Gary,
they don't realize just how expensive Noosa is. The Gold Coast has left Canberra way behind in terms of population numbers, and it has overtaken the population of all of Tasmania.

If you live in Noosa, you would have to get up at 3am to drive to Brisbane to catch the early morning flight to Sydney or Melbourne to do business, then get home around 8 or 9 pm. That is not 'easing into retirement'.

Gary,
I am staring to think that the last time you came to the Gold Coast you were bitten by a dog.

Globalisation seems to have effected different regions in different ways. Capital cities are becoming more internationalised (if that's a word)and more cosmopolitan. The Gold and Sunshine Coasts haven't tapped into the same processes. As tourist meccas they recruit the liminal tourist experience which stays distinct from the local. The local stays parochial. And increasingly defensive. People who've lived here less than 10 years still count as tourists.

Unfortunately for us we're not as interesting as, say, highlanders in New Guinea. We don't count as a unique spectacle for tourist consumption. Tourists don't wander places remote from the tourist hub in search of the authentic experience with the natives, although they can book a canal cruise and look at the homes of millionaires.

Lyn,
Adelaide is beginning to shift from its parochial and defensive response to globalization as it moves away from being a rustbelt state.

I'm surprised by your statement:

As tourist meccas they [Gold and Sunshine Coasts] recruit the liminal tourist experience which stays distinct from the local. The local stays parochial. And increasingly defensive. People who've lived here less than 10 years still count as tourists.

There are a thousand new peopel arriving every week from southern Australia---that's what ex-Premiere Beattie used to tell the rest of the nation. In 1976 there were 100,000 people on the Gold Coast. Today there are 500,000.

How can they be parochical and defensive re globalization? What is going on?

Les,
I'm working off articles in the AFR --'seachange bounceback' is a well known phenomenon. Many who leave from Sydney to downsize return after a couple of years or so.

Gary,
"How can they be parochical and defensive re globalization? What is going on?"

Bearing in mind that dividing people into 'types' is problematic, the Gold Coast is the last place your globalised, urbane types are going to migrate to. The Sunshine Coast is a bit different, a bit more Byron Bay yuppyish. A bit.

The people who move up here tend to be of the battler variety or what Centrelink staff call the warm poor. If they stay it's mostly because they can't afford to go back.

It's very hard to fit in here and very hard to find a first job unless you know someone. One of the reasons is a suspicion of outsiders, but employers are reluctant to take on recent arrivals who might not stay, or who might be tourists posing as permanent. That also means it's hard to establish social networks through workmates. Estate agents tend to be suspicious of prospective tenants for the same reasons.

Retirees come here to get away from the global and relax a bit. The only flows they're interested in are the ones that carry lures past the noses of flathead, or through the garden hoses that carry water to their roses.

For arguments' sake, divide the population into natives, recently arrived battlers and retirees. Battlers want a warm, insulated place with cheap housing and sensible local newspapers. Retirees want to shut the world out. Natives have seen too much change too fast and a lot are resentful of the tourists they depend on for their income.

If you want globalisation you go to Brisbane which, like Adelaide, is shifting.

There is no denying that the air on the Gold coast is less polluted than other places. One whiff will tell you that. This attracts people. Perhaps there is something in this positive and negative ions thing that makes people sea change.
I am not sure of the official stats but I would guess that only 10% of the residents are born here. People move,sometimes it doesn't work out and they move back or somewhere else. Such is life.

Lyn,
I disagree that retirees come here to shut the world out. I say that most would be the opposite.
Retirement villages, bowls clubs and lots of other clubs are a hive of activity with lots of people engaging more of the world than they have ever done.

Les,
I agree that retirees are socially active. You mentioned lawn bowls - I get a real kick out of seeing the young folk and the oldies mixing it on barefoot days.

Lyn,
sounds like the Gold Coast is very place bound --not that much different from Victor Harbor, despite the huge increase in population numbers, and the far greater penetration of the "space of flows" of the tourist economy.

In Victor Harbor there is a deep immersion in the particularities of place and locality despite the mobile phone and the internet.

Gary,
Yes, place bound describes it well. The flows are there, but they don't change the place bound worldview, even though they change everything from the built environment to the economy.