EVERY time there is an analysis of Australia's population growth hotspots, the focus rarely shifts from southeast Queensland, the outermost suburbs of large capital cities, and parts of the eastern seaboard and the southwest coast.

To be perfectly frank, I am sick of these places hogging the limelight. Move over, Mandurah, give others a go, Gold Coast, ease up, Dardanup, take a holiday, Hervey Bay. What about Tasmania's growth hotspots?

Yes, Tasmania.

The fact that Tassie's towns do not have the critical mass of mainland growth centres does not mean that there is nothing happening down there. In fact, quite the reverse. Tasmania has 62 urban centres with 500 people or more, including Hobart and Launceston.

Some 49 of these towns are growing, and 21 increased their population base by 10 per cent or more in the five years to 2006. However, most (19) of Tasmania's high-growth towns contain fewer than 3000 people, so they do not register in any assessment of leading growth centres nationally.

The town with the biggest percentage increase in population in Tasmania is Margate, 20km south of Hobart, where the population rose by 42 per cent over five years to reach 1366 at the 2006 Census. Margate is a lifestyle and commuter town servicing Hobart.

However, outside Launceston and Hobart the urban centre that attracted most new residents between the 2001 and 2006 censuses was Kingston and Blackmans Bay. This "growth corridor", positioned between Hobart and Margate, recorded 2465 new residents, or 16 per cent growth in the five years to 2006.

Further south of Margate is another of Tasmania's fast-growing towns, the irresistibly monikered Snug. I am pleased to advise that the number of Snugglers increased by 10 per cent to 880 between the 2001 and 2006 censuses. Snug is on the rise.

The trends evident on the mainland, especially the Australian preference for lifestyle, are equally present in Tasmania.

Tree-changers have concentrated in commuting distance of the capital on expansive rural-residential allotments around Pontville (up 32 per cent) and Bagdad (14 per cent), about 20km north of the Hobart CBD.

Sea-changers, on the other hand, have congregated east of Hobart's airport at Midway Point and Sorell (up 16 per cent), Lewisham (14 per cent), Dodges Ferry (19 per cent) and especially in pretty Primrose Sands, up 29 per cent.

Other Tassie hotspots are also linked to lifestyle. The western side of the Tamar River between 10km and 20km north of Launceston hosts a series of high-growth communities. This corridor begins with Legana, where the population has increased by 16 per cent over the five years to 2006. Next stop downstream is Grindelwald, up 22 per cent and then Lanena and Blackwall, up 23 per cent.

Launceston also supports a fast-growing rural residential community west of the city's airport at Perth (population 2239) as well as others west of the city in the settlements of Westbury (1358) and Deloraine (2243). The sea-change phenomenon is a visible presence in Tasmania. I especially like the development action at Port Sorell, 10km east of Devonport, and at Turner's Beach, 10km west of Devonport. These Bass Strait beach towns added between 14 and 16 per cent to their population bases respectively in the five years to 2006.

Other population growth hotspots in Tasmania are on the island's east coast, which is home to the ultra enviro-trendy Freycinet Peninsula. Indeed, there are growth hotspots to the north and south of Freycinet.

The population of the peninsula's northern gateway towns of Scamander, St Helen's and Stieglitz jumped between 11 and 14 per cent in the five years to 2006.

Access from the southern end, from Hobart, prompted growth in Orford and Triabunna of between 10 and 12 per cent in the same period. It is probably instructive to note that population growth for urban Hobart in this period was 2percent, and for urban Launceston it was 4 per cent.

That is not to say Tasmania is full of "tiger towns" growing rapidly from small bases. Five of the state's 13 declining towns recorded what I would regard as a significant loss over the five years to 2006. That means a loss of more than 10 per cent, or an average of more than 2 per cent a year.

These include Queenstown and Strahan, which were down between 10 and 14 per cent in this period. These losses are most probably due to changes in mining operations on the west coast.

The other three losing towns are puzzling because they sit near growth centres. Geeveston (down 10 per cent) lies south of Snug. Bicheno (down 12 per cent) is positioned between Scamander and the Freycinet Peninsula, which surely means that it should be growing.

Finally there is Gravelly Beach (down 10 per cent), on the Tamar's favoured west bank near the locality of Lanena and Blackwall.

It is almost as if the Tasmanians have so many lifestyle options that they can tire of one locality and gravitate to another in the vicinity.

Or, perhaps there is a demand for more housing in places like Geeveston, Bicheno and Gravelly Beach but planning restrictions redirect that demand to nearby localities, leaving the original town's population to subside as it ages.

This makes Tasmania's social geography interesting.

Not for Tassie the vast swathes of homogenous suburbia and beachurbia that mark the mainland's cities and coasts. Rather, the deal here is an intricate social patchwork of clans that have made a generational commitment to a locality, and of tribes based on lifestyle values that are bolting on to these communities.

I wonder, for example, what Tasmania's landed gentry think of the new rural residential estates springing up off the Midland Highway north of Hobart? And, more to the point, what do the tree-changers think of the locals who have been there for six or seven generations?

The drivers of new growth in established areas are the same as elsewhere in Australia.

Sometimes it is worth looking at differently scaled markets to find an opportunity you might otherwise have dismissed. Consider Tasmania's tiger towns.

Source: The Australian, Bernard Salt                                     12 June 2008