The idyllic village of Apollo Bay is a tourist mecca whose population explodes roughly 10 times in the peak visitor season. But its popularity has fuelled a housing crisis that means locals and workers without deep pockets are forced to leave, exacerbating the pressures on those who remain year-round.
Time seems to move a little slower in the coastal town of Apollo Bay.
The picturesque, yet relatively isolated, tourist hotspot is nestled along the twists and turns of the Great Ocean Road, about a three-hour drive from Melbourne.
The latest census figures show about 1,800 people call the town home, but its population balloons tenfold during the peak summer period as travellers and holiday-makers flock there.
Even on an overcast day, the place hums with activity.
Loading...Tourists lackadaisically stroll along the beach, welcoming the chance to stretch their legs as they make their way to the iconic Twelve Apostles.
Seagulls squawk. Kids on scooters rattle down the pavement.
The ambient chatter of locals and visitors alike spills out from busy cafes and restaurants.
Backpackers and van-dwelling travellers lounge in the sun.
Like many other coastal towns, Apollo Bay's population has increased as people fled suburban areas during the COVID-19 pandemic or sought a sea-change lifestyle.
It also has a high proportion of short-stay accommodation, meaning locals can find it hard to come by long-term rentals.
So, despite all its charm and beauty, the town is gripped by a nexus of challenges.
The town's only childcare centre is oversubscribed, understaffed and at risk of closing.
Businesses are struggling to get workers due to the cost of living.
Housing is so unaffordable that locals and essential workers are being driven out.
Harsha Aucklah loved living in Apollo Bay.
In between caring for her three boisterous boys and working in aged care, she busied herself with volunteering in the community and forging friendships with other mums.
"It's a very peaceful town and the community is very supportive," she says.
But Harsha's serene stint in the town was cut short in 2022 when the lease on her rental property expired.
It was always a challenge to find a rental in the town, but this time around nothing fit her budget.
In 2018 she was paying about $350 per week for a two-bedroom property. By the time she left town, that cost had risen 85 per cent to almost $650 for the same home.
"It's impossible to afford that when everything is costly and you are in competition with other families," she says, shaking her head.
Like other tourist towns, Apollo Bay has a high number of short-stay accommodation and holiday homes.
It's not clear how many houses aren't being used as permanent rentals in the town, however most estimates say at least a third of the homes are short-stay accommodation.
This draws on census data from 2021, when almost 60 per cent of the town's private dwellings were unoccupied.
Harsha says both houses on either side of her rental were empty most of the time, with the landlord making an obligatory visit once or twice a year.
"In winter it's a dead town. You'd be happy to see a light on at night."
She feels angry thinking about the lack of long-term rentals.
"There are families who are struggling ... so it made me upset. I'd think, 'This property could house a family, why is it empty?'"
Eventually, Harsha made the decision to leave town.
She's fortunate enough to have the money to buy a modest home in Mortlake, a country town about two hours north-west of Apollo Bay.
It was a bitter end to the haven that once offered her so much peace and stability, but she says she had no choice.
"I moved for better mental health, for the children and myself, rather than keep struggling down in Apollo Bay.
"I always had that stress of wondering, 'Where am I going to live next year? What's going to happen to this property, or is the rent going to go up?'"
The housing crisis in Apollo Bay has been festering for years.
In 2021, the local Colac Otway Shire Council declared a key and essential worker housing crisis.
At the time, then-mayor Kate Hanson said it was critically important to address the housing problem in the shire.
"The lack of worker housing in Colac and Apollo Bay is having an impact on the economy and livability of our communities; it's important we address the shortage of worker housing in Colac Otway Shire," she said.
It's not the only Australian town struggling with housing.
The latest National Shelter-SGS Economics and Planning Rental Affordability Index paints an ugly picture of rental affordability in Victoria.
Only three areas in regional Victoria — the inland postcodes of Kerang, Nhill and Numurkah — were classed as affordable. Meanwhile, Torquay, Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove along the Surf Coast were the most expensive area for renters.
In 2019 this data deemed Apollo Bay to have "acceptable" rental affordability.
Now, it is classed as "severely unaffordable", meaning low-income families would be spending up to 60 per cent of their income on rent.
People looking to buy in Apollo Bay without deep pockets would also be out of luck.
Realestate.com.au data shows for the year ending December 2023, the median house price sat at $1.2 million. This is double the value for the same period in 2019, when the median price was $612,500.
As the former president of the local Chamber of Commerce, Bob Knowles knows the housing challenges of Apollo Bay well.
"We've got a mechanical issue that we need to solve. The situation is desperate, and it's been desperate for a while," he says.
Essential workers like Harsha leaving the town is bad for residents, bad for businesses, and bad for the future of Apollo Bay.
"This is the fabric of the town," Bob says.
"If working people can't afford to live here, then those with deep pockets won't get their grass cut and they won't get their lattes on Thursday."
Bob was a driving force in a now-defunct affordable housing task force established a few years ago to attempt to coordinate a response to the accommodation issues.
At one point, the task force wrote to all the town's ratepayers, effectively pleading with them to take their property off the short-term-stay market if they owned such a property and they could afford to.
Some people chose to convert their property from an Airbnb to a long-term rental, but Bob says that's not an option for everyone.
"Many of the Airbnbs are run by people who depend on it for their income and their contribution to the local economy."
While he says there's no silver-bullet solution, Bob believes the formation of a community trust or housing cooperative could help provide cheap and affordable housing in Apollo Bay.
"If we don't have affordable worker accommodation, we will need more social housing because people will live in their cars."
It's that prospect of people living in cars that worries Karlijn Sas, the coordinator of the Marrar Woorn Neighbourhood House.
Amid the high cost of living, she says parents are forced to decide whether they buy fresh vegetables or have money to pay for their children's extra-curricular activities.
The remoteness of the town and a so-called tourist tax makes basic necessities expensive too.
"People call in and say, 'Hey, I'm on a pension and I'm raising my grandchildren. I can't make it to the end of the week, can you help me?'''
To help those struggling, the hub manages a food pantry that's stocked with donations and supplies from a food bank.
About 300 kilograms of food flies off the pantry's shelves every week.
Nappies and baby food are snatched up quickly, which makes Karlijn even more concerned.
"Parents are suffering, which means that children are suffering."
She's worried the town will lose more locals if working families continue to struggle.
"It will become a retirement village, when it could be a vibrant town with a diverse community."
It's not just food and nappies that parents in Apollo Bay are struggling to get their hands on.
It's getting child care.
Karlijn is among the lucky ones. Her son, Toby, was put on the waitlist six months before he was born, but she still had to wait 15 months after giving birth before Toby secured a placement.
Karlijn says she was fortunate to know an older couple who would happily babysit so she could return to work.
Not everyone in the town is so fortunate.
Emma Andrews is one of three teachers at the local school Apollo Bay P-12 College who has not been able to return to full-time work because she can't get child care for her 10-month-old daughter, Pip.
It's the second time she's faced this dilemma — she went through it with her first-born son Albert, who is now two-and-a-half years old.
All her family is in the United Kingdom so there's no-one to help with child care.
She's hoping to return to work this year. Despite putting her baby on the childcare waitlist before she was born, Emma has not yet secured a spot.
This makes it tricky for Emma to let her boss know whether she can work.
"The added complexity now is that I need the same two days of child care for both kids for me to be able to work."
School principal and Apollo Bay resident of two decades Brian Humphries says the situation has become progressively worse since the COVID-19 pandemic.
He says other teachers can only return to school for one day of the week, as that's the only day they can get child care.
"It affects the consistency of teachers and makes it difficult for me to plan.
"It also disrupts the kids' education, because they'll have one teacher two days a week and then a different teacher for another three days."
Apollo Bay Child Care Services seems like any other early education facility.
Kids frolic about in the outside yard, playing with toys and dressing up dolls.
Art coloured by a child's imagination adorns the inside walls, while youngsters flick through picture books.
But the centre is under extreme pressure. It faces critical staffing shortages and an excessive waitlist, all while facing an uncertain future.
There's a desperate need for child care in Apollo Bay and the centre is the only one in town.
All of the 24 spaces for the coming year are allocated and there's still 35 children on the waitlist.
Most of these children will not get a spot for at least 18 months.
Marie Sinclair and Josephine Barr, who jointly operate the centre, say the building has the capacity to look after 48 children.
But due to staffing shortages that sprung forth during the pandemic, it is only able to offer half that number.
The centre can be in big trouble if even one staff member is unwell. If someone is sick, rooms will have to be shut and children sent home.
It means parents will have to scramble to make other arrangements or miss work to stay home.
"We're just hanging on by a thread," Marie says.
"That puts added pressure on staff because they don't want to call in sick, knowing it puts pressure on everyone else.
"It's hard for people to take holidays because we can't fill their position. It really has that mental effect on you."
She believes burnout is also adding to the dwindling staff pool.
"A lot of staff last three years if they're lucky. They say it's too stressful and they want to take a step back and do something else."
Thankfully, the centre has just managed to hire another worker. This team member will live an hour's drive away and will need expensive visa sponsorship, but it will help take pressure off the rest of the team.
Marie and Josie say the price of housing is the reason for the staff shortage, as the cost of living makes it hard to recruit and retain staff on an early childhood worker's wages.
Marie herself is no stranger to the impact of the housing shortage. She had to move an hour away to Winchelsea as she could not find an affordable home in Apollo Bay.
She says it's no surprise that skyrocketing rent and housing scarcity mean it's hard to attract workers to the town, with people often preferring a city like Geelong where there's more housing and ample work available.
While other businesses may be able to provide accommodation for workers, either through subsidising rent or owning staff properties, that's not an option for the childcare centre.
"We're lucky if we break even, let alone buy houses," Marie says.
In fact, the childcare centre doesn't have the means to even secure its own future.
Great Ocean Road Health owns the centre's building and will need it back at some point to accommodate its expanding team.
Chief executive Sandy Chamberlin reassures locals there is no deadline for this and the centre won't leave until a new premises for child care is available in Apollo Bay.
"Half of our staff use that child care. There's no way we're going to ask the child care to vacate if they have nowhere to go, and there's no way we're going to evict them until there's a secure option," she says.
While there has been talk of extending the town's new kindergarten to include an early childhood centre, Marie says there are no firm options just yet.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said in a statement that funding might be available under the Community Child Care Fund through a special circumstances grant. This money can be granted to approved providers to keep their services open when something unexpected occurs.
The spokesperson said this included when the centre was at risk of permanent closure and there was a lack of suitable care in the community.
Meanwhile, the state government is spending $370 million to increase the number of early childhood teachers and help with staff attraction and retention.
It's also establishing 50 government-owned-and-operated childcare centres across the state between 2025 and 2028.
Unfortunately for parents in Apollo Bay, the town was not included on that list.
Worker shortages are not just affecting the childcare centre.
Even the local supermarket is struggling to get people to stack shelves and serve customers.
The Apollo Bay IGA's manager Nick The says staffing has always been a challenge in the town.
"But the shortage of homes makes it even harder. We're just picking up whoever can put the hours in. We're very desperate for people."
Sometimes job-hunting travellers will pop their heads into the store to enquire about work, Nick says.
"My first question to them is: 'Have you got a place to stay?' A lot of the time people don't."
Andrew Noseda, who runs the local watering hole Great Ocean Road Brewhouse, is in a similar pickle.
He estimates the business has spent about $50,000 subsidising staff accommodation in the past year.
The average cost for a three-bedroom home in Apollo Bay is roughly $750 a week, Andrew says.
Split three ways between workers, he says $250 is still a decent chunk of a hospitality worker's income.
Any accommodation upstairs at the brewhouse is dedicated to staff.
"There's an opportunity cost, but we need to do that to keep the workforce here. It's just what we need to do," Andrew says.
Colac Otway Shire mayor Marg White says the council has housing and child care front of mind.
Despite the council advocating to state and federal governments, Apollo Bay was not included in Victoria's list of 50 new government-owned early childcare centres between 2025 and 2028.
This disappointed the mayor, but she hopes the news that 50 public homes are set to be built in nearby Colac shows the government is listening to the cries for help.
"That's giving us a little bit of hope that there is an eye on this region."
Graham Costin, a shire councillor who also lives in Apollo Bay, says the town's fluctuating population means securing help can be tricky.
"That makes it difficult because government policies and council allocations of money and the attention you get from others is based on the official census population," he says.
Out of the challenges the town faces, he says child care should be tackled first.
"Creating more childcare places will allow people who already live here to work, and that will help the worker shortage."
Meanwhile, freeing up more land for housing developments is tricky, he says.
Apollo Bay is flanked by a national park on one side, and landslip-prone land on the other, meaning the town can't expand its boundaries.
This year the council will review its structure plan and Graham hopes zoning changes will allow for medium-density developments in certain parts of the town.
He also believes more long-term rentals need to be available so the town can thrive and have a good base of workers and community volunteers.
"We want to grow the population here and create a more sustainable, vibrant town."
Loading...Harsha says she hopes to one day return to the peaceful coastal haven she felt forced to leave, even though it might not be until her children are grown up and independent.
"Apollo Bay feels very inclusive and it's easy to get along with others," she says.
"You don't have to be worried about who you are, or where you've come from, to be able to fit in."
Credits
- Reporting & photography: Jean Bell
- Digital production: Daniel Franklin