Inverell is a very long way from the varied, dramatic landscapes of Namibia on the southwest coast of Africa. It also offers a slower, gentler pace of life than Brisbane.
Fred Vilonel knows them both intimately, but found deep satisfaction with his family in his home and the community of Inverell. He believes this rural community, cradled within the hills and paddocks of the New England, has captured his heart, and satisfies his soul.
“I sold my caravan,” Fred said.
“Why? In Brisbane, you try to get away from everything and you want to go rural. I said to my wife, ‘Now we’re rural. Where do I want to go for a day? I don’t want to go to Brisbane. I don’t want to go to Sydney. I don’t want to go to the big cities. We’re living. We’re having a holiday here.’”
“So, I sold the caravan. I don’t need a caravan. I don’t want to get away. I’m already here, so why would I want to go anywhere?”
Bindaree pulls in the right people
As the current Chief Information Officer, overseeing all IT and systems for the Bindaree Food Group, the road to the Vilonel’s current home began over 20 years ago, when he and his family moved to Australia, and settled in Brisbane where he accepted a job with Australian Country Choice in the beef industry.
Fred said that like Bindaree, it was also founded as a family company. But after two decades of urban living, when the job at Bindaree came up in 2021, he was attracted to the Inverell-based offer, saw the similarity of putting people first, and valued the company ethos.
“Bindaree is very much about people, the people as an asset. And you can see it,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter who you are and where you come from. They value the people. And I was very surprised that Bindaree can pull so many people to work for them in a small place like Inverell.”
On the day his interview, Fred said his first impressions were favourable.
“I travelled Queensland, literally from top to bottom. I was in Camooweal in the north of Queensland, as far as Charleville in the West, all up the coast,” Fred said.
“The one thing that struck me about Inverell the moment we drove in the first time for the interview was how neat and clean it looks.”
Before the family left the town limits on the day of his interview, Fred was offered and accepted the role of Group Manager of IT. It was time to relocate, and the beginning of an unforeseen adventure.
Fred said the journey to the Inverell home where he now lives with his wife, daughter, and two grandchildren was far from simple. Initially, the Vilonels initially decide to keep their home in Brisbane, and rent in Inverell, but faced a scarcity of options for the size of their family.
“And that just didn’t work. There was nothing,” Fred said, adding his family encountered another obstacle in the process of house hunting.
“You have to be physically at the house to view the house, to be able to rent the house,” he said.
“But because we were in Brisbane, you could just not do it. And you cannot drive every weekend to come and look at houses and hope you can get the house to rent.”
Nine months in a caravan
To tackle the problem, the Vilonels threw caution to the wind, and packed up their caravan and headed south to Inverell, thinking it would be a brief stopgap while they perused the rental market.
“We decided we will take the caravan and go and stay in the caravan park, just to find out there’s a rule that says you cannot stay in the same place for more than a month,” Fred said.
“So every month you have to move. So that we had to do for nine months. Originally, they actually told us we need to go to another park.”
In time, one of the local park owners made and exception and rather than enforcing the rule, they allowed the family to move to the other side of the park at month’s end, giving them more stability while they established themselves in the community and looked for a home.
But despite being physically in town, they were stymied by the same rental shortage hitting regional communities.
“And then we started looking for rentals, but still couldn’t find a rental because we needed a rental that’s a bit bigger because I moved with my daughter and her children as well. So basically two families,” Fred said.
“And that caused us a big problem because there were just not bigger houses that you could rent at all. And if it becomes available, it’s gone the same day. In the end, I gave up and said, ‘We will sell in Brisbane and buy a place.’”
Time gives quality of life
The family settled in an old home on a property with town limits. More recently, Fred was able to purchase a second home in town, which he is renovating after hours for his daughter and her children. He said regaining time for living rather than commuting to work, errands, waiting in long lines, or shopping, has been life-changing.
“If you really think about it, that is what’s giving you quality of life. Time to think, time to have for your children, for your family. You lose so much time in the cities. That is just a waste of time. You don’t get anything for it. You don’t achieve anything by it,” he said.
“You spend in Brisbane an hour to an hour and a half to two hours a day just on driving to work and driving back. Here, it’s five minutes. There’s nothing Inverell that’s less than five minutes or more than five minutes away.
“It’s that pace of life is achievable. It makes you still feel in the end of the day, you look forward to tomorrow because of your today.”
It hasn’t all been clear sailing. Fred said besides the scarcity of options in the rental market, the family have encountered barriers to accessible healthcare. He said within his family, they manage some chronic conditions that require some specialist care that still puts them on the road to Brisbane.
Government neglecting duty of care
“I really believe the government is neglecting the duty of care to rural Australia in a place like Inverell,” he said.
“They should be enough doctors in the hospital. The taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to get that place built, but there’s no doctors, so I know. So that is a neglecting of duty of care.”
“I understand at the moment there’s a shortage of people everywhere. Everybody has said there’s not enough nurses, there’s not enough teachers.”
“But in a rural community, think what you have to do. You have to drive hundreds of kilometres to get to a doctor.”
He also recognised the lack of employment opportunity for younger people, but believed with good planning and foresight, Inverell has capacity to capitalise on its assets and attract more large businesses, bringing more jobs.
“But really, I think if they start bringing in more younger people or trying to attract more younger people so that you can have businesses that can grow from having enough people to work,” he said.
Overall, he felt the benefits of moving rural have outweighed the negatives. Fred believed there were additional economic benefits to making a tree change, including tax advantages home interest subsidies, and moving compensation for people relocating to rural Australia.
“Do I ever want to move from Inverell? No.”
He said he values the good service from local businesses, the maturity of the children in the country community, and the genuine nature of local residents. He said returning to a rural lifestyle, like his earlier years in Namibia, has altered his vision of what his future might be.
“Because I actually grew up in Namibia, and then moved to South Africa. So, I’m now living in Australia longer than I lived in Namibia. And I don’t think it’s too many years from now that I will live in Australia longer than I lived in South Africa,” he explained.
“But in essence, you know that a country doesn’t make a person.
“I thought to myself, if that is how much living rural can change you, what are we still doing in the cities?” “And that’s the important part of it. You think to yourself, do I ever want to move from Inverell again? No. There’s no reason that I want to move from Inverell because it’s such a nice place.”
From his office, overlooking the Inverell community, out toward the Dividing Range to the east, the kangaroos grazing on the lawns, and the rich variety of country life around him, Fred said each day was a kind of balm.
“So originally, I didn’t think I would ever retire here, but there’s no reason why I want to go and retire in any other place,” he reflected.
“I sit here every morning I look out, and it’s literally it’s food for the soul. You think about it as, ‘Let’s get this job done so I can go and look at more stuff.’
“It is just so nice to every day look forward to the next day because it is just enjoyable.”
Top image: Bindaree Food Group CIO Fred Vilonel has landed in Inverell, and can’t think of a reason to ever leave. (Photo: Michèle Jedlicka)
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.