The Sunshine Coast poised to be the newest Australian tech hub
Right now it’s beaches, hinterland and the glossiness of Noosa, but the Sunshine Coast’s next chapter will be set in tech.
In a not-so-distant future, about a quarter of the nation’s internet will flow through a data centre in a Queensland hot spot associated more with pristine beaches, glorious hinterland and long Noosa lunches than any kind of tech groundswell.
But time and the tide are changing on the Sunshine Coast, where the region’s reliance on tourism is being challenged by its emergence as a key Australian technology hub.
The Sunshine Coast, which sits about 100 kilometres north of Brisbane with a population of approximately 350,000, is proving a popular rival for the nation’s upcoming Tech Central.
This is thanks in part to the coast’s natural charms, but also because of the plugging in of a submarine cable, one of just two in Australia – the other is in Sydney – that connects the nation to seven cities in four countries across three continents and two hemispheres.
The 550-kilometre fibre optic cable, buried under the ocean floor and connecting at Maroochydore to an existing Japan-to-Sydney cable, will allow internet speeds of up to 18 terabytes per second, the fastest connection to Asia from Australia’s east coast.
The company behind the submarine cable, Singapore- headquartered RTI Group Companies, is attempting to build the world’s largest private network. Its chief executive Russ Matulich expects up to $1 billion in investment will end up following his new cable into southeast Queensland.
“Undersea cables are invisible but great, powerful tools and everybody uses them every day,” he says.
Australian tech companies are already capitalising on the new cable, with data centre king Craig Scroggie already securing the landing station site for his second data centre on the Sunshine Coast.
Scroggie, the chief executive of NextDC, says the Sunshine Coast region has been completely transformed in recent years, partly because of an influx of people from Sydney and Melbourne who swapped metropolitan lockdowns for Queensland lifestyle. But also thanks to a shift in the dominant business demographic and the infrastructure that supports it.
“I’ve lived in Brisbane for a decade now. I used to like going up to the Sunshine Coast for holidays and now when you’re up there, it feels like it is starting to mature quite significantly from what was a beautiful little holiday location into a community that has some really important infrastructure pillars,” he says.
Scroggie says Australia is following the US trend of growing digital infrastructure in regional centres.
“What is happening in Australia is not dissimilar to what’s happening in the US and that is compute services and content is going into the regions,” he says.
“Obviously, computing has been largely clustered around very large populations in Australia and as a geographically diverse country, we have a lot of compute in a very small number of places.
“As the internet itself has evolved as a service, its users are not only consuming content but they are creating content. So, we have got this bilateral requirement to have more network and more compute at the edge rather than just at the core.”
NextDC’s next data centre will sit next door to the new $2.5 billion Maroochydore City Centre greenfield development, which will be home to the many new tech companies expected to make the shift.
“The local government was essentially the catalyst for making the early investment in the type of landing station with RTI and NextDC,” Scroggie says.
Sunshine Coast mayor Mark Jamieson wants his city not to rival Sydney but outdo it with its new city centre, $5 billion health precinct and $347 million Sunshine Coast Airport redevelopment, also at Maroochydore. “The Sunshine Coast is well on the way to being the tech capital of Australia,” Jamieson says.
“I see us as an economic powerhouse. Most people consider the Sunshine Coast a great place for a holiday and that will continue, but increasingly we’re advancing our economic prowess and the industries that are vital for our future.”
It is not just locals backing the region. The Sunshine Coast has even received the tick of approval from the newly formed, Sydney-based Tech Council of Australia.
“I don’t think people really understand the size and scale and over the next five years we expect more Australian companies, more global companies to move here,” says council executive director Kate Jones.
“If you’re a tech company and you’re thinking of where to make your investment, the Sunshine Coast ticks all those boxes.”
At the time of writing, the Tech Council estimates there are 10,000 tech workers in the Sunshine Coast and surrounding areas, a figure that almost matches that of Brisbane‘s tech sector.
Coinciding with the growth of the Sunshine Coast as a tech hub is the rapid evolution of the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC).
The university, which was founded in 1996 with little more than 500 students, now has 19,000 enrolments across five campuses.
“We’re relatively young still, at 25 years, but in the past 10 years we’ve doubled our size in terms of student enrolment,” says USC vice-chancellor Helen Bartlett.
“The growth has been quite rapid. We have gone from one campus on the Sunshine Coast to five campuses up and down the coast.”
Bartlett says topics of local conversation are changing. Today, there is talk of start-ups, innovation, and partnerships with international companies.
“That’s certainly how it is in my circles,” she says. “This has been a much more recent phenomenon. Once it was an economy led by tourism, but now it seems to be attracting companies who want to have offices here or individuals who want to set up here.”
USC has played a key role in the growth of local tech companies with its own hub that has harvested the growth of local start-ups.
“The innovation focus has been for about 25 years and the tech focus has been here for the majority of that time, with our university innovation centre celebrating its 21st anniversary,” says the university’s deputy vice- chancellor Ross Young.
As the nation faces a rapidly growing labour shortage, Bartlett says the university will focus on chasing regional and close overseas talent.
“We think that we‘ll see growing interest from international students,” Bartlett says. “They’ve always been interested in IT and business. We think, with a focus on Southeast Asia and South Asia, we can bring in even more talent who will want to develop those skills and to contribute to this region.”
USC computer science student and surfer Zane Hutchison, 19, would ultimately like to create his own software one day.
“I’ve heard that the submarine cable landing at Maroochydore could create a sort of tech hub here, so I’d be open to working on the coast at the end of my degree,” he says.
“(I chose) computer science, because there are so many different paths like machine learning,
artificial intelligence, databases, website development and cyber security. You’re not restricted.”
One of the key differences is that those who study locally tend to stay, Bartlett says. “As a regionally headquartered university, what we do is that if we educate our students in the regions, seven out of 10 will go on to work in the regions rather than working in the city, she says.
“That compares with just 2.3 out of 10 students in city areas. That’s very important for us to understand.”
With the rise of tech in the area comes new local groups who are helping to steer the sector.
Among them are Silicon Coast, a group of Sunshine Coast-based entrepreneurs, and the Sunshine Coast Tech Industry Alliance, which formed in April.
SCTechIA chair Kris Carver, the chief executive on Entag, says the sun is shining on the coast’s tech industry.
“The timing is right. If you look at all the things that are starting to come together for the industry alliance – you’ve got infrastructure, we’ve got a great motivated sector across fintech, food and ag tech, advanced manufacturing, cleantech – the timing is right to bring these pieces together, tell those stories so we can attract investment, attract talent and we can really build what is an emerging tech industry on the Sunshine Coast,” Carver says.
Westpac consumer and business banking chief information officer Paul Bari uses “silicon” to describe tech in southeast Queensland, where the bank has created a hub of software engineers.
“We’ve chosen the Gold Coast to combine the best lifestyle, career and growth opportunities into what we see as Australia’s own ‘Silicon Beach’ where tech and innovation meets the sun and surf,” Bari says.