Town where growth and jobs collide

If you’re a Tasmanian tradie looking for jobs, here are the best suburbs to get work in now.

Builder Trent Young lives and has his business based at Sorell. Picture: CHRIS KIDD

“IF YOU are a plumber in Queenstown — get to Sorell.”

That’s the advice of leading demographer Bernard Salt, with jobs in trades booming as the population grows in towns such as Sorell.

In research commissioned by the Mercury for the Future Tasmania series, Mr Salt found the areas that have experienced the biggest population growth were Sorell, which grew by 20 per cent, and Port Sorell, which grew by 18 per cent. The most dramatic drop was in Queenstown, with a population decrease of 11 per cent.

TASSIE ON THE CUSP OF GREATNESS

Sorell Mayor Kerry Vincent said growth was across the board, including in the agriculture sector due to the extension of the south-east irrigation scheme.

“The [Tasman] Peninsula and lower East Coast are perfect waters for the finfish and shellfish industries to keep expanding and both of those places are hot spots for tourism,” Cr Vincent said. “When you look at the residential growth in the area, that leads to growth in hardware and trades, which in turn leads to everybody buying a pie and a Coke for lunch which has a spin-off for retail as well.”

LET’S START CELEBRATING OUR ‘FIT AND HEALTHY LIFESTYLERS’

Mr Vincent said there were 3000 jobs expected to be created over the next decade in the South-East.

The Sorell School is home to the South East Trade Training Centre, which was built in 2015 to meet the demands for Vocational Educational Training in rural and regional areas.

“We’re working closely with employers to make sure we train people at our trade training centre with the skills to go straight into those jobs,” Mr Vincent said.

He said in his nine years on council, the total value of development applications had grown from $1.5-2 million to $6-7 million a month.

Developer and builder Trent Young, from The Young Group, lives and has his business based at Sorell and said he did not have to go far to find work.

“Sorell’s really taken off — we bought a site a few years ago and it was unloved, with no one else really interested in it and didn’t know what to do with it, but as the area’s evolved, it’s become a central part of the town,” Mr Young said.

“We’re trying to do as many projects as we can locally and employing as many people from the area as well. There’s just a bit of a shortage of industrial work in Sorell right at the moment so we’re working up the road in Cambridge.”

Read the full Future Tasmania series in Monday’s Mercury.