Clutha's health body is using the district's charms and slower way of life in a national advertising campaign to lure health professionals and their families.
The Otago Southern Region Primary Health Organisation (PHO) plans to run advertisements in North and South magazine in a bid to entice doctors, nurses and others to Clutha Country as it, like many other rural areas, struggles to find enough workers.
The campaign highlights the district's "true Kiwi rural lifestyle" and how it offers everything that can be found in larger centres, but at a lower cost.
Clutha's version of a traffic jam is a mob of sheep being driven along a gravel rural road, the district's local river cruise is portrayed as the Tuapeka Mouth punt, while rush hour in the centre of Balclutha shows a handful of cars slowly cruising up the street with no traffic jams or road rage.
PHO recruitment co-ordinator Irene Mosley said the campaign would highlight everything that already existed in the district - things many locals probably took for granted but features that appealed to many who lived in crowded cities and faced the pressures of traffic jams, congestion and high property prices.
The PHO is also offering to help find work for couples interested in making the move south.
The advertisements poke fun at city life by suggesting Clutha offers all of that but without the pressure.
Throwaway lines at the bottom of the advertisements rub it in.
One reads: "Our kids still walk to school, there's only one traffic light in the whole district and even the automatic doors open slower down here."
Mrs Mosley hoped the campaign would encourage health workers in other centres to seriously consider the move south.
