is nice.

Hey BB re having Dylan on the mind, Dad went to NY on a scholarship in 1961 and his teachers used to take him down the Village to hear the acts and guess which up and coming artist he got to hear?

Disappointed for a world that never was ?

How long did you say you’ve been in Australia for ?

Population has pretty much doubled in my lifetime alone . I was there , BB. I lived it. The census confirms it.

The population growth can be reduced from its current extreme levels. Not turning back time , it’s called democracy !

Funny you should talk about undemocratic when more than half of Australians don’t want a bigger Australia and they’re flagrantly ignored by the ALP/ LNP duopoly.

Population growth can be slowed from its current extreme levels. It’s not called living in the past , it’s called democracy!

Anyone who thinks Australia was a better place in the 70s either wasn't there or was so off their dot the entire period, they can't remember it.

You just say that because you were struggling to understand a new culture.

Australia in the period 75-95 was as good as life has ever been for anyone in the history of the world.

Subject to personal decisions of course.

vj, I saw him once in Centennial Park in Sydney in the 90s. When he came on a stack of us just ran down to the front and ignored the security. Saw the whole show leaning up against the stage. It was pretty good but for me peak Dylan was the Highway 61 Revisited/Blonde on Blonde era. I will still knock out a version of Like A Rollimg Stone given the slightest encouragement!

Quieter , cheaper , simpler . Less bullshit. Less people . More pristine . Less rules . Easier.

Better.

Your not serious BB ,i survived the 70s and australia was such an easy place to live,to get around without the crowds surf was pretty much always uncrowded...what wasn't there to like?

.......unless you were gay, indigenous or female. Or got on the wrong side of local cops by having long hair and smoking dope. Good enough reasons for a thorough kicking!

“Facto, I am actually thinking about Streaky or somewhere on the Eyre P.

I am literally ringed by a massive new housing development.
Any day the bulldozers will show up.”

Ughh that’s fucked, get outta there FR76.
You on standard sized block or bigger?

It's amazing how much you miss in the rear vision mirror with your uncrowded surf goggles on.

Did you really just say that it’s better for females now ?

Fuck me , you’ve swallowed the lot didn’t you ?

My missus laying next to me happens to disagree with you too. But what would she know ?

Blowin I think the resources per capita stat had Australia and Canada 1971 as the absolute peak iirc? HQ Holden was also released then, that was the all time high ever

Kidding about Streaky SD?

Kind of.

As to white flight: Not my concept. Not my bag.
But when you look at the range rovers, Audis and beamers dropping the kids off at school it's pretty obvious whats happening.

This used to be a fishing village. And I mean way before whitey came. A place of male initiation too.
Like a lot of east coast headlands the inside section of Lennox is an ingeniously designed and built fish trap.

Still works brilliantly too, well it did until Whitey with his brilliance made it off limits to fishing.

The things I value most in life ( beyond intimate human relationships ):

Being a part of a pristine environment.

Healthy environment in which to live.

Space and solitude when I need it.

Plentiful natural resources .

Ease of life.

Informal society.

None of these have improved in the past 40 years. Most have gotten exponentially worse. Mainly due to inorganic population increase.

" struggling to understand a new culture" Well weren't we all? By 1970 I was deeply embedded in a really strong local surf culture competing for waves with every pro on the NB when the point was cranking. No mate, I knew what was going on.