ABSTRACT
The literature on retirement migration might discuss 'Northern Beach Town and 'Coastal Centre' using the term 'rural retirement destination (RRD)'. The RRD category to this context focuses on two points. First, these towns dominated by in-migrant retirement are also tourist destinations. The obviousness of this correlation – that people choose to retire in places they believe they will enjoy just as they choose holiday destinations – obscures sometimes important problems affecting post-retirement lives. Second, an older community and the absence of some amenities identified with the city are attractants for in-town retirement. In such places, ageing in-migrants are aggregated with that ageing-in-place by factors like past occupation, disposable income, past residence and, perhaps most crucially, shared tastes. Such towns are troubled by a double ambivalence. Northern Beach Town differs from an RRD in the visible cultural diversity produced by its Aboriginal population and that it differs most of all in its relatively low socio-economic indicators and related resourcing problems.
