Some people move to the city to find more employment opportunities, shopping, people, and a broad range of culture, schools, and activities.
Others move to the country for a slower pace of life, careers, rural landscapes, less traffic, and peace and quiet.
Paul McLachlan has done both, but finds his home back in the New England the only place he’d like to be.
Paul’s journey to Inverell has been a bit of a boomerang.
A Bingara native, Paul built a long career in retail, managing the H. Fay & Sons Hardware, and grew a family in Bingara. But a family move took him to Brisbane in 2020, which provided a very different kind of life. He said it didn’t take long before he regretted the decision.
“I went to Brisbane and managed a large IGA in Cleveland there, and I just became tired, a bit jaded of the industry,” Paul said.
Before long, he began thinking about a move back home.
BOSS offers a pathway home
BOSS Engineering is a born and bred Inverell company that employs more than 200 people, and is always on the hunt for more, welcoming resumes at any time regardless of whether they have jobs advertised.
“My son actually has worked at BOSS since 2018, and he’s always talked about what a wonderful workplace it is here.”
BOSS mainly services the varied engineering needs of the agriculture and transport sectors, with BOSS Agriculture including Broadacre Planters, Row Crop Machinery, Air Seeders, and spare parts, and BOSS Built producing the highest quality ute trays, service bodies and transport equipment on the market. The company recently partnered with Alceon Private Equity to fund rapid expansion plans, including establishing a new site at Tamworth.
Paul weighed up the urban cost of living, his grandchildren back in Inverell, the time it took to pursue his hobbies and interests, and just the daily demands of life in a city environment.
He applied for a position at BOSS and had a trial in September 2023. They offered him a job, and he organised his move south.
“I haven’t looked back. I love it,” he said.
Paul is now working in warehouse and distribution at BOSS Engineering’s Inverell headquarters.
Getting back the gift of time
Paul said the sacrifice of time was difficult in the city.
“The biggest thing for me that I didn’t like was the travelling. Taking so long to get from A to B, even if it was only a short distance,” he explained.
“When you holiday, you have the freedom of time, so you don’t notice so much; you sort of fall in love with the place and don’t have the realism of your working life, and the allocation of time to your interests and hobbies.
“They almost become unattainable in some aspects.”
Work was only about four kilometres from home, but could take 20 minutes on some days.
He said some routine trips just 20 kilometres away for an activity or other engagement might put an hour on each end of the excursion, putting a damper on city living.
“It comes back to valuing your time again, and it got to the stage where I thought, ‘I can’t be bothered doing that,’ so I’d either go without or change my plans.”
A dirtbike enthusiast, Paul took his bike up to Brisbane with the intention of riding frequently.
“The reality of it was, if I wanted to do that, I had to spend six hours travelling, for potentially an hour and a half or a two-hour ride, which, when you’re talking about time and life, that doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
“And that was another big reason to moving back to the New England area. You have the freedom of time.”
How’s the serenity?
“You can travel 15 or 20 minutes in a lot of directions, and you can be fishing, you can be riding motorbikes, you can be hunting.”
“Just all of your interests are so close and attainable.”
When he returned to the New England, he welcomed family and friends back on his doorstep, and appreciated the value of spending face-to-face time with them, and reinvesting himself in rural life.
“I’ve loved coming back here. I’ve become a very outdoors person. And just being able to think, ‘I might go for a hike here, or there,’ and be there in not a great deal of time, and take your time – just the solitude, the quiet,” he reflected.
“And it’s true – it’s not sculptured or manicured in any sense.”
He said the serenity was the first thing he really noticed when he came back. In Brisbane, he lived close to a major hospital.
“You just constantly had ambulances, airplane noise, you become used it and desensitised to it, but once I moved back here, that’s when I really started to value the peace and quiet,” he said.
“I won’t go back. I like it too much here.”
Our series on people who have moved to the New England is supported by a micro-grant from the Local Independent News Association (LINA) and the Walkley Meta Fund Grant that has enabled New England Times to have an investigative unit.