It’s hard to believe how much the world has changed since a generation of shoulder-padded, power-suited young women, set out to “have it all” in the 1980s and 1990s.

These days, you’re more likely to hear women fantasise about leaving “it all behind”, trading the career treadmill for a quiet life in a coastal town.

COVID measures, culture wars, housing, relationship breakdowns, bullying, malaise and mass fatigue are just some of the anecdotal reasons why women are prioritising wellbeing over work, and finding freedom and sanctuary in the regional lifestyle. 

According to a recent survey of 500 Australian women for the Deloitte 2023 Women at Work report, 16 per cent left their jobs in 2022 (more than 2020 and 2021 combined) citing a lack of flexibility around working hours as a reason for leaving.

Declining physical health and an ability to switch off from work were also contributing factors, with 30 per cent of Australian women reporting ongoing “burnout”, and 54 per cent reporting an increase in stress levels from the previous year.

Finding freedom in the slow lane

Jodie Tuckwell-Knight came to the realisation that she had had enough of her stressful job as a chief executive of a Melbourne charity during the city’s intense COVID lockdown period.

“For me, it was like, you’re just on this grind. It’s never enough, there’s always more, I was exhausted. There was not enough money to do what we needed to do with the work I was doing,” she said.

“It made me reassess everything. I didn’t want to go back to working my butt off all day, then out at meetings or events at night time for work and having no time to stop and look after myself. I’m getting older, you only have a certain amount of time.”

She and her husband made the life-changing leap to the Victorian coastal town of Lake Tyers, three-and-a-half hours east of Melbourne in September 2020, after purchasing a holiday house online on the merit of a video walkthrough.

“It was actually affordable down here and being from the other side of the West Gate Bridge in Newport, we always looked at Lorne and Apollo Bay, but it’s just so expensive,” she said.

“I looked down here and I thought my god, this is an untapped treasure.”

Although her circle of friends may have diminished, she now enjoys spending time on her own going to the beach, going on bushwalks, walking the dog and “taking time to notice” things.

With high cortisol levels from working at a high pace, she feels that she is finally getting to the bottom of long-term health and sleep issues.

She said that spending time in nature now takes precedence over everything else.

“I totally lost my joy, which scared the crap out of me, really scared me and the last two-and-a-half years has been about finding that again and being comfortable with looking after myself – not bending over backwards for everyone else.”

After years of having a craft room without any time for craft, she now has a rear studio where she paints and runs art therapy classes.

“I’ve set up an apartment on our block too, primarily for women who were like I was two-and-a-bit years ago totally burnt out and not knowing what the next step was going to be.”

Nature, the healer and the muse

Despite often being described as a pandemic phenomenon, research fellow with Melbourne University’s Future of Work Lab Peter Ghin says the “sea changer” and “tree changer” migration has been an ongoing trend for the past 20 years. 

“The majority of people who moved already had intentions of relocating pre-pandemic, however, the ‘pandemic reset’ provided the opportunity for people to act on these latent intentions”, Dr Ghin said. 

Originally from the UK, mural artist and beekeeper Amanda Diamond moved to Venus Bay in 2016, after running her own business in Melbourne making large-scale public artworks for festivals and events.

“I’m really inspired by nature down here, especially the birds. Here because we’re off-grid with water, everyone’s got water tanks so I get commissioned to paint private and public water tanks with birds and nature on them.”

With so many tea trees on the sand dune peninsula and a thriving bee population feeding on the leptosperin and making manuka honey, Diamond became very interested in apitherapy, an alternative form of healing derived from bees and bee products.

After studying apitherapy in Romania and Slovenia, she began treating ailments ranging from asthma and insomnia to arthritis and shingles using bee venom.

Although she plans to split her time between South Gippsland and her new home in Morocco, Diamond is living a similar trajectory of mindfulness, creativity and healing herself and others through nature.

“I sit on my deck and see kangaroos, I have a garden wombat, there are birds in every tree. I can walk to a surf beach, I surf every morning and I can walk up to Point Smythe at the end of the peninsula and see wallabies, banksia forests, tea tree forests. It’s just magnificent.”

No fixed address

Originally from Tyers, free-spirited Jacqueline Swan has spent most of adult life roaming the world, having lived in Perth, Magnetic Island, London and travelling extensively throughout Europe and Africa.

“I think women have decided that they want their power and they’re doing it in really outlandish creative ways and their taping into their innate wildness,” she said.

Returning to Australia five years ago, she is now a full-time house sitter, travelling annually to north Queensland in her campervan.

“I’ve been nomadic for a long part of my life and I feel more accepting of this now and I realise now that it’s actually a really healthy way for me to live,” she said.

With a background in social work, she keeps herself balanced and grounded by walking barefoot in nature, exercising, being around animals, and practising yoga and meditation.

She is in the process of setting up a nature-based creative therapy business that helps clients living with disabilities find healing and connection with nature through art.

“Definitely the fall out of COVID is predominantly mental health issues and so I guess nature-based therapy, being creative, having a sense of belonging and being in community is really important more now than it’s ever been.” 

Although she has some aspiration to one day “rest somewhere on land with a tiny house and grow vegetables”, she is content driving around, discovering different places and having different experiences.

“For me, I don’t have fear and I just trust that I’ll be provided for and I’ll be guided where I need to go. I’ve learnt how to manifest the things that I want. It’s all about your vibration, your attracting in what you’re putting out.”