Last year Ms Weston of the tiny village of Cumnock NSW, Australia, came up with an initiative that saw city and interstate families radically change their lifestyle. Concerned about the decline in numbers at the local school she came up with a plan to convince people to move to the area. Her plan was to bring people into the area by offering cheap rental. $1 a week gets a family a farmhouse. It may have an inadequate kitchen and an outside toilet (or dunny as we’d call it in Aussie slang,) but despite the obvious drawbacks people snapped them up.
With the cost of living going up and up and the price of houses and rental accommodation increasing, especially in Sydney, families needed a cheaper alternative and a way out of the vicious cycle. Ms Weston’s idea has provided it for some families.
128 families not just from NSW, where real estate prices are most expensive but Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, jumped at the chance for a changed lifestyle in a small country community.
The local school has since had to hire an extra teacher to cope with the extra 14 students enrolled. In small country schools with a small number of student and 1-4 teachers, a rise or fall in pupils can have a huge effect on the school and the community. The lack of children at the school put in threat the local bus run. Now it seems everyone in Cumnock is happy in their changed lifestyle.
The condition attached to the cheap rents is that families must be prepared to renovate the farmhouse and be prepared to be a part of the local community.
Their story is being televised this week by Compass. It’ll be interesting to see how husbands, wives and children have adapted to the radical change.
The scheme has apparently proved so successful that the idea has now been trialed in Victoria. Given the positive response in Cumnock, in July this year, another area this time in Victoria initiated the same idea in Whycheproof. According to the ABC over 10,000 people from around the world have shown interest in the scheme.
I think you’ve got to be the right sort of person to change your lifestyle this drastically otherwise it can be a culture shock. You also need to be extremely secure in your marriage to contemplate such a change. What do others think?
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