Senior Dating in Australia: For People Who Are Still Going Places

There is a particular Australian version of retirement that does not exist in many other countries, and it changes what senior dating looks like here. Rather than settling down, an enormous number of Australians in their sixties and seventies are doing the opposite: buying the caravan, heading north for the winter, moving to the coast, filling the calendar. Dating in that context is a different proposition, and a rather good one.

The Grey Nomad Question

If you are one of the many Australians who spends part of the year on the road, the obvious worry is that it makes you undateable. It does not. It makes you specific, which is a far better thing to be on a dating site than vague.

Put it on your profile plainly: where you go, how long for, whether you would rather travel with somebody or meet up between trips. What you will find is that a good proportion of people your age are doing exactly the same thing and have been quietly wondering whether anyone would want to share it. A shared plan to be in Broome by August is a considerably better basis for a relationship than most first dates manage.

If you are not a nomad but the person you like is, the thing to sort out early is what you both actually want. Somebody to go with, somebody to come home to, or something in between. All three work. Assuming without asking does not.

Sea Change, Tree Change and the Smaller Pool

Plenty of Australians move somewhere lovely at retirement and then discover the trade-off: the coastal town or the hinterland block is beautiful, and the dating pool is about forty people.

Two things help. Widen your search radius substantially, because the next town over doubles your options and an hour's drive on quiet roads is nothing much. And do not rule out somebody in a capital who is thinking of making the same move you already made; that comes up far more often than you would expect, and you are the person who can tell them what it is really like.

Distance, Heat and the Practicalities

Australia is large enough that a first meeting can be a genuine trip, and warm enough that the season shapes plans as much as it does anywhere cold. In the north, the dry is when everything happens and people travel; in the south, summer evenings are made for meeting somebody for a drink and winter is when the messages get longer.

The practical advice is the same everywhere: a first meeting somewhere public and easy, in daylight, with a natural end to it. A coffee, a walk somewhere pleasant, a beer in a beer garden. Something with a beginning and an end, so nobody is stuck.

Living Apart Together, Which Is More Common Than You Think

A very large number of Australians who find somebody in their sixties or seventies never move in together, and it is worth knowing that this is a completely normal outcome rather than a failure to commit.

The reasons are usually practical and sensible. There is a house with decades of history in it. There are adult children with views on inheritance. There is a pension arrangement that changes if you cohabit, which is worth getting proper advice on rather than guessing at. And frankly, after years of running your own household exactly as you like it, sharing a kitchen again is a bigger ask at seventy than it was at twenty-five.

Couples who work this out early do very well. Two houses, a lot of nights together, holidays as a pair, and nobody arguing about the thermostat. If that is what you want, put it on your profile, because a surprising number of people are hoping to read exactly that and assume nobody else will say it first.

Where to Start

Write a profile that sounds like you, say what your year actually looks like, and browse for nothing before you decide anything. If sixty-odd is where you are, dating over 60 sits closest, while mature dating generally takes the wider view and dating over 50 suits the decade before.

Say where you are headed and find someone to go with. Join free.