Combating Loneliness: How Community Groups Are Fighting Isolation in Regional Australia
Old Bastards Bring Connection to Regional Isolation
Rena, my daughter, she registered as an Old Bastard 27 years ago,
John Abreu said of the Carnarvon community group. She was nine months old. She was the youngest Old Bastard in Carnarvon.
Each week on Thursday evenings, John Abreu visits the Gascoyne Hotel located in Carnarvon, Western Australia, accompanied by his daughter and brother to participate in the Old Bastards meetup. The group catches up weekly to have a yarn, a drink, play games, and fundraise for their community, abc.net.au reported. People of all ages and genders make up the membership of the Old Bastards, despite what their title might suggest.
Recent research has found more than half of Australians suffer from loneliness. As reported by abc.net.au, this figure climbs even higher throughout regional Australia, where associations such as the Old Bastards are fighting back by providing regular opportunities for people to connect.
Locals like Jonathon Foster, who relocated to the remote coastal town six years ago, have found that the meetup serves as an essential lifeline. You don’t see it too often in a lot of other places,
he said. I didn’t feel connected until we met these guys and they just put their arms out and welcomed us into the town. We’re 500 kilometres from Geraldton and 600 from Karratha. It’s probably because of the isolation that it all works.
Outback Isolation Spotlights Rural Shortfalls
The Old Bastards is just one of many small community groups in the outback doing heavy work to address isolation in regional Australia, according to Associate Professor Michelle Lim. Heading Ending Loneliness Together—Australia’s peak body dedicated to tackling loneliness and social isolation—Lim serves as the chief executive. She noted that loneliness impacts regional and rural Australians more than their metro counterparts.
I think that there’s not enough research in this area, but what we do know is the prevalence is significantly higher for both loneliness and social isolation in regional and rural communities,
Lim said, as reported by abc.net.au. What people living in those communities are telling us is that there is a lack of infrastructure and investment in spaces, in programs.
Ending Loneliness Together began surveying Australians in 2018, and its recent report identified regional and rural Australia as an isolation hotspot. Lim recalled that before the COVID-19 pandemic, public concern over loneliness was frequently met with dismissiveness.
Anecdotally, when we were talking about loneliness, people were concerned but they didn’t have empathy as to why someone could feel lonely,
Lim said. And in fact, if anything, I think we caught a lot of criticism and a lot of people would say just get over it, you live and this is just part of life. And then COVID happened.
Global Public Health Warnings Follow Local Realities
As noted in reporting by abc.net.au, the U.S. Surgeon General raised alarms regarding isolation-related harms in 2023, classifying the condition as an epidemic-level public health crisis. In terms of mortality alone, loneliness can impact a person’s longevity as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
When people feel like they are shouldering life’s burdens alone, it can lead to health complications such as heart disease, depression, anxiety, and an increased risk of stroke.
On the Gold Coast in Queensland, the government-funded Aged Care Volunteer Visitors Scheme—known as Chatterbox—tackles this problem by matchmaking volunteers with older people who would otherwise miss out on human connection. Darren Maughan became a volunteer after observing residents while visiting his late mother-in-law at the Ashmore Gardens Care Community.
I saw the loneliness and the isolation of other residents there, a lot of people that I never saw with a visitor,
Maughan said. Some you’d see with a family member that might come in once a month for a couple of hours. I could see the physical and mental decline on these people while they were sitting there.
Matchmaking Generations Through Chatterbox
Maughan has had up to 10 people on his Chatterbox roster, including 95-year-old Cyril. The pair share conversations ranging from Cyril’s days working on the Western Australian gold mines to updates about their families.
You can’t sort of sit down with somebody for a couple of hours once a week and not be friends,
Cyril said, per abc.net.au. I mean, if we weren’t friends, I’d ask him to leave!
Renee Brown coordinates the Chatterbox volunteers and notes that the health impacts of visits can be immediate. Family members have come back and said they’ve noticed a brand-new spark in family members from having just a couple of visits with their friend,
she said. So those who’ve visited someone in a residential aged care facility as well, they’ve noticed that they like to come out of their room a bit more. Or if not, they’re really, happy and they’re like I know my friend is coming to visit me today.
Professor Lim emphasized that friendship between generations matters because both ends of life experience have a lot to offer each other. I actually think that we don’t do intergenerational friendships enough,
she said. The two loneliest cohorts in Australia, are the 18 to 25 years and then the 65 and over. Young people have energy and new ideas and enthusiasm and they’re real advocates for life. And then you have all the people who carry this wisdom, mentorship, life experience. And those two cohorts really can benefit so greatly from each other.
In Carnarvon, those intergenerational dynamics are simply part of daily life at the Gascoyne Hotel. Old people can talk about experiences and how they’ve grown through their life, whether it be financial, family planning,
Foster said. We’ve got a wide opinion, whether they listen to it or not. But young people can talk to us about technology, obviously. They just seem to have a really, good rapport between the youth and the seniors and they love it all when they come here. It’s just part and parcel of what the town does I think.