Australia's regional areas have had their largest net inflow of people since the Australian Bureau of Statistics started measuring internal migration in 2001.
The ABS said a net 43,000 Australians moved to regional areas from capital cities in 2020.
That is more than double the number in 2019.
Net migration is the difference between arrivals and departures, so the figures reflect not just the number of people moving to the regions, but also the number of people staying put.
ABS demographer Andrew Howe said a net loss of people from the capitals has been seen before, but the amount of people staying in the regions is new.
"That's always happened for decades — Australia has had more people departing the capitals than entering the capitals.
"What's happened in 2020 though, is that number of people actually leaving the regions for the capitals has come down quite substantially.
"That outflow from the regions has slowed down."
Residents flee COVID-hit Melbourne
Mr Howe said the migration patterns for Melbourne last year were out of the ordinary.
"The substantially different trends we're seeing for Melbourne — it's implying that there is a pandemic impact with internal migration patterns," he said.
Greater Melbourne had a net loss of 26,000 people in 2020.
"In 2019, that was basically zero and in 2018 more people moved into Melbourne than moved out.
"So, to have a 26,000 net loss over 2020, that's the highest net loss for Melbourne on record."
The demographer said Sydney also lost about 30,000 people in net terms, but that was on par with recent decades.
"Melbourne was substantially different in 2020, whereas, other capitals, not so different," he said.
He said roughly half of that outflow of people from Melbourne went to other parts of Victoria and the others went interstate.
"The net outflow for Victoria isn't unprecedented — back in the 90s, with recession we also had large outflows from the state," he said.
"What was happening then though is that both regional Victoria and Melbourne were losing out.
"Whereas in 2020 it's Melbourne with that large net loss, regional Victoria actually gained around 13,000 people over the 2020 calendar year."
Queensland the most popular for movers and stayers
The sunshine state was by far the most popular destination, with a net gain of 30,000 people in 2020.
The next closest was Western Australia with 1,385.
Mr Howe said it was the highest net gain of internal migrants for Queensland in more than a decade.
"Queensland has always attracted more people than it's lost in terms of internal migration, however, 2020 was certainly higher than the norm," he said.
Bucking the trend for capitals, Brisbane did not have a net loss of people to the regions.
"There's still actually more people leaving regional Queensland for Brisbane," he said.
"It's just that substantial number of moves from the other states, that's pushing that regional Queensland migration to record levels."
Western Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and South Australia also had net gains.
"It was only a small increase for South Australia over 2020, just 100 people, but that's the first time South Australia has actually gained more people than it's lost in 30 years," he said.
Glitter strip lifestyle lures Victorian
Accountant Mike McHenry and his family moved from Geelong, south of Melbourne, to the Gold Coast last December.
He said the coronavirus lockdown played a role in their decision.
"For me it demonstrated you can work from home," he said.
"For months we all had to work from home and it worked pretty seamlessly, so that was really the catalyst."
He said his family was happy with the move.
"The outdoor living is unbelievable, the weather's fantastic, it's conducive to anything … there's nothing you can't do, absolutely nothing you can't do up here, it's just unbelievable," Mr McHenry said.
Pandemic limits international moves
For plastic surgeon Carly Fox, the coronavirus pandemic disrupted her plan to move to London to train in microsurgery.
"As it got closer to July 2020, it became clear that I wasn't going to make it over there, both because of immigration regulations out of Australia, but also because London wasn't a particularly great place to be through most of last year," she said.
"So I had to cancel that fellowship that I had been planning for such a very long time."
Dr Fox said she found a different job in Australia, so her professional education has not been affected, but she would miss the travel.
"A big part of the reason why we go overseas to do a fellowship is so you can live in Europe, and we put our lives on hold for so long through surgical training that it's really a carrot at the end of training," she said.
"So that's been put on hold [travel], but it's been put on hold for everyone else in Australia as well, so I don't count myself too unlucky."
Internal migration just one factor
Mr Howe said internal migration was one of three components of population change.
"The other components being overseas migration, which is minimal at the moment, but also there's that natural increase, the number of births minus the number of deaths, which obviously changes population as well."
The ABS's internal migration estimates were based on Medicare address data.
The next national census on August 10 will closely evaluate movement trends.
"It's always an exciting time for population nerds around census time," Mr Howe said.
