The Great Debate: "Are you a local?"

“Very mobile. Very unsettled. A lot of transience. The exceptions might best be described as the stay puts. And may include that small number who were born bred and dragged up ‘locally’ and have never ventured "elsewhere" all their lives. Or the more numerous few who, having left, gained from the experience to some degree or another and for one reason or another gravitated back to where they consider to be "home"... Collectively these ‘locals’ constitute  a stubbornly entrenched 10 per cent around whom great change has been wrought whether they like it or not by people who largely; having changed things; have moved on to ‘somewhere else’. One must presume they have moved on ‘elsewhere’ because the very changes they wrought delivered a ‘here’ they didn't like at all.

“Anyway ~ Why the 14 year + rule of thumb? Those who have stuck around through15 years + of the above described population turnover cycles have survived a near total population replacement 2.5 times at least. And may rightly lay claim to having a better idea of what has gone down and is going down and what may go on at the hands of the latest ‘blow ins’...See!?’’

It is an explanation at least some agree with, while Craig Marsterson almost certainly qualifies as a local. He commented: "My G Grandmother stepped ashore at Port Douglas in 1885, got married the next day. Hope I qualify as a local?"

Luke Jenkins suggested there were no true locals left in Port, just blow in, while others suggested the term “local” was divisive.

Newsport hit the streets of Port to get a feel for what makes someone a local of the Douglas Shire, including trying to get a locals priced pizza, beer and massage at some of those places offering such deals.

Amy Inglis has worked in the community library, owns bubble tea business Steep and is well known to many families, but she knows to not call herself a local having lived here for just four years.

“People seem to have a lot of different ideas on what is a local,’’ she said.

“I’ve heard a few people say that seven years counts as local.

“But Port Douglas is very hyper-local… it is a very intense subject. I’ve lived in a regions where the ‘local’ debate is there but not as strong as it is in Port.’’

Amy said you would need to know how to prepare for a cyclone to qualify as a local.’’ 

Whileaway owner Sarah Lovett, who first came to Port to live for one year with her family in 1989 and returned a decade later as an adult, said “you’re not a local until you start to gripe about someone else not being a local’’ while her staff member Louise Calkwell said “someone with community spirit’’ qualified as a local.

Louise, despite rocking an English accent, has been in Port for 36 years.

“I came here as a 20-year-old, it was the best decision I have ever made,’’ she said.

If you hang around the locals at Rattle N Hum and be a half decent bloke, you may not be regarded as a local, but you may just get the local specials, while at Flower Massage you only need to have a Douglas Shire address on your licence to get the local price for a massage.