City slickers are continuing to leave the hustle and bustle behind with regional migration remaining above pre-pandemic levels.
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Most people ditching city life moved to regional areas of Queensland, accounting for 41 per cent of movers in the 12 months to June 2023, with the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast the most popular.
Regional NSW saw the next biggest gains with 33 per cent before regional Victoria with 20 per cent.
But some of the biggest annual growth was in regional Western Australia including local government areas of Greater Geraldton, Waroona and York.
In particular Greater Geraldton has seen total net internal migration inflows up 395 per cent in the past 12 months.
In the 12 months to June 2023 regional migration accounted for 11.1 per cent of all relocations compared to the 9.6 per cent moving to capital cities, according to the latest Regional Movers Index.
It found migration flows to regional areas is up more than 16 per cent on average compared to 2018 and 2019.
Where are people moving to in regional Australia?
The five most popular tree or seachange destinations for city dwellers were the Sunshine and Gold coasts in Queensland, Victoria's Greater Geelong and Moorabool and Lake Macquarie in NSW.
Moorabool, which is located between Melbourne and Ballarat, experienced the biggest annual growth of 88 per cent among the top five.
The other areas with the highest growth were Waroona in Western Australia, Livingstone and Mackay in Queensland and Alexandrina in South Australia.
RAI chief executive Liz Ritchie said people were seeing country communities as offering a happier, cheaper and better quality of life.
"It clearly shows that the love affair with regional living is far from over and highlights the importance of resourcing the social and physical infrastructure that these growing places urgently need," she said.
"In June, there were more than 87,000 jobs advertised online in regional Australia. The old myth that there aren't any jobs in the regions just isn't true.
"The inflows we're seeing into regional areas, particularly in those Western Australia hotspots, shows people know they won't compromise and can often advance their careers in a regional context."
For people already living in the regions the most attractive places to move to were the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Coast, Toowoomba and Bundaberg in Queensland and Greater Geelong in Victoria.
The Regional Movers Index is a partnership between the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the RAI and uses the bank's relocation data from more than 16 million customers.
