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We're all familiar with the concept, but what's it really like to sea change? Meet the family who relocated from Melbourne to their holiday house in Warrnambool.
Richard Smith and Kerrie Pearson wouldn't be the first couple tempted to move to their beach house, enticed by the change of pace, open space and (especially this time of year) sunny seaside vibes that permeate through the streets.
Almost a year ago however, Richard and Kerrie followed their spontaneous tendencies and decided to live the dream. They packed up their home in the Melbourne suburb of Ormond and with their two daughters, 10-year-old Heidi and seven-year-old Asha, moved into their Warrnambool holiday home.
"It got to the stage where we were moving from rental house to rental house every one and half years or so, and just getting jack of that," says Richard. "When COVID hit, we were disappointed in the fact we couldn't get down to our holiday house in Warrnambool and instead were stuck in Melbourne. We had a crystalised thought that we were much happier in Warrnambool when we were on holiday than doing real life in Melbourne."
This story is from the new Change of View publication. Click here to read it online.
Richard had been running media agencies for 23 years in Melbourne and is now a media consultant at The Standard. He and Kerrie had already tried a tree change, moving to Emerald in the Dandenongs in 2012, but once their daughters were born decided it was too far from the grandparents in Melbourne.
They moved back to the city in 2016, living in four different rental properties in the subsequent six years, and buying their beach house in Warrnambool in 2017.
"We checked out the prices of holiday houses on the Mornington Peninsula, then the Bellarine Peninsula, then Lorne, then Apollo Bay, and we just got further and further from Melbourne," says Richard of their search for a holiday retreat. "I'd only been through Warrnambool once 23 years ago; I don't think Kerrie had ever been, but we just saw this property down here and it was in our price range, so we drove down and bought it on an absolute whim, the first one we saw."
Before moving, the family had spent time in Warrnambool six or seven times a year, the location proving to appeal on numerous fronts. "We wanted to experience regional life while the kids were still young enough to enjoy it and not old enough to rebel against it," says Richard, adding that they were also keen to move somewhere where it was too far to regularly commute back to Melbourne.
As a parent, I think the main thing you ask yourself, with a major move like this, is how well and how quickly the children are going to settle in. We've been really pleasantly surprised at how naturally this has all come together.
- Kerrie Pearson
Danny Harris, co-founding partner of local real estate company Harris + Wood says he's always thought Warrnambool enjoyed a healthy migration, remaining one of the fastest growing regional centres in Victoria.
"During COVID, we were like a lot of other coastal regional towns, there was a mass exodus out of the city," he says. "It's back to what I would call back to pre-COVID levels."
Richard no doubt echoes the thoughts of many sea changers when he says he was initially cautious of how real life was suddenly going to feel, after always associating Warrnambool with holidays and good times. However those concerns fell by the wayside after a month or two.
"As a parent, I think the main thing you ask yourself, with a major move like this, is how well and how quickly the children are going to settle in," Kerrie says. "We've been really pleasantly surprised at how naturally this has all come together.
"Back in the city it was all organised play dates, but we're finding here it's a lot more organic. We live in a quiet street with great neighbours and the kids just knock on each other's doors to see who is 'coming out to play.' It's a bit like our own childhoods in the 1970s and 80s in that regard, which is a very welcome throwback for us as parents."
"The kids literally swing open a farm gate and the school's 200 metres away," Richard adds, noting that the kids adjusting was their biggest fear. "We held off telling them almost until the week before we were doing it (moving), because of the fear of them rebelling. But they've been fantastic and probably settled in even better than we have."
Homelife is now punctuated with sound of the ocean crashing against cliffs, views of sand dunes and koalas up gum trees in the garden, and for Richard, lunch runs from the office that don't involve a single traffic light.
"Given it's a town of only 35,000 people, it's got an amazing infrastructure," he says. "I think it's because we sit so far from Melbourne and it's got a huge hinterland. There's much more than you'd expect from a town of this size and that's been a real plus."
"We've got the beach, and not only that, it's a large enough centre that it provides diversity so far as careers," Danny says. "Our major enquiries historically have been from Melbourne, Geelong and Ballarat, and over the years we've had an influx of people that have moved from northern Victoria, (such as) Mildura for climatic reasons."
With plans to continue renovations on their holiday-turned-permanent home (they have already built a new bathroom and sunlounge out the back, and plan to extend further), Richard says he would recommend a sea change to anyone who is tempted.
"You can always go back," he laughs. "We've done the tree change, now the sea change - but this feels more genuine in terms of cutting the strings to Melbourne. I'd say if you've wavering, give it a go. We've got no regrets whatsoever."