I co-run a small co-working space and we've had a couple of tenants join who were relocating from the East coast of Australia to Adelaide for similar reasons.

Haha Adelaide is for religious dorks! You should definitely live somewhere cool like Melbourne and Sydney [1]

[1] Please don't mention Adelaide publicly. Coopers beer, the fringe festival, great weather, great wine, housing for families that's close to town, and beaches where you can be the only person for miles. I want to buy a house there and demand will drive pricing up.

Do you work in IT?

Sydney and Melbourne seem to be the only Australian cities with a substantial tech presence.

If you can create new tech in Australia at all, with the lack of investment opportunities and government support, you can probably do it from Adelaide. If you're into fixing existing stuff then yes stick to the big cities.

Where did you move to if you don't mind me asking?

Newcastle. It's taken nearly 20 years but it's starting to recover from the post-BHP doldrums.

Yes, it has changed a lot since those days... I visited some friends there about a year ago and was very pleasantly surprised.

Glad to hear it is working out for you :-)