November 16, 2012
The SBRC has thrown its support behind a plan to copy an idea from NSW in a bid to attract new residents to the South Burnett.
The plan is being promoted by the Wide Bay Burnett Regional Organisation Of Councils (WBBROC), which acts as the peak body for the South Burnett, North Burnett, Gympie, Fraser Coast and Bundaberg regional councils and the Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council.
WBBROC hope to secure funding to build a web portal for the Wide Bay-Burnett similar to the Evocities portal developed for the inland NSW towns of Albury, Wagga Wagga, Orange, Bathurst, Dubbo, Tamworth and Armidale.
South Burnett participants at a workshop held in Kingaroy this week were told the Evocities website – coupled with a $7000 grant offered by the NSW State Government – had helped persuade several hundred people wanting to relocate from capital cities to move to these inland towns in the last few years.
There is no reason, they heard, why the same idea couldn’t be applied here.
The workshop was led by Mr Mark Olsen from consultants EC3 Global, one of the firms engaged by WBBROC to investigate the feasibility of the project and determine the unique “selling points” of each part of the Wide Bay-Burnett.
Mr Olsen said research showed up to one million Australians would consider relocating from cities to regional areas in the coming decade.
WBBROC’s interest was to ensure that the Wide Bay-Burnett attracted as big a slice of this market as possible.
The key to doing this successfully, he said, was to define what unique benefits the South Burnett enjoyed that would encourage people to visit here, invest here or move here.
The same applied to all the other portions of the Wide Bay-Burnett.
The 18 participants, who came from small businesses and not-for-profit organisations across the region, were then invited to share their views about what they thought the South Burnett offered to new residents, and the area’s strengths and weaknesses.
They also took part in a group exercise to determine how they believed the South Burnett should be presented to the outside world.
The outcome of this exercise is expected to be known by February next year.
