Examination of what recreational activities residents in 2529 undertake.

Cohan Murray LG3 5LC8

Oak Flats/2529 area is an Australian town located in the South Coast Region of NSW. Throughout this essay we will be examining data gained through census data from 2001 to 2006 and also data collected through a questionnaire which a number of Oak Flats residents have completed . The topics we will be studying are exercise & recreational activities, The reason why these topics have been chosen to understand why Australian’s have an ever-growing waistline. The information has been in some cases rather interesting, for example: most of the elderly people in the 2529 area are live a quite active lifestyle. I also believe the exercise levels of persons in Oak Flats is well above the national average. The Shellharbour City Council governs the 2529 area and also governs a total of 65,000 residents. The population of persons living in the Oak Flats area is 6,400 with an average age of 35. The majority of population living in Oak Flats have an median income, with the predominance of housing standard 3 to 4 bedroom homes. Below is a population graph displaying the variation in population over time. This establishes that residents of the 2529 area are an aging population with close to 1000 residents between the age of 45 & 54. The Population graph below has been made using Census population data from 2006.The population graph indicates that the Oak Flats population is aging. The majority of the population is between 30 and 60 years. This also reflected the age of the persons surveyed as they were all above 30. Services available in Oak Flats are suitable for the 6200 person population, These include: buses, a train station, a medical center, various shops, Sporting fields, a petrol station ect. Businesses in the Oak Flats are mostly standard supply or food shops. For example take-away stores & chemists.

Changes in Exercise & recreational activities
   
Exercise levels and recreational activities have been slowly reshaped over the course of a century, with the developments of technology, multiple jobs and a busier lifestyle. New technology has brought some ease to our complex lives, but this new technology can also act a double-edged sword. For example: Game consoles used for recreational purposes can promote an unhealthy anti-social lifestyle. Also with the use of the world-wide-web we now have programs like MSN, which people with a modern lifestyle use to socialize, so instead of face-to-face socializing people living in this post-modern world are using MSN, which would normally confine the user to their home. In terms of online games WOW (World Of Warcraft) has over 11.5 million world-wide subscribers is a perfect example of an online world witch many adolescence play, this MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is so addictive that it is often referred as heroin-ware.  All of this online integration pushed onto our  Australian children, I believe is one of the vital reasons why Australians have an ever-growing waistline & why Australia has gained the notorious award for being the most obese country in the world by percentage.  In 2009 wall street crashed resulting world wide drops in share prices. Employers begin cutting back on unneeded jobs, and unemployment has risen, and because of this Australian’s have been trying to get multiple jobs to maintain their lifestyle & standard of living. With this busier lifestyle many Australian’s have either been over worked or just can’t find the time to exercise. So this is also another strong contributer to the reason why Australian’s have an ever-growing waist-line.
These obesity percentage inclines have grow slightly over the years and how now resulted in a statistic of 1 in 4 Australian children obese. Australian children are using more technology and gaining un-healthy habits from it.  Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008 Year book of Australia, states that 74.6 percent of people in the age bracket of 15-17 years participate in sport or physical recreation but then the percent declines over most age brackets to 49.4 percent of Australians in the age bracket of 65+ participating in sport.

Census data has been used to make the graph below and it illustrates that moderate and high levels of exercise are declining and low levels of exercise are becoming more popular throughout the australian population. So we can now see that these tuff australian economic times are cause people to take on more work an inherently have less time to exercise.
The exercise levels of persons in Oak Flats predominately in 4.5-6.0 hrs section, but persons surveyed were only between 36 & over 50. But as the majority of the Oak Flats 2529 population is between this range these results act as a fair representation of exercise levels of persons in Oak Flats.

The graph above was made with data collected from the questionnaire that Oak Flats 9 residents completed.  The graph indicates that most of the recreational activities undertaken by Oak flats residents where either in the other category or swimming