I just moved to Hobart, Australia from SF. It's quite affordable. I pay A$400 /mo rent in a share house, and walk 20 mins to a downtown co-working space every day (also A$400 /mo). Lifestyle is pretty incredible. It's small, but still a state capital city, so there's plenty going on. Hobart is also the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, so a lot of smart folks come through. Plus it was a trial zone for the National Broadband Network, so everyone has cheap fiber to the home.
edit: also the exchange rate is favorable, so if you have savings in USD they will go a long way.
I live across the pond, and though I love Hobart and tassie, intellectual is not exactly in the top 10 words I'd expect most people to use to describe most australian culture, let alone in its smaller cities.
Edit: which is mainly why I'm in Melbourne.
Edit2: though to be fair, looking at half the suggestions so far, no one seems to be taking said criteria very seriously.
Yeah, I was thinking of the "focus on my own intellectual pursuits" part of op's post. I imagined this to be something like writing open-source software, or doing math.
Tasmania is legitimately one of the most beautiful place I've seen anywhere in the world. Bruny Island, Huon Valley, most of the East coast, Hobart itself... but you absolutely pay for the beauty with lack of amenities and convenience.
The entire state only has 500k people in it, and you feel it. Shops close early, and close multiple days a week to save staff costs. You have to buy most stuff online, and shipping takes a while longer than anywhere else (for obvious reasons). The internet is mostly fixed wireless, unless you're in the middle of Hobart. There's regular power and Internet outages. There's a lack of people-stuff, so very few meetups, and it's very hard to find friends.
Most my family are down there (chefs and farmers), and it absolutely suits the outdoors types. Fishing, boating, hiking, and photography are all just cheating down there.
But I wouldn't call it a hub for... anything. You're on an island, and it very much feels like it.
Without a doubt one of my absolute favourite places in Australia (and the world) to holiday though. It's in my top 5 "places people must see before they die" list.
It's definitely not a hub. I wouldn't recommend trying to find a software job here. However, if you are a software engineer focusing on intellectual pursuits (like writing, math, OSS) and not working, then Hobart is pretty damn good.
Other places that are as cheap and beautiful can have some major downsides in terms of language barriers, safety, looking like a tourist, etc.
I'm in Melbourne right now but I'd love to move over the strait to Hobart. Do you have a remote job? The only thing stopping me is not being able to find work there - of the many things Hobart has, a thriving high tech industry is not one of them.
Melbourne here too wave -- greatest city on Earth, IMHO (I'm not from here), but we were in Adelaide just last week and it's getting interesting there. I assume rent is cheaper than Melbourne due to lower demand.
Yeah, I've been writing open source software mostly, plus a bit of software consulting. Several folks in my co-working space work remotely for companies in Melbourne.
tasmania has historically been a relatively poor part of australia, recently hobart has been having an issue with availability and affordability of housing, particularly relative to local wages: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/hobart-beats-sydney-mo...
hobart is not a great choice if you are looking to find software-related work locally. you'd be better off in one of the bigger "mainland" australian cities, melbourne, sydney or brisbane, or perhaps perth if the mining industry is in full boom phase. +/- intellectual atmosphere.
I agree that this isn't a place to find a software job.
I interpreted op's "follow my own intellectual pursuits" as not working. If they are coming from the bay area as a software engineer then their savings will go a very long way here, but not so much in other big cities.
As a fellow Aussie living on the main land - Tassie is absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to work remotely from Tassie and live on a big farm. Oh boy... One can dream.
Funnily enough I had faster/better internet on a farm at the very bottom of Tasmania (50mbps fixed wireless) than I did in an inner Melbourne suburb (ADSL2 only, walking distance to CBD).
One of the weird things about the NBN roll-out was rural areas getting more attention than city suburbs.
> One of the weird things about the NBN roll-out was rural areas getting more attention than city suburbs.
In some ways that makes the possibility of getting out and working remote better, you could buy a much cheaper house and have it paid off much sooner in a nice town, if that's your bag.
Yeah, I've been pleasantly surprised with fiber here in Hobart. The only thing that sucks is the latency of ssh to US cloud providers, but I haven't found it to be a big deal.
edit: also the exchange rate is favorable, so if you have savings in USD they will go a long way.