COVID-era struggles with housing, cost of living felt in Gippsland
Paula Jorgensen made a tree change before COVID hit. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
Paula Jorgensen made the move to a modest share house in the leafy, eastern Victorian town of Nowa Nowa in 2016, as a way of opting out of "heavy duty, extractive city life".
In doing so, she was ahead of the wave of tree changers who made the move to regional areas during the pandemic, as lockdowns closed many of Australia's largest cities.
Her life once included a marriage, mortgage and two cars.
She now lives a more simplified, low-carbon existence on her savings in a small, television-free studio bedsit near a creek among the gum trees.
Ms Jorgensen traded city life, for a modest and peaceful existence in Nowa Nowa. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
"One of the reasons I left the city was because I felt like from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep, I was responding to whatever stimulus was around me: work, people, kids, noise, marketing — there was always something to buy," Ms Jorgensen said.
"I just never had the headspace to just be or reflect or enjoy where I was. I was always on to the next thing."
These days Ms Jorgensen can easily spend 45 minutes looking out the window watching the birdlife, reading a book or dabbling in environmental and community causes at her leisure.
"I have a really great quality of life, but I have a less than ordinary standard of living, yet I'm happy," she said.
Having recently quit the workforce, Ms Jorgensen is one of many Australians reflecting on life since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, and the exodus of tree and sea changers who followed in her footsteps.
Ms Jorgensen worked as graphic designer for Mastercard in the US in the 1980s. (Supplied: Paula Jorgensen)
Born and raised in South California during the 1960s, Ms Jorgensen worked as a graphic designer in New York in the 80s.
She reached the unsettling realisation that for many, money was becoming the purpose of life rather than a tool.
Now in her 60s, Ms Jorgensen said she had witnessed a growing sentiment of cynicism and questioning of wealth and power since COVID, a movement that is seeing people from all sides of the political spectrum tune out to mainstream information.
Ms Jorgensen, pictured in her youth in San Francisco, now lives in a small Australian town. (Supplied)
She speaks of the gradual decommissioning of critical thinking and the institutions that promote it, the arts, history and philosophy, and an extinguishing of constructive public debate.
"I think the idea of democracy and what we are living are very different things.
"We're living in a world where it doesn't feel psychologically safe to say what you're thinking, because somebody is going to cancel you, or talk back at you, or post a comment on your Facebook page.
"Someone's going to shoot you down."
Day-to-day fatigue
Elsewhere in Victoria's Gippsland region, residents are reflecting on how the pandemic has affected the way people live.
Arfa Sarfaraz Khan works in Morwell, one of Victoria's most disadvantaged socio-economic postcodes.
The diversity adviser, and United Muslim Sisters of the Latrobe Valley president, describes an ongoing hangover of COVID fatigue in her community and broader networks.
Arfa Sarfaraz Khan says people are exhausted from the ongoing financial struggle since COVID. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
She said people have lost their jobs, had their hours cut, or have had to leave the workforce due to ongoing health issues.
"Things are really, really bad," Ms Khan said.
"The exhaustion I think is that you have to be on top of everything, you have to make a certain amount to go to the next month — you don't have any savings."
Originally from Pakistan, Ms Khan said immigrants who had come to Australia to secure a more prosperous future were typically trapped in low-paying jobs, living pay cheque to pay cheque.
With grocery bills increasing as a result of inflation, she said many families had cut down on non-essential expenses such as children's activities.
"When your brain is always functioning and working towards how you're going to meet the needs of the family — it is affecting your mental health because you're not relaxed," Ms Khan said.
Ms Khan keeps the COVID-inspired artwork of her two daughters on her desk at work. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
She believes that when people can't experience peace of mind from the "joys of life", because they are constantly fatigued by day-to-day challenges, there are repercussions for their mental and physical health.
Ms Khan said it was important that people supported and kept an eye out for each other, such as taking someone out for coffee or making them a cake, as a means of creating a better community.
"Create those little joys in your life that can make you happy," she said.
"For me holding on to my faith is very important. In our religion, Islam, it says you have to strive for something, you have to keep trying, so people are trying — we're praying for better things to come," she said.
Middle-class homelessness
Across the train line in Morwell, Mitchell Burney works primarily with disadvantaged youth and people at risk of homelessness.
"It's been really tough four years on in Gippsland, said Mr Burney, of Quantum Support Services.
"We've seen the housing crisis here in Australia and I think that's really affected people's aspirations, hopes and dreams."
Mitchell Burney says there aren't enough resources to deal with unprecedented rough sleeping. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
He said, in the country, homelessness traditionally meant couch surfing, but in recent times people from all demographics were sleeping on the streets, in the bush and in their cars.
With inadequate resources to provide outreach to the unprecedented number of rough sleepers in the regions, Mr Burney said it was impossible to collect data on the actual scale of the problem.
"We've really seen a lot more people in the more middle-income brackets and people that are employed experiencing homelessness," he said.
"Last year in Gippsland 22 per cent of the people that sought support for homelessness services were employed."
He has come across full-time workers sleeping in their cars and people choosing between rent and food, just a pay cheque away from potentially losing their home.
"Once you lose your home, all those other things that we need to rely on to feel healthy and well start to be very hard: your job, your wellbeing, your connection to your hobbies and your recreation."
The Latrobe Valley is contending with issues such as a housing shortage and a surge in youth crime. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
Prohibitive costs
Tessa Jenkins, 28, of Moe, lives with her parents as it's financially prohibitive to live independently.
"People are expected to be earning a certain kind of wage and not everyone earns that wage," said Ms Jenkins, who has cerebral palsy.
"'If your only income is a pension, then you're very much at risk of homelessness or poverty.
"I think we need to be able to a make things such an annual GP visit and annual dental visit free for everyone."
Tessa Jenkins is working while doing short courses online rather than pursuing higher education. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
Ms Jenkins has resolved to stay in the workforce and complete short courses online, rather than enter higher education where face-to-face, personalised interaction has declined.
"Wanting to study is really hard because the prices have gone up, courses are so expensive and assistance for people with disabilities at places such as TAFE or universities is very reduced, especially here in Gippsland," she said.
Her father, former Victorian Labor MP and Latrobe City mayor Brendan Jenkins, said his generation was "more fortunate" than the one it followed – and the one that came after.
He said he purchased his first home when the average property cost four times the average wage, compared to 10 times now.
"You can't always blame the baby boomers for everything, but you can blame my generation if the systems that are in place are actually not fair," he said.
Mr Jenkins believes Australia has benefited tremendously from the skills, labour and cultural influences of post-war immigration, but he would like to see more support for younger Australians to raise families in order to build the population.
Tessa and Brendan Jenkins say young people are facing unprecedented barriers to housing. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
Mr Jenkins said the most compelling change in the COVID era related to assessing the integrity of information.
"I think it's been difficult for people to come to grips with the way that communication has changed," he said.
"If you're presenting facts or reporting to present facts, you should have some obligation to be able to demonstrate those facts.
"That doesn't happen anymore with electronic communication, people can say whatever they like.
Mr Jenkins wants more support for younger Australians to raise families. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
'I've been speaking to so many people that have believed a certain narrative and you find out after you've discussed it with somebody, that the narrative might not actually be true.
"I don't know how we are going to come to grips with that."
Low-cost fun
High school counsellor and Scouts Victoria volunteer David "Wombat" Lyons lives in the expanding Gippsland corridor town of Trafalgar.
"For me personally, my life has been going pretty smoothly — I was lucky to have purchased my house before COVID hit, and so I had a good head start in paying off my mortgage," Mr Lyons said.
David "Wombat" Lyons says people are choosing low-cost activities for fun. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
Despite a national decline in community volunteering, he takes an optimistic view on the COVID era, having seen people find unity in low-cost, fun activities.
"Whether it's community arts or the bigger festivals, it's all still happening, but it's definitely changed and evolved a bit since COVID and the cost-of-living situation."
From his outreach work, Mr Lyons has seen more students requiring support from the Victorian government's school food program, and many Scouting families unable to afford to renew.
"A different type of child had emerged from the COVID era," he said.
"We do see that behaviour in young people has changed post COVID — some of that social cohesion stuff that we as adults are seeing that has occurred in the last few years, our kids are feeling that too.
"They're trying to get their sense around a world that has changed in that way and that people are more visibly flying the colours of their tribe, but not really willing to see other people fly the colours of their tribe."
Collective energy
Reflecting on life since the pandemic, Paula Jorgensen believes people are taking a more guarded approach to communication and there is little patience for discussion, debate or collaboration anymore.
Observing that most people are so overwhelmed by information that they only have the time and mental energy to respond to what is right in front of them, Ms Jorgensen believes that we need to "relearn how to be communities, how to be non-polarised".
"I think one of the ways we could lift ourselves out of the funk is by doing more things together," she said.
"The lift out of this funk isn't going to be economic. It's going to be something about collective energy — lots of little connected things."