Pull factor: Adelaide’s secrets revealed

Homes for $500k, a 30-minute commute and classy stuff to do. Were we wrong about Adelaide?

New arrivals … Adelaide couple David Bailey and Alexia Schar at 2KW Bar in Adelaide’s CBD on Friday night. Picture: James Elsby

Don’t go telling everyone, but there’s a place in Australia where you can buy a family home for around 500 grand near the beach or in the hills, spend less than 30 minutes commuting to work, and make it to the wine country for a classy dinner and a cracking bottle of red by 7pm on a Friday.

It’s a place that’s long been dismissed as devoid of job opportunities and, in a lifestyle sense, derided as a bit quaint, or even dull. Now, there are growing signs that the genuine promise of a more affordable, manageable life is luring escapees from the east, as the long-suffering residents of Sydney, Melbourne and even Brisbane seek respite from congestion, tolls and punishing property prices.

And while every eastern state premier is slamming the shutters and declaring their state full, South Australia’s Steven Marshall has a simple message for people stuck in their cars on Parramatta Road or the Bolte Bridge.

“Give SA a go,” Mr Marshall told The Weekend Australian. “Give us a go because there is another life for you out there. Every week I hear of somebody who has moved from one of our big cities to Adelaide and been shocked by what their money can buy in the property market in SA and very pleasantly surprised by the type of jobs that are now on offer.

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“Routinely people talk about selling their house in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, buying their house freehold in Adelaide, and putting money in the bank, in a really attractive environment for their kids to go to school, good quality jobs, and a great lifestyle.”

Mr Marshall’s remarks aren’t the empty touting of a man desperate to kickstart a flagging state. For the first time since South Australia’s State Bank collapse in the early 1990s, which fuelled an exodus from the state and deterred anyone in their right mind from shifting there, the latest population data shows South Australia is finally reversing the trend.

While the state’s rate of population growth remains half the national average of 1.6 per cent, the rate of net interstate migration out of South Australia has almost halved from well above 7000 people a year five years ago to just over 4000 people in 2018.

Mr Marshall said one of his main policy objectives as Premier was to achieve zero net interstate migration, and then to swing the migration pendulum in South Australia’s direction.

He has a four-pronged strategy to grow the population: a greater share of the skilled migration intake; concessions for overseas students to stay longer in South Australia upon graduating; attract residents from the east; and win back young South Australian expats who departed under the state’s debilitating and extended brain drain.

To that end, young couples such as property lawyer Alexia Schar, 32, and her electrician husband-to-be, David Bailey, 28, are in Mr Marshall’s exact sweet spot.

Mr Bailey was born in South Australia but left for Queensland as a boy, while Ms Schar lived most of her life there but moved to Brisbane with Mr Bailey three years ago after they met while working on the ­snowfields of Canada during a gap year.

They moved to Adelaide three months ago after Ms Schar got a good job at a leading law firm, Wallmans, and Mr Bailey found work with ­Niessen Electrical.

“We are getting married on December 6 and it just seemed like we might as well do everything at the same time — wedding, new jobs, move interstate,” Ms Schar says.

“We paid $455,000 for a house that’s just four minutes’ drive from Brighton Beach, with three beds, two baths, 20 minutes out of town, and it would have cost us $650k-$700k if we had stayed in Brisbane and who knows how much in Sydney or Melbourne.

“I’ve got a lot of mates from here who moved to Sydney and now they’re moving back.”

Mr Marshall said he’s got friends who have told him the same story.

“We need to sell this story to the rest of Australia,” he said.