For much of the last year, I was finishing a day's work as a national business reporter for the ABC with a walk along the beach on Victoria's famous Great Ocean Road.
It was a privilege only afforded to me because of the sudden upheaval of working arrangements during COVID.
I've got no dependents and have rented my entire life, and I'm one of the lucky ones who had stable employment through the pandemic, so making a move to Torquay was easy for me.
I was open to staying there long term and at one point even looked at property to buy around the region.
But I soon discovered that the dream has some logistical challenges.
And now I've moved back to Melbourne.
I already knew I liked regional living
I grew up right on the edge of Melbourne's CBD and feel alive in the buzz of a city.
But regional living wasn't new to me.
I've been with the ABC for almost seven years and many of those was as a reporter in regional Queensland and Darwin.
Living regional gave me a love of empty horizons, hiking, and small communities where you know everybody at that weekend's dinner party.
But all of my previous jobs, whether in Darwin or Melbourne, were all tied to an ABC news bureau.
That's because I needed to produce live radio news bulletins, TV stories, online articles and do voiceovers with technology and equipment that was usually housed in an office.
It was only when I got my current job with the ABC's TV show The Business in the middle of COVID last year that the way I could work radically changed.
The job was working on more longer lead stories, and I was given a laptop with all our crucial editing software and server access.
And with this, I had the key to live anywhere I wanted.
I wasn't alone. Working from home arrangements have surged during COVID, and 16 months on from the start of the pandemic, major employers like NAB are making the arrangements permanent for their staff.
The ABC's Australia Talks survey found prior to the pandemic, half of survey respondents did "zero hours" work from home, but now 43 per cent spend some of their working time at home.
Why did I chose the Surf Coast?
I chose the suburb Jan Juc, on the edge of the famed town Torquay on Victoria's Surf Coast, because I have some good friends who live there. I was familiar with the area from visiting them and I knew I'd have an instant community.
Research by the Regional Australia Institute shows most city people who go regional move to places where they have existing ties. Few are going in totally cold.
I also chose the Surf Coast because it was just a 90-minute drive from Melbourne's CBD. That gave me the option of driving to the city when I needed to go to the office or wanted to see family and friends.
Purely on lifestyle, I also wanted to live near the beach and hiking spots over Australia's COVID summer.
Turns out I wasn't the only person with this grand idea.
The rental market on the Surf Coast tightened to near breaking point around the time I moved there. This was also seen in other coastal regions, such as Byron Bay.
While there isn't enough granular data to show exactly where people have moved during COVID, significant rises in property prices like that on the Surf Coast or Byron Bay hint at the bigger picture.
ANU demographer Dr Liz Allen suspects many people have made "small moves" during COVID, like I did.
"It's unlikely that we're seeing major shifts many kilometres out from the city regions," she told me.
Essentially, COVID is likely more contributing to the pre-pandemic spread out from the capitals, rather than some drastic city and rural divide.
Reporting in my pyjamas for the ABC
I spent Spring and early Summer in Torquay making new friends, going hiking and camping in the Otways, and still enjoying most of the luxuries of city living.
Torquay isn't exactly the bush. It has everything I needed – beautiful groceries, healthcare, mechanics who come to your house, good cafes, and shopping centres in the regional city Geelong just 30 minutes away.
I also found the transition to working from home surprisingly easy. I couldn't believe that I could file a 4-minute TV story while wearing my fitness gear (or far worse) at home.
I learned how to build a sound booth to do voiceovers at home. The so-called doona fort wasn't glamorous but it got the job done with a lapel microphone.
Reporting on the stock market at 6:30am is also a lot easier when you can do it from bed.
But there are some logistics to my job that I soon found difficult in Torquay.
Sometimes I have to be filmed speaking on camera and that would involve a drive into the city to meet up with the ABC's Melbourne-based camera operators. This soon got stressful on a deadline.
The moment where this became obvious was just a few months into my COVID relocation, when a prominent Australian construction company collapsed.
I was sitting at home in my pyjamas with unbrushed hair at 9:00am when the story broke.
I had landed an interview with the company's boss and needed to be in Melbourne by 12pm to interview him and other experts for the TV story on that night's 7pm news.
I spent the frantic drive to Melbourne re-evaluating my life choices and cursing my cockiness.
It all came down to the tyranny of distance
It wasn't just deadline driving that got painful.
As Melbourne opened back up from its second extended lockdown last year, I started spending a lot more time there seeing family and friends.
As much as I love the beach, I got FOMO as Melbourne got its groove back. I guess in my heart, I'm not quite ready to settle down for a quieter life on the coast.
I went from somebody who loved driving to one who resented constantly being on the road with a packed overnight bag, torn between two lifestyle choices.
And I wasn't alone in this sentiment.
Earlier this year, I was put in touch with a lawyer who moved from Melbourne to the Surf Coast during COVID to work from home. She just moved back because she got sick of driving. The tyranny of distance just became too much.
As well as the driving, I also really missed being around my colleagues.
Research shows that while worker productivity increased at the start of COVID with more people working from home, that many have missed in person collaboration and the social elements of office life that can't be done over Zoom.
Another couple I met on the Surf Coast who moved there from Melbourne during COVID have been doing this in recent months.
When Alex and Amy Hart originally bought a house in Ocean Grove, their Melbourne-based jobs were working from home.
But now Alex's workplace wants him back in the office a few days a week, while Amy is going in once.
To make that work, they're getting up at 6:30am to catch the ferry across the bay into Melbourne's CBD. That's a four-hour round trip every day.
"It's definitely long and it's tiring but it's okay for now," Alex said.
"My heart is set on being here, though."
I admire Alex and Amy's dedication. I love my sleep too much.
Another dilemma that drew me back to Melbourne was property prices.
In a twist on the popular narrative that it is cheaper to live regionally, the median property price in the blue chip Torquay hit $1 million during my time there. Apartments, which is all I can afford, are cheaper but rarer.
If I ever want to buy my first apartment, it makes more sense to try for that in Melbourne.
And finally, it simply got cold. A sea change is great over Summer but the lifestyle isn't as alluring over winter for me.
So I moved back to Melbourne
Nobody in management asked me to do it.
In fact, many in my team were confused about why I'd leave the coastal dream for a big city, which is how I found myself writing this story.
I am still working from home in Melbourne a lot of the time – but I am now closer to my colleagues, office collaboration, and camera operators. Catching up with loved ones in the city no longer feels like an all-weekend commitment.
ANU demographer Liz Allen told me that she thinks many other people who moved regional during COVID won't stay there long term.
"Many people moving to the regional areas will soon discover that it's not all that it's cracked up to be," she told me.
Unfortunately, I picked the worst time to return to Melbourne.
Just one month after I resettled in Melbourne, the city went into its fourth lockdown due to another rise in COVID cases.
I certainly had some pangs of regret about leaving the Surf Coast, as my friends back there were let out of lockdown earlier than Melbourne, and I was once again reporting in my pyjamas.
The dream of open space, fresh air and a quiet community is very much still in my mind.
Who knows, maybe I could move back next Summer?
COVID has changed everything, after all.
