Beyond the City Limits

Callantha Brigham: Why did you leave Sydney to work in regional NSW?

Tricia Helyar: I grew up on the north coast of New South Wales but went to university in Sydney and practised there for around 20 years. I had always intended to go back to the coast but it takes a while to establish yourself and then the cycle of jobs tends to lock you in for two-three years. But there came a crystal moment in my practice about five years ago when I was between clients and thought if I don’t go now I will have to wait at least another three years for an opportunity. So I moved to Bellingen. Moving there felt like coming home.

Virginia Wong See: My partner Hamish and I are a bit similar to Tricia in that we weren’t originally from Sydney. I had grown up in Canberra and Hamish had grown up in Newcastle. I stayed in Sydney for 30 years but never intended to live there for that long! Our reasons for leaving Sydney were part family lifestyle and part practice. Our daughter is a keen horse rider and this started taking us out of the city every weekend – until at a certain point

we looked at each other and thought what are we doing, we should be living somewhere else. Now I work four days a week and go horse riding every Wednesday. Horse riding is my best design day and very important to let me think. So it was a lifestyle choice, but the other reason was that we had been working in Sydney on a lot of similar projects for a long time. Terrace renovations seemed to be the core of our work, and while there was plenty of it, it was all quite similar. Our work outside Sydney now offers a lot more variety.

Callantha: What was it like to establish yourselves in regional NSW?

Tricia: I was told it would take me about five years to establish myself in Bellingen, but there are probably more architects on the North Coast than there is demand. It’s been around five years, but I still need Sydney work and have a Sydney office.

Virginia: The further inland you go the easier it probably is to establish yourself. In the beginning we took whatever came in; a sundeck or veranda extension; but within 12 months we started to get some larger projects. We don’t advertise. In smaller environments people know each other – for example we went to Moree for one project and came back with four. It’s been four years now and we have great variety, mainly residential and some community work; but we still do the little projects if people ask for them. In the regions you tend to become more of a general practitioner, you really feel like you are here to help people in the community.

Tricia: There is also a very supportive environment in the regions between architects. There are times when work is a bit slow but when we get together, even the four other practices in Bellingen, it’s a collegiate environment. We are competing, but not really.

Virginia: We have had the same experience. There are four of us in Armidale but we are all offering very different services so it doesn’t really feel like we are competing. If a job came in and we weren’t comfortable with it you could refer to the other three architects quite easily. Country Division has also been an incredibly supportive environment for me in this regard. I didn’t even know it existed and I felt a bit suspicious at first, but the organisation itself is made up of a really helpful, friendly group of people. It’s actually fun to attend the annual conference and one of the main reasons I go is to catch up with friends.

Callantha: What is the nature of work in regional areas, can you talk a bit about the challenges, differences and rewards?

Virginia: The budgets available for projects are a lot lower than they are in Sydney. Our work is very accessible – we have never worked on a house over a million dollars. All of our buildings can be built by local builders because we only use standard cost effective construction methods. People generally have a greater awareness of what things are worth and expect value for money. Farmers are very practical in the way they look at things. If you show them a light you have bought in the middle of Surry Hills for $2,000 you are going to be laughed at. Property prices are not what they are in Sydney and it is easy to overcapitalise. For this reason we always talk about an exit strategy with our clients. If something happens in their lives and they can’t afford to keep the building we don’t think they should be paying back $100,000 for a building they don’t own anymore.

Tricia: The demographics on the north coast are quite different to the big properties on the western plains. The retirees I am working with are predominantly young, have been successful in their careers and sold out of Sydney for a tree-change. Existing housing stock is not of great quality so they are either modifying or knocking down and rebuilding. They are conscious they are overcapitalising but they don’t intend to leave their houses and so for them is less of a factor. At the other end of the spectrum affordability is a huge factor. You hear of the extreme measures people take to get into the housing market, for example: living in their car for a couple of years while they are working or studying to save a deposit. One of the issues in Bellingen is that there is not enough diversity in housing stock. Much of what is available is three or four bedroom houses and there aren’t enough smaller places available for people to enter the market.