Why life in the Gympie region is calmer, cheaper, safer

The rural world id a far cry from the bikie brawls and age-stripping traffic jams of places like the Gold Coast.

Forget buying a property - you spend most of your life in a car at most of our major cities these days. Picture: Contributed

FROM bikie brawls to infrastructure-imploding crashes, living on the Gold Coast was never something which could be called "dull”.

Which is why I know you'll never find better places to live than in regional Australia. It seems I'm not alone, either.

The Regional Australia Institute has revealed more than 400,000 people have moved out of the cities and towards greener pastures in the past five years.

And why not?

Here, I rarely worry about a four-minute trip to work ending up as a 40-year journey to the promised land because someone couldn't drive in a straight line.

A much more tolerable traffic jam. Picture: Katherine Emery

I love Robina Town Centre's variety - but I like my chances of not being shot at Goldfields or Gympie Central a whole lot better.

Nor do I need to cram into a 12sq m cubicle ambitiously called an "apartment” with 14 other people and a pet goat just to pay the rent.

Of course, with the influx there needs to be infrastructure and jobs.

A good way to start would be driving more of the ever-growing number of public service jobs here - and with it their wages.

So why can't Gympie be home to police headquarters, or TMR?

Call me crazy, but I'd even take the Psychologists Board of Queensland at this point.