While working at Urbanlist four years ago, Ben Tyers noticed there wasn’t really anything in the same vein for country businesses, no Urbanlist or Broadsheet that went out of the cities. As a writer and editor always trying to profile the best places to go, he thought readers were missing out by not hearing about regional spaces.
The pandemic had a “bizarre” side effect for his guidebook The Local Rag. “It actually did wonders for it”, Tyers says. “Even though you couldn’t travel, I think everyone knew that [after lockdowns] you weren’t going to be able to go overseas.”
The timing worked, and The Local Rag is now a go-to guide for all things restaurants, pubs, hotels and attractions in regional Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales, with Tyers hoping he can get into other states, too, as it grows.
Tyers joins the Smart50 program this year as a guest judge on the Regional Award category. Here, he shares his love for regional spaces, and his experience of watching the changing face of regional businesses in the modern era.
What is it about the country and regional businesses that make you tick?
I grew up in the country. I’m from Melbourne originally and we moved to a little place called Yarram when I was about five. But I spent from five until 17 in Yarram. I left town the day after I finished high school because there wasn’t much there for me. But I really loved growing up in the country; all the friends that I made throughout those years, I still have those connections now. I have a really strong bond to country areas and the community aspect of them, the characters and all those kind of things that kind of make them up. It’s just so different.
Even if you go an hour and a half out of Melbourne, and find these smaller towns, there’s just a completely different way of living and a way of life and different issues and I just think that also probably doesn’t really get into the mind of people that live in the city. The Local Rag is about just making sure people know that these towns and places are out there and are making the most of their opportunity, whether it’s a weekend, or, it’s an hour and a half drive, or whatever it is.
Things changed a lot over the last few years. What attitudes and feedback are you gauging from these country businesses these days?
It has been interesting watching the shift in the way that businesses operate. There were points there where we could obviously only travel in Victoria and NSW and those sorts of things.
That attracted many to these smaller towns, towns have changed over the last two years. Where I grew up in South Gippsland and the places that Yarram used to play footy in, like Loch and Meeniyan and all that? There wasn’t much there, they had a milk bar and whatever else. And now? Loch has all these fancy cafés, it’s got a distillery; it’s crazy to see that change over the last two or three years. So it was obviously happening, but I think the pandemic sped it up a little bit. It’s also that people are doing tree changes as well.
I just saw in a town called Toora, some guys that have a general store in Prahran, have taken over the Toora general store to redo it and make it this amazing asset for the community. That sort of thing is really cool as well. People are realising that if you’ve got a business in Mordialloc, or you want to open one in Prahran, that’s cool, but they’re realising now that Bendigo and Ballarat and even places like Toora are a great place to expand your business as well. That’s kind of cool to see too.
Ben Tyers joins the Smart50 program this year as a guest judge for the Regional Award, which celebrates entrants from regional areas that have made significant impact to their community by supporting local organisations or boosting economies with jobs and opportunities. Don’t miss out – enter now.
Ben Ice is special features editor of SmartCompany.
