Eight of us sat down to dinner last night to celebrate a birthday, André’s fifty-first. We’ve all been friends for years. All of us moved here from Sydney: three in 2000, my partner and I in 2001, and the last three in 2002.

We left the city for various reasons: to make wine, to raise a child, to escape the pollution and noise of the city, to follow our dream of living in the country. All of us were encouraged by those who’d made the leap before us.

The child, an infant when he moved here, will be 10 years old next year. He has an active sport and social life. His parents find it amusing that while their social life languishes, their son is regularly invited to dinner and sleepovers at his friends’ houses. He once made his parents promise that if they ever divorced, they’d never leave Daylesford: he’d miss his friends too much.

As well as his doting mum and dad, the boy has two ‘uncles’, three ‘aunties’ plus an official uncle to keep an eye on him. And then there’s the rest of the community.

Growing up in a country town has its downside. You’re guaranteed of support whenever you need it because everyone knows who you are. But when teenage rebellion erupts, life in a country town could be a little stifling.

It was this ‘life in a fish bowl’ aspect that I found to be challenging when we first arrived here. Not that I was likely to disgrace myself. No, I’d done all the dumb things (as Paul Kelly sang) in my youth, and wasn’t likely to re-visit them once I passed 30. But what about all those unintentional dumb things that might cause tongues to wag?

Luckily, this community is a particularly welcoming and tolerant one and most of my gaffs went completely unnoticed. (I could go into detail here, but I won’t.)

That level of tolerance makes Daylesford a natural setting for ChillOut, the largest annual celebration of gay and lesbian culture in provincial Australia. It’s also why, as David Sedaris says in his story Laugh Kookaburra, published in the New Yorker, ‘If Dodge City had been founded and maintained by homosexuals, this [Daylesford] is what it might have looked like.’

A town where the majority of people are heterosexual, but which invites huge numbers of people to celebrate their difference at an annual event, has to be special.

ChillOut aside, it took me a year or more to try to understand why people would drive up here from Melbourne, pootle around the boutiques, buy a few things and then sit in a café before driving home. Melbourne has some fabulous stores and the cafés are generally better down there than they are up here.

And then it dawned on me: many of those day-trippers make the journey for a glimpse of what it’s like to actually live here. Groups of them cluster around the windows of real-estate agents, checking out the ‘for sale’ notices, often shocked at the asking prices of cramped miners’ cottages (with European kitchens, of course).

The following statement will only come as a surprise if you’re reading this in another country: While most Australians feel they have strong links to the land, this is one of the most highly urbanised countries in the world.

In an effort to encourage more people to move from Melbourne to provincial Victoria, Regional Development Victoria recently conducted the Relocated Residents Survey in conjunction with The Centre for Regional Innovation and Competitiveness at the University of Ballarat, and the ASCET Group. The survey was completed by over 369 residents who’d re-located to regional Victoria from Melbourne in the last decade.

Seventy-five per cent of people surveyed were satisfied with their move, with 60 per cent reporting that life in provincial Victoria was better than expected. If you’d like to read the survey results, go to the Business Victoria website and click on the link.

It’s interesting to note that the three poorest rated features of living in provincial Victoria are public transport, employment prospects and business opportunities. Here in ‘Dodge City’ all are in scarce supply.

Educational opportunities, too, can present problems when children reach high-school age. We’ve known of several couples who’ve returned to Melbourne to enrol their children in schools that specifically cater for interests that aren’t accommodated here.

It’s no surprise that the majority of tree-changers from Melbourne to provincial Victoria are aged from 45 to 54 years. It seems that baby boomers are still keen ‘to get ourselves back to the garden’. I just hope it doesn’t get too crowded around here.