Work from Blacktown, Ballarat... or Bali? Seeking leisure and lifestyle is the Australian way

Australians, the inventors of seachange and treechange, are fusing work, with leisure and lifestyle. I see a world where both aspirations connect to deliver an even better quality of life.

Bali, a tropical idyll that initially appealed to the hippie set then widened its market to scoop up families. Picture: Thinkstock

Australians have always been great travellers. From the colony’s earliest times, well-to-do squatters would travel “back home” to England to see the sights, to reconnect with family, to savour the fruits of their labour on a long, languid boat trip via exotic ports.

Perhaps it’s an attribute of a colonial society that the capacity for travel is regarded as a marker of success and sophistication. The new world delivered prosperity but, to some from that era, it may also have been viewed as a tad provincial. For them, leisurely travel was compensation for living so far from home.

By the 1960s young Australians and Kiwis had established a protocol of travelling to and working in London for an extended period. Years later both cultures would find unique terms to describe this process: we call this adventure a gap year, while the Kiwis call it their OE or overseas experience.

Leisure travel within Australia was rare prior to the 1970s, especially for families. The rise of the Gold Coast and the opening of Sea World in 1971 in particular changed the travel landscape. East coast Aussies discovered the joys of the road trip. Some even stayed in a motel along the way where breakfast was delivered to the room via a wooden trapdoor. At the time this was a truly exotic experience!

Then came Bali, a tropical idyll that initially appealed to the hippie set then widened its market to scoop up families. Out with in-room breakfasts; in with chef-made omelettes consumed in a breakfast room replete with a thatched roof. Where Bali went, Fiji, Phuket and others followed. By the 1990s Australians were travelling long distances and interstate for holidays and even long-weekends at newly discovered destinations like Byron Bay, Noosa Heads, Port Douglas and, as always, the Gold Coast. On the west coast places like Bunker Bay gained prominence.

In the 21st century globalisation across two decades has delivered prosperity to Middle Australia. That wealth has been channelled into housing and exotic travel. Destination weddings, offshore conferences and cruise experiences are no longer out of the ordinary.

This capacity for leisure travel within Australia has shaped the way we live. I am sure the pandemic will be viewed eventually as a turning point in the Australian way of life. Out with nine-to-five working, in with remote work and the four-day-week. All of it enabled by access to new technology including Zoom.

In this brave new world of leisure experiences I see a fusion of work, lifestyle and travel. Some might rail against this seeming breakdown of the way productivity is delivered, of course, but the balance of power between employers and employees shifted during the pandemic and young people are increasingly assertive about how they want to work.

Australians will have greater capacity to dictate how, when and where they deliver workplace value, be that from Blacktown or Bali. Perhaps Australians, the inventors of seachange and treechange, might increasingly fuse work, leisure and lifestyle by choosing to “bolt on” workdays from holiday destinations.

Australians value lifestyle and travel. I see a world where both aspirations are neatly fused to deliver an even better quality of life.