Come home, my darlings! Please don’t wait too long before flying back to the nest

AVOCADO man Bernard Salt smashed it at yesterday’s Mer

cury Future Tasmania luncheon at Wrest Point.

The famous full-time futurist and occasional human headline, as I described him in a panel discussion following his keynote speech, is a consummate performer.

With a click of a switch, he took 200 guests on a rollercoaster ride of statistics, stopping on each slide to laserpoint to where we were 10 years ago, where we are and where he thinks we will be in 2030.

The Demographics Group chief, whom we commissioned for our series insights, seemed to linger a little longer on one slide — or maybe it was just my imagination.

It’s time to fess up. I’m keen to bring home more of our kids from the Melbourne suckhole before they squander the remainder of their youth and much of their talent and tax benefit on a place that will never love them as much as we do.

Unless we embrace this goal of attracting more 20 to 30year-olds home, the future of Tasmania looks old. Really old.

I’m all for living among living treasures, but only if their age is offset by abundant youth and vibrancy. On current trajectories, that ain’t going to happen. Great if you work in aged care, pretty drab otherwise.

Bernard’s graphs made that

reality clear. Come home, darlings! Don’t leave it too long. Don’t hang around in a city that has no hills if you can build a strong career here.

Come home, you cool things! We’re a bit hipster, too, you know. We’re woke. But we need you if we are to be woker. And younger. And cooler. And all of the other qualities that will create convergence of people like you.

Don’t let Tassie become known as a retirement village for cashed-up mainlanders. Well, do, but let us be known for our fabulous young people and their covetable island life.

Frankly, we need you here not just to balance the demographic scales, but to balance the books. Your smashed avocado breakfasts pepper prosperity in our community (darling, Bernard told me he was mocking middle-age with his quip three years ago, not dissing you).

Don’t listen to the naysayers, my love. I too have felt the toxic sting of stunted poppies; though quite often pretty, they are a perennial problem. Ignore them, petal.

Darling, I know you can hack it on the mainland. I know you can hack it anywhere. But would it be such a bad idea to put your roots down here early?

When I was your age, I remember an older friend telling me there was great value in pouring your energy and love into one community. I was restless so I listened.

I know that sounds paradoxical, but the way I see it now, the world can be your oyster from Tassie. You can live in Hobart and have Paris and Prague on a platter before you career-hop to places to you feel called, wherever in the world they may be, then quick, back to the nest.

We need poster girls for the cause (brainy beauties, I mean, not bikini babes).

Beautiful young men and women who can sell the dream fully clothed and sipping a craft beer.

One more thing. This’ll get you. I reckon there’s even more cafes than when you nervously nosed that old Volvo up the Spirit ramp for Melbourne five months ago. I know it’s quaint, but some are even still serving smashed avo on toast.