All points north
It's taken a long old while to get going, but the great cyclical migration north is picking up the pace as the Sydney housing market prices out some homebuyers, and people gradually work out how dreary the winters are down south.
It's been pretty evident in Brisbane for a while - every second person you meet has seemingly just moved up from somewhere else, that somewhere else usually being Sydney.
It's been pretty evident in Brisbane for a while - every second person you meet has seemingly just moved up from somewhere else, that somewhere else usually being Sydney.
And the figures now have confirmed that Brisbane now has the highest net internal migration gain of all the capital cities, hitting a pacy 10,100 in 2015-16.
Net internal migration to the Gold Coast (6,428) and Sunshine Coast (6,200) also increased to the highest levels in about a decade.
As the creator of most new jobs, Melbourne is attracting a historically high number of migrants internally, with a net gain of 8,300 people, while Hobart moved into positive territory with a net gain of 400.
On the other side of the coin Adelaide (-6,100) is suffering a remarkable brain drain, partly to the bright lights of Melbourne.
Meanwhile the resources capitals Perth (-3,300) and Darwin (-1,200) have continued to grapple with the winding down of mining construction, while Canberra (-180) also lost a handful residents on a net basis.
Of the regional areas outside Queensland, Geelong (4,216) is seeing fairly strong internal migration, and we might expect this to continue.
Foreign born Sydney
The figures released by the ABS for 2015-16 provided a remarkable insight into the changing face of Sydney.
Sydney lost 23,200 people net during the financial year, with the biggest internal migration loss to regional New South Wales as retirees take their equity to cheaper and coastal locations (and who can blame them?).
Sydney's rapid ongoing population growth has instead been driven by a combination of high rates of immigration from overseas and natural growth (more births than deaths), meaning that a large chunk of the resident population today is overseas born.
