WHEN I was growing up in Tasmania, there was little conspicuous wealth. (The biggest shock of a first trip to Sydney was the number of new cars on the road, and so many of them were Mercedes, BMWs and even more exotic beasts.)

Doctors were at the top of the social order in terms of prestige and earning power, at least in southern Tasmania which had less landed gentry than the north of the state.

To grow up in Hobart meant to mix with people from all over, from Woodbridge to Bridgewater. Points of contact were numerous, from school holiday activities to music pubs, meetings in the mall and at matriculation college, through extended networks of friends and lovers. There wasn’t the yawning social divide you get in other cities.

It was an unglamorous place but it was grassroots. Tasmanians knew their home state (or, at least, their own half of their own home state — north/south parochialism being what it was and still is) intimately.

The natural environment was the natural playground for a place where even most city-dwellers lived in suburbs that backed onto bush or fronted onto beach.

It was a classless engagement with the great outdoors: girl guide or scout camps, hunting trips, Sunday drives, school end-of-term excursions, surfing safaris, shack holidays, fishing, bushwalking. Tasmanians didn’t have much money but were rich in nature. You could enjoy fried flounder for breakfast or abalone and mussels straight off the rocks, hitch-hike up the East Coast and camp by a beach … we were paupers but paradise was free.

Paupers in paradise was intended as a negative assessment of the state — a warning of what the state would become if development didn’t flow. One of the most damning aspects of the economic situation to those who concurred with this negative assessment was that young people were forced to leave the state to find work.

But let me tell you, I left looking for better opportunities myself and, harumph, it never did me any harm. Going out into the wider world was a great, revelatory, exciting thing to do. I got work and I got a fresh flow of ideas and experiences. Eventually I came home, a better person for it.

Small communities benefit, not lose out, from this refreshment of outlook when native sons and daughters return to their birthplaces.

Do you have a reservation

While I was living interstate, a return home on holidays led us on a disorganised trip up the East Coast, with no particular destination in mind. It was late afternoon as we reached the turn-off to Coles Bay.

I remembered a rare family holiday, staying at the Chateau there. I had spent the entire week exploring the rock pools and running round with other kids staying in the amiable cluster of fibro chalets. I took the turn-off.

We reached there at dusk. No more fibro chalets. No more Chateau. It was now an “eco-tourism” resort, whatever that means. The manager eyed off our jeans and t-shirts as we approached the desk. “Do you have a reservation?” “No, do you have a room?” A sniff, then a grudging admission in the affirmative. A quick totalling of our cash resources revealed a shortfall. Our gold Amexes were, unfortunately, away for retreading. “Is there an ATM in Coles Bay?” A thin smile thawed the edges of the manager’s face: “The nearest is at Swansea,” she said triumphantly.

It was the warm welcome of the new Tasmania.

We took our inadequate funds further north to the Silver Sands Motel at Bicheno, where they were more than sufficient to pay for a room for the night, a few beers and a counter meal.

I met a mainlander the other day who had moved to Hobart with her husband after buying and selling a succession of homes, each time making a pleasant return on their investment as they gravitated further out from the hub of one of Australia’s major metropolises.

Prior to Hobart, they had lived in a mining town, which they were gratified to see, shortly after buying their home there, was starting to attract considerable speculative investment and development from the big smoke. “It’s going to happen in Tasmania too,” she said to me encouragingly.

She and her husband were already planning their next relocation.

Gabfest, who takes his motto — Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one, from Clint Eastwood — is a Tasmanian media professional.