Girls: Aussie Blokes Have Gone Bush

Illawarra Mercury

Friday October 15, 1999

City women bemoaning a lack of men should head for the country, with new data showing men outnumber women four to one in some parts of rural Australia.

There are four men for every woman in towns such as Wiluna, Leonora, Laverton and Meekatharra in Western Australia, Cloncurry, Eromanga and Quilpie in Queensland and Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs and Cockburn in South Australia.

While the overall ratio is just 101 men per 100 women across non-metropolitan Australia, areas of inland Western Australia, western Queensland and South Australia have ratios of at least 150 men to 100 women.

The Bureau of Rural Sciences has drawn on 1996 Census figures for its Country Matters: Social Atlas of Rural and Regional Australia.

The series of 88 maps, a first for Australia, also shows that Australia's coastline is a people magnet, with fewer people living in rural and regional areas.

More rural Australians are gaining tertiary qualifications, unemployment levels there are falling and there are more women employed in agriculture.

Australia's population increased by 5.8 per cent from 1991 to 1996 to 17,739,124, with 83 per cent living within 50km of the coast and strongly concentrated in the east, south-east and south-west.

People were flocking to metropolitan areas such as Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth while inland Australia had as few as 0 to 0.1 people per square kilometre.

© 1999 Illawarra Mercury

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