I arrived in Australia in 1992 expecting Crocodile Dundee, cheap beer, V8s, sunshine and opportunity. For a long time, that is exactly what I found. Looking back more than three decades later, I sometimes wonder whether the country that welcomed me has quietly disappeared beneath layers of regulation, soaring costs and diminished expectations.

I arrived in Australia in 1992 and, like many migrants of that era, fell in love with the country almost immediately. Australia felt young, confident and optimistic in a way that Britain did not at the time. There was a widespread belief that the future would be better than the past and that ordinary people could build comfortable lives through hard work and common sense. The country seemed relaxed, prosperous and comfortable in its own skin. The Australia presented through Crocodile Dundee, tourism campaigns and television soaps turned out to be remarkably close to reality. People drank, smoked, drove big cars and generally got on with their lives. The wowser existed, but occupied the margins rather than the centre of public life. Australians seemed less interested in judging one another and more interested in enjoying themselves.

Within six months of arriving, my then wife and I were living in a two-bedroom apartment on Ocean Street, Bondi, with views across Bondi Beach. We were both in our twenties and each earning around $30,000 a year, giving us a combined household income of roughly $60,000. By the standards of the day, that was a good professional income for people our age, but we were certainly not wealthy. What strikes me now is not how much money we earned but what that money could buy. We lived near one of the world's most famous beaches. We both ran V8 cars because fuel was cheap enough that nobody thought twice about it. We socialised several nights a week, drank with friends, smoked like chimneys and travelled when the opportunity arose. Most remarkably of all, after funding what looked like a fairly extravagant lifestyle, we could still save around $400 a week.

At the time none of this felt extraordinary. We did not regard ourselves as particularly fortunate or financially gifted. We were simply a young professional couple building a life in Australia. The relationship between wages and living costs made sense. A good income translated into a good life, and financial security seemed achievable without extraordinary sacrifice. Looking back, what seems remarkable is not how much we earned but how little financial pressure we felt. We seldom worried about money. We did not analyse every discretionary purchase. We simply lived. That experience is becoming increasingly difficult for younger Australians to imagine.

For many Australians today, that world must sound like a fairy tale. Wages are undeniably higher than they were in the early 1990s, yet so too is the cost of almost everything. Housing costs have exploded. Insurance premiums rise relentlessly. Energy bills have become a constant source of frustration. A packet of cigarettes can cost around $50 and a pint of Guinness can easily cost $16.50. Every year seems to bring another levy, another surcharge and another bureaucratic explanation as to why households should pay more for less. The result is a strange paradox. Australians are earning more money than ever before, yet many feel poorer than previous generations.

The change is not merely economic. It is cultural. The Australia I encountered in 1992 felt relaxed, tolerant and self-confident. Adults were generally assumed to be capable of making their own decisions, including bad ones, and living with the consequences. Today there is a growing sense that every problem requires a policy response, every vice requires taxation and every risk requires regulation. The old Australian instinct was to roll your eyes, have another beer and get on with life. The modern instinct often seems to involve committees, submissions and campaigns. Whether that represents progress is a matter of opinion. From where I stand, however, something valuable has been lost in the transition from a relaxed society to a managed one.

The workplace reflected a similar change. When I arrived, there was a prevailing attitude that work mattered, but it was not everything. People took their jobs seriously, yet they rarely defined their entire identities through their careers. Friday lunchtime often marked the beginning of the weekend. Colleagues would disappear to the pub, settle in for a long lunch and eventually drift home. Nobody talked about work-life balance because most people enjoyed it naturally. A job existed to support a life rather than replace one. Modern workplaces are undoubtedly more productive and more professional, but they are also more intrusive. Smartphones, laptops and email have removed the boundaries between work and home. Many employees now feel permanently connected to their jobs regardless of where they happen to be.

Interestingly, Australians also work longer hours than workers in the United Kingdom. OECD figures suggest that the average Australian works approximately 1,633 hours a year compared with around 1,524 hours in Britain. That amounts to roughly 109 additional hours annually, equivalent to almost three extra working weeks. When I arrived from Britain, that trade-off seemed worthwhile because the rewards were tangible. Housing was affordable, fuel was cheap and a comfortable lifestyle was attainable for ordinary professionals. Today many Australians continue to work longer than their British counterparts yet feel they are running faster simply to stand still. The issue is not effort. The issue is what that effort ultimately delivers.

Public health provides another interesting lens through which to view modern Australia. Governments have spent decades discouraging smoking through taxation and regulation. Smoking rates have undoubtedly fallen and life expectancy has increased substantially. Australian men can now expect to live more than 81 years compared with around 74.5 years when I arrived in the early 1990s. That is an extraordinary achievement and should not be dismissed. Yet the broader health picture is more complicated than politicians sometimes acknowledge. Other health challenges have grown dramatically over the same period.

Around the turn of the millennium, approximately 17 per cent of Australian men were obese. Today that figure has doubled to 34.1 per cent. A further 38.4 per cent are overweight but not obese, meaning that 72.5 per cent of Australian men are now carrying excess weight. Put another way, fewer than three in ten Australian men fall within the normal BMI range. The picture for women is only slightly better. Around 31.7 per cent of Australian women are clinically obese and another 30.2 per cent are overweight. In total, almost 62 per cent of Australian women are carrying excess weight. Whatever else modern Australia has become, it is undeniably a heavier country than the one that welcomed me in 1992.

Bondi itself reflects some of those broader changes. When I first arrived, the beach embodied the carefree Australia that had been sold to the world through tourism campaigns and popular culture. Topless bathing was commonplace, the crowds seemed impossibly glamorous and nobody appeared especially concerned about what other people were doing. The atmosphere was relaxed, confident and unapologetically Australian. Today Bondi remains one of the most beautiful urban beaches in the world. The ocean is as spectacular as ever, the cafés are thriving and property prices have reached unimaginable heights. Yet the atmosphere feels different. It seems more commercialised, more self-conscious and perhaps a little less carefree. Some of that may simply be nostalgia, but it is difficult to spend more than three decades in a place without noticing genuine cultural change.

That brings me to my own future. At this stage of life, I increasingly feel as though I am marking time until I can access my superannuation in August next year. After decades of working, paying taxes and doing all the things governments encourage citizens to do, I find myself waiting for permission to access money that is already my own. Once that day arrives, I have little desire to spend the rest of my life watching the cost of everything continue to rise while the quality of day-to-day life declines. Australia remains a wonderful country in many respects, but it has also become one of the most expensive places in the world in which to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

My plan is simple. I intend to spend much of my time overseas in places where the cost of living remains reasonable, where retirement savings stretch further and where everyday pleasures have not yet been transformed into luxury purchases. That does not mean abandoning Australia. Australia will always be the country that gave me opportunities and experiences that would have been difficult to imagine when I first stepped off the plane in 1992. I expect to return regularly, perhaps for a few months each year, and top up the money bags through contract work. Nevertheless, the fact that such an arrangement increasingly makes financial sense says something important about modern Australia. The economics are encouraging people to spend their retirement years elsewhere.

In truth, August next year feels less like retirement than liberation. For the first time in decades, I will have genuine freedom to choose where I live, where I spend my money and how I spend my time. That prospect is exciting, but it is also faintly disappointing. When I arrived in Australia in 1992, I imagined I would spend the rest of my life here without a second thought. I came because it was a land of opportunity, affordability and optimism. I stayed because I genuinely loved the place. I still do. But when I compare the Australia I discovered in 1992 with the Australia of today, I cannot escape the conclusion that something important has been lost along the way.

The beaches remain. The sunshine remains. The people remain. Australia is still a beautiful country blessed with extraordinary advantages. Yet the easy-going, affordable and optimistic nation that first captured my imagination increasingly feels like a memory from another age. Perhaps every generation thinks the best years were the ones it experienced in its youth. Perhaps nostalgia is clouding my judgment. Then again, when I think about a Bondi apartment with beach views, two V8s in the driveway, nights spent in pubs with friends and money still left over at the end of the week, I cannot help feeling that there was something special about the Australia of 1992. And memories, unlike cigarettes, remain tax-free.

Tim Flynn is a writer and researcher of Irish heritage whose work explores migration, cultural identity and social change. Raised in England and resident in Australia since 1992, he writes on the economic, political and cultural forces shaping contemporary life in Ireland, Britain and Australia.

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