[willemh]

Torquay/Ocean Grove may be more your style. The weather isn't as consistent as QLD but beats Warrnambool by being a couple of degrees warmer. It's near Geelong but you still get the ocean. And it's only about 1.5hrs to Melbourne if you avoid peak hour.

I get your point about Queensland. Maroochydore might be slowly modernising. They're building a new city centre from scratch on what used to be the golf course. They've recently connected to the Japan-Guam-Australia South submarine fibre cable and the council are marketing that pretty hard. Saying that, it's still largely seen as a place to retire; evidenced by one of the largest contributors to the local economy being healthcare (which includes nursing homes).

[stephenr]

How exactly does the submarine cable connection affect things realistically? I’d have thought the point of contention for most people in Australia would be either the last mile with the boondoggle that is FttN or the distance to other countries. Does skipping a bit of terrestrial fibre backbone really make that much difference?

[dwd]

Brisbane is a 10ms ping away, Sydney is 20ms and 90% of the sites people use have a least a Sydney based CDN; but we can't let facts get in the way of real estate sales.

[stephenr]

That's what I thought.

[willemh]

Yeah, not much difference to the end user but I think the council are trying to attract businesses. That could be the good mix up the economy needs. The future will tell whether it works or not.

[dwd]

Don't forget the Otways.

The old growth forest parts are amazing and you used to be able to camp some places in there and even take along the dog. I live within walking distance of a comparable waterfall but can't take the dog due to its park classification.