Property Point 13 June

Soon after I arrived in Mackay I was talking with a middle-aged couple who mentioned they had been to a particular restaurant and, not being familiar with the local cuisine, I asked what the food was like.
“The meals aren’t very big,” the wife said.

In other parts of the world I’d heard criticisms such as “the steak was tough” or “the fish was oily”.
My friend Mick tells the old joke about the bloke at a Chinese restaurant who complains to the waiter that “this chicken is rubbery”.

“Ah, thank you very much,” the waiter replies. You’ve got to be shamefully politically incorrect to even get that joke. It’s disgusting and I don’t know why I laugh every time Mick says it when we’re eating Asian food.
But the scathing comment from the locals I asked about the food at a particular restaurant was not that the food was bad, just that the meals weren’t very big.

I’ve noticed that in some restaurants, those known for “fine dining”, the quantity of food seems to be less important than the quality.

However, I get it … you don’t want to pay for a meal and leave the restaurant feeling hungry. Mackay practicality.

It was an early signal to me that Mackay people tend to like big things.  When I first arrived, Holden still made cars and apparently Mackay had the highest per capita ownership of Club Sports. They liked big V8s.
These days they are more into big 4WDs and SUVs. Witness the number of RAMs and other monster trucks on the road.

The belief that big is better became an issue a few years later when certain residential developments with much smaller blocks were taken to the Mackay market.

Precincts such as the Woodlands Estate in Andergrove, Plantation Palms in Rural View and Blacks Beach Cove were all designed with smaller blocks than the usual Mackay offering.

While Mackay home-owners were accustomed to typical 700-800+sq m blocks, suddenly there were blocks of 300-500sq m. They were a bit like those meals at the Mackay restaurant I mentioned, not very big.

In those days many of those properties were snapped up by investors and rented out. Many of us, me included, said Mackay people were never going to buy those properties because they want big blocks, properties where you can fit a shed and get access for a boat or a caravan.

And it is true that many Mackay people did not want them. They wanted bigger blocks and the space they offer for vehicles and boys’ toys.

But over the past year properties have been selling in those estates in the high $500,000s, $600,000s and $700,000s. The blocks are small and they’re not for everyone but Mackay is showing that the market is more diverse than we thought.

Not everyone has a caravan, a big boat and a massive 4WD. Mackay has changed … there is now a terrific, divergent ethnic mix that makes the place more interesting and culturally complex. Many of those people have different requirements to the typical old Mackay buyers.

We have had an influx of young professional people from southern cities who have also helped break the mould.
And there are plenty of older people who want to downsize to something modern and low-maintenance and they are snapping up properties on smaller blocks.

So while many Mackay people will still focus on the size of the meal and the car and the block, we are changing. Many busy Mackay people want the convenience of a smaller block with a modern home that requires little maintenance.

In Mackay it’s no longer one size fits all.

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