FROM ROCKY AYRES, NORTHERN TERRITORY EDITOR

WITH ALL the hullabaloo about the shortage of housing in Australia, many statisticians have missed a slow moving disaster creeping up on Australia: the ever increasing population of grey nomads.

Recently released figures suggest that by the 2080s the grey nomad population will exceed the settled population, with most Australians drifting around the continent pulling caravans, and driving RVs.

The phenomenon has considerably picked up pace since the turn of this century, fired by more and more retirees. The Covid pandemic only poured fuel on the flames.

“Everyone is looking at housing, but it’s road space we really ought to be worried about,” says Dr August Autobahn, an expert in traffic flow from Hamburg, Germany. “You must begin to make provision for millions of large vehicles on Australian roads at the same time. And then there’s he need for caravan parks. Houses will need to be cleared to make way for huge mega-parks. It’s an enormous challenge and the Federal Government in Canberra is doing little to prepare for it.”

Research suggests that if the practice continues, and Australians continue to live longer, as many as seven out of ten Australian houses will be empty by the end of the century, with their owners touring around the country. Whole towns will be almost completely empty except for the grey nomads passing through.

“It might be that a new industry of house renting will accompany the problem,” Dr Autobahn suggests. “People renting their homes on short lets to other grey nomads. That would relieve some of the stress. But grey nomads like their caravans and RVs. Not someone else’s house. I can see issues.”

“I can see regular traffic jams as long as a hundred – maybe two hundred – kilometres,” says Brian Orwell, an expert in flow dynamics. “Everything we have now is in the wrong place for this new age of the grey nomad. The roads will need to be three times as wide. And we don’t need windmills, or new power stations. We need portable solar panels. Millions of them. It could be a nightmare. Yes, a real nightmare.

“Tourism will flourish though,” Dr Autobahn remarked. “I’d invest in coffee wagons.”