The pull of Melbourne has become too much – we’re reverse sea changing

So. Turns out you can take the girl out of the city but it’s harder to take the city out of the girl.

Two and a half years after we ditched Collingwood for the beach, part of the great pandemic panic, we’re beating a retreat back to the bright lights. Kind of. We’ve signed a one-year lease on a 1930s Parkville flat to trial a hybrid model of jumping between Ocean Grove and Melbourne.

Kate Halfpenny is missing the pull of the MCG.

The official reason? My husband is back working in the city more. The 4.20am alarm for an early train to Southern Cross made him cranky. I didn’t love it either. I could never go back to sleep, even though Chris tried to be quiet clopping around in the RMs making a heart-starter coffee.

But being tired and commuting was manageable. What was harder to ignore was how much we missed the world’s best city and its leading role in who we are.

When we moved to Ocean Grove, a local told us she regularly booked a Melbourne hotel just to bathe in the city lights. We were bemused. What about seeing the Southern Cross blazing in a clear country sky? But after a while, I craved the artificial dazzle and the unplanned adventures. I wished I could teleport to Bar Liberty, to the MCG, the NGV. To anywhere man-made.

More though, I missed myself. Or the me I’d been for decades – someone who wore vintage Jean Paul Gaultier to a newsroom instead of tracky dacks to Baker’s Delight. Someone who had a tiny walk-on part in the industry of the city, threw an annual rooftop party, knew where to get borek, silk cotton pyjamas, a blow wave.

I’m not calling it buyers’ remorse because we’re still obsessed with our beautiful coastal place and have no plans to sell. It’s more a case of the old song: torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool. Loving you both is breaking all the rules. Or breaking the bank, at least. The monthly rent is more than our mortgage and we haven’t had the courage yet to tell our financial adviser to redesign the retirement plan.

It also started to feel our marriage was breaking, at least around the edges.

I’m mad for my husband’s black humour, grey matter and pink heart. But since 2020, we’ve lived and worked in close quarters, the past two years isolated from the people and places that were our relationship’s gorgeous backdrop. We started talking about the weather at dinner. Our Groundhog Day world made us simultaneously defensive and aggressive. Spending to save us in this year of recalibration feels worth it.

At the coast, you rely on nature for entertainment. And stunning as the view is, it never changes, 365 days a year. That’s not enough for us, raised on finding the unexpected around every corner and streets with people in them after 5.30pm.

Anecdotally, I’m hearing others are doing the reverse sea change, but we aren’t troubling the scorers much yet. March’s Regional Movers Index showed net “capital to regional” migration was up 16 per cent on pre-COVID-19 levels, although a small uptick in regional Australians returning to cities was noted.

Our flat? One-bedroom. Original cornices. Built-in bookshelves. Feels right. It’s in the same block as our OG BFF Lisa, who also lives between coast and city.

Less than two kilometres from our daughter’s place. One hundred metres from the old Parkroyal Motel, which my dad managed in the ’70s. The letting agent is the same bloke who rented me a terrace in Carlton’s Canning Street in 1986. I was late that day to pick up the keys, the city in chaotic gridlock because of the Russell Street bombing.

Nobody needs to pipe up and say I’m privileged to have two homes in a cripplingly tight housing market. I know that. I also know what I need to be happy, interested, interesting, married. This is my proactive alternative to therapy. Now, when can we catch up?

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.