By Rachael Dexter and Craig Butt
On census night, in August last year, St Kilda resident Rebecca was 1600 kilometres from home.
A month earlier, the day Premier Daniel Andrews announced Victoria’s fifth lockdown, the 46-year-old lawyer bundled up her cat and a few belongings and drove north to Byron Bay, in NSW.
Lawyer, Rebecca, was one of many St Kilda residents who left Melbourne during COVID lockdowns.Credit: Eddie Jim
“It was really a whirlwind. I was working remotely anyway, so I just knew I didn’t have to be here for [another lockdown],” she said.
Nine months later, Rebecca was still in Byron.
Rebecca, who requested her surname not be published, is one of many Melburnians who fled lockdowns and were away from their homes on census night, resulting in population declines across dozens of suburbs.
When plotted on a map, the suburbs with population declines form a “red wall” across Melbourne’s inner-east and south.
The wall stretches from St Kilda and Elwood, up through Prahran, Windsor and South Yarra, all the way north to Kew and Camberwell.
Although Greater Melbourne’s population increased by almost 10 per cent between 2016 and 2021, about one in five suburbs bucked that trend as their populations declined.
Matthew Deacon, principal demographer at Demographic Solutions, said: “The declining populations were unusual in the context of the significant urban redevelopment that has been happening in Melbourne for the last 25 to 30 years.”
“[Usually] more dwellings equals more households equals more population,” he said.
The reasons why some areas shrank are obvious. Student suburbs concentrated around the CBD and university precincts had the biggest drops in population due to the evaporation of students and overseas workers during successive lockdowns.
But the reasons for the decline in other areas are more curious.
“Some of it will be students from Swinburne, but some of it is likely to be fairly well-off people who left Melbourne to work from their holiday homes, I suspect … particularly around Toorak and Camberwell,” said Glenn Capuano, demographer at ID Consulting.
Deacon agreed with the “beach house” theory, saying that some Melburnians moved to their holiday homes on the Mornington Peninsula, Surf Coast, Bass Coast or Greater Geelong. But there are other contributing factors.
Melbourne during lockdown.Credit: Scott McNaughton
“Fewer overseas students, fewer young backpackers, fewer persons from the country and interstate and fewer business migrants. [These are] very fashionable places for temporary high-income types,” he said.
Overseas students and backpackers were more likely to be responsible for population decline in the Prahran-Windsor end of the “red wall”, he said, while drops in Kew were more likely attributed to a dearth of business migrants and families heading to their holiday homes.
Populations also declined in pockets of growth areas in Melbourne’s outer-north and western fringe.
In certain areas, the “empty nester” effect is responsible for the population drop. Older suburbs that were popular with Baby Boomers raising their families in the 80s and 90s, including Hoppers Crossing in the west and Mill Park in the north, are shrinking as part of what demographers call the “suburban life cycle”.
Wyndham City mayor Peter Maynard said families with adult children from Hoppers Crossing, Werribee and Point Cook were seeing their children move to new greenfield developments in the region, or leaving the council area altogether.
But he said the comparatively small declines in population in some suburbs of his council area were countered by “crazy growth” in others alongside them, like Manor Lakes, Tarneit and parts of Werribee.
In the northern pocket of Mill Park, the population dropped 2 per cent between 2016 and 2021, while in the southern areas of the suburb the population declined 5.5 per cent.
“A lot of the Baby Boomers are moving on, with their children having left, and they’re wanting to downsize or even go to a retirement home,” said Kon Kouvas, a real estate agent at Ray White Mill Park.
The big question for policymakers and demographers is whether major pandemic-related shifts detected in the latest census will be temporary or permanent.
Port Phillip mayor Marcus Pearl, whose council area takes in Elwood and St Kilda, said while many residents in those areas left during lockdowns for respite from the city, the ground had shifted again in the 11 months since census night.
“I would also say that speaking to real estate agents locally there’s a lot of people returning to the city,” he said.
As Melbourne’s lockdowns dragged on, Rebecca realised her stay in NSW would become long term. She found a rental of her own in Byron Bay and leased her St Kilda apartment to an international couple until she finally returned home in March this year.
Three of her friends also fled Melbourne for the coast – only one has returned to Melbourne.
“When I returned it was a good time to come back. March, April and May were really nice here and I was quite happy,” she said.
“But with everything creeping back in again, [it] feels like it’s almost time to go again.”
With Cara Waters and Melissa Hong.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.