Why this patch of south-east Queensland is a micro-business hotspot

Five hundred metres above sea level, surrounded by ancient rainforest, the place they call “the mountain” is just over an hour’s drive from the Brisbane CBD but feels a world away.

The weather at Tamborine Mountain is reliably a few degrees cooler than on the Gold Coast, and locals boast the air is fresher.

Where the streets of Queensland’s capital are full of people rushing off to work for big business or the state government, here you’re more likely to run into someone making a living selling artisanal fudge, German cuckoo clocks, or crystals and candles.

His own health struggles inspired Dwayne Chanter to set up Hinterland Hemp.Credit: Rosanna Ryan

In a bright space next to a honey shop on the main drag, the Gallery Walk, Dwayne Chanter works on his own in his small business seven days a week.

The job has its challenges but is easier on the body than the commercial flooring work he was doing a few years ago. When he injured his back, doctors initially gave him the usual opiate-based painkillers. He found more relief with medicinal cannabis.

That journey inspired him to set up a shop selling shirts, superfood snacks and healing balms, all made of hemp. For Chanter, it’s more than just a way of paying his bills.

“I get goosebumps multiple times a day, when I get either phone calls [from customers] or I’m just talking to people about this stuff,” he says.

“[The reward is] knowing that it makes some sort of difference, not only for the environment but for people’s health and wellbeing.”

Tamborine, population 7500, is one of a few major towns in the Gold Coast hinterland – an area with the second-highest density of micro-businesses in Australia, research found.

GoDaddy’s Venture Forward study this year defined micro-businesses as those with fewer than 10 employees, including solo entrepreneurs, specifically looking at those that had a presence online.

Where most parts of south-east Queensland have one or two of these businesses for every 100 residents, the Gold Coast Hinterland – made up of the towns of Springbrook, Canungra and Beechmont, along with Tamborine – has more than 11.

The data comes as no surprise to Janice Smart, who sells wellness products from a nearby shop on Gallery Walk. This is a town with no McDonald’s, no Woolworths, no Coles.

Smart began selling Himalayan salt lamps when she was living in a beachside suburb on the north of the Gold Coast. But when the pandemic hit, it felt like the right time to get out.

“I had a dream to live on a mountain. My logo has a mountain on it. I created that 15 years ago, and never thought anything of it, but I must have been manifesting it,” she says.

“I just wanted to get my kids away, so we could teach them how to be self-sufficient, to be mindful of what you’re doing every day, not just being in the rat race running around a wheel.”

Janice Smart at the Old Church, an events space that she is helping with marketing and website work.Credit: Rosanna Ryan

“The mountain” offered her family a different lifestyle. Here, she could get a massage from her neighbour and pay with eggs from the chickens in her backyard.

She no longer works alone in her shop: having two employees gives her time to focus on a new hustle running candle-making parties, and freelance marketing and web design work for other local ventures.

Business on Gallery Walk, Smart says, isn’t about competitiveness: there are enough tourists to go around.

“There’s three crystal shops on Gallery Walk, and I have a crystal shop. If I don’t have a crystal, I’ll send them down to the next shop. If you work together, it comes back.”

Further GoDaddy research found Queensland entrepreneurs were more likely to be female, more likely to have finished formal education with high school, and less likely to be earning more than $100,000 from their businesses.

Tamara Oppen, GoDaddy’s vice-president of English markets, says many of those surveyed initially would set up “side hustles” while keeping their full-time jobs. As they find success, they can move to full-time work, and consider hiring more staff.

“That’s what people underestimate – the positive impact these micro-businesses have on the economy,” she says. “We’ve only seen that grow since the pandemic.”

While the Gold Coast hinterland stands out, other south-east Queensland hotspots include Broadbeach-Burleigh and Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, parts of inner Brisbane, and Maroochy on the Sunshine Coast.

Rowena Barrett, QUT’s pro vice-chancellor for entrepreneurship and regional innovation, says Queenslanders have a culture of innovation.

The professor says the south-east corner has other ingredients for small business success – such as fast internet and good access to services – but that culture is key. “We just get stuff done; if it’s broken, we fix it.”

Business isn’t always easy for the shops of Gallery Walk. Where Janice Smart could once rely on being one of a few suppliers of Himalayan salt lamps, customers can now pick up cheap versions at Kmart.

Dwayne Chanter is trying to get the word out about his business, but finds it challenging to advertise on online platforms wary of hemp’s association with illegal drugs and the highly regulated world of medicinal cannabis.

“When it comes to advertising … roadblock, roadblock, roadblock, restriction, restriction, restriction,” he says. “If I was selling alcohol? Put your sponsorship on a football jersey, happy days.”

The environment has its own challenges. There are few roads in and out of town, and shop owners are vulnerable to natural disasters like the storms that hit about Christmas last year.

Housing is as expensive as in some inner-Brisbane suburbs, which means not everyone can afford to pack up their lives to start a small business here. But Chanter says even a day tripper can experience what makes the Gold Coast hinterland special.

“It’s a different noise up here,” he says. “Down there it’s air-conditioners and cars and sirens. Up here it’s the wind through the trees and the birds.”