The possibilities of seachange: a study of urban to rural migration, self and place in Gippsland

Seachange is about quality of life choices. These decisions taken by individuals, enacted by moving from the city to the country, have become an identifiable and significant population trend. Seachange is part of a long tradition of moving to the country as a way to change your life. It is the moving and the place that categorises people as seachangers and anchors their stories and their sense-making. Current research into the motivations of seachangers is limited, particularly in Australia, and does not provide many insights into the meanings that seachangers attach to their move or why they want to live in the country. This thesis examines how seachangers in Gippsland, Australia explain and understand their seachange and focuses on the interaction between place, personal meaning-making and cultural discourses to provide an in-depth examination of the relationship between seachangers and their place. What is the meaning of these country places for these seachangers and how do these places facilitate or contribute to a satisfying life? People make connections between, and interpret meanings from, events and experiences; so too for research. Research is not about finding the truth or the final meaning; it is about entering into a process and cycle of investigation and interpretation. Different ways of collecting, analysing and representing data can open up interpretation to alternative connections. I interviewed people and asked them to take photographs. My analysis was influenced by a narrative approach, in particular analysing for meaning within each interview or story before looking for common themes across interviews. This approach provided a different understanding of the themes, in particular the multiple and alternative ways they wove into a person‘s story of seachange. I also analysed and represented the interviews using research poems and grouped photographs. In creating poems my purpose was to provide a space that enabled other meanings to emerge and another way to engage with the process of meaning making. Moving beyond the disciplinary background of sociology, I looked to, and was influenced by, literature on seachange and place in geography, education and philosophy. This approach provided me with multiple perspectives with which to sift my understanding of seachange. ii Many studies of seachange propose that people are influenced by a narrative that portrays country places as a rural idyll. It has become an easy explanation for seachanger motivations, however it obscures as much as it explains. It provides a limited understanding of the role of place; how a country place enables change; or how people incorporate place into their stories of self. This thesis takes explanations of seachange and country places beyond the rural idyll. Central to this interpretation of seachange are three interwoven concepts: becoming, time and place. Seachange opens up spaces for other ways to think and to be. Time makes sense of, and shapes, the stories we tell of our lives. Where we are influences who we can be and how we know. Seachange is about the dynamic relationship between and within stories, people and places and the meaning that is created through that relationship