What happens when small towns are overlooked…
By Kirsten Diprose, co-host of the Town Criers podcast
Kirsten Diprose heading off to work for the day, but stopping to clear out the cattle grid …
ANOTHER DAY ON THE FARM
It’s not often a small shire is suddenly granted a large sum of money. And when it happened to my local area… we were horrified. We demanded it be sent back.
See, the $1 million dollars the Moyne Shire in south-west Victoria was allocated in 2019 by the Federal Government at the time, was for emergency drought relief. But our paddocks were green, our sheep were fat and the crops were tall. We were sending our hay to the farmers in the north of the state and beyond, who were doing it tough. It made no sense.
Then, it twigged. Did the Federal Government mean… the Moira Shire? It’s in the noth-east of Victoria and was indeed, rather dry. I started tweeting photos of what my farm and my neighbours' farms looked like. Other farmers were telling anyone who would listen that they didn’t want the money, because it wouldn’t be right. Local councillors raised the alarm and the media soon picked it up. Moyne Shire, Moira Shire, same thing, right?
I am not sure if the previous Federal Government ever admitted it as a mix up. Perhaps something else happened. But they reversed their decision not to fund the Moira Shire and the Moyne Shire rejected the funding, saying it was no longer in drought. So, all’s well that ends well, in this script which seems fitting for the comedy TV series, Utopia.
But the truth is, if you’re a bureaucrat far away, it can be easy to make such mistakes. Firstly, $1 million is not a lot of money in the scheme of things for a Commonwealth grants program. But it’s huge for a rural community. The Moyne Shire could have done a lot of other good things with that money, but they knew their constituents would never stand for taking money when other regions needed it more.
Unfortunately, too often, that’s how funding works. Knee-jerk decisions, made for political reasons. You have to be quick to put your hand up, fit the strict criteria and you need the people with the time and resources to actually apply. This can be hard for small towns, where the populations are tiny. Even if you do manage to put together an application, you are at the mercy of bureaucrats far, far away, who do not understand the nuances and unique challenges of your region. Or even worse, your application to upgrade your local footy ground’s derelict clubrooms falls on deaf ears due to much larger political machinations (we all remember the sports rorts scandal of 2020).
There are many reasons why a small town misses out on the funds and publicity of the larger regional centres. We don’t have comparable economies of scale and the number of people who can do the job. The sea-changers and tree changers from the capital cities are coming…but they are coming to the regional centres. In small towns, it’s often the same people who are volunteering for the local clubs and organisations. They love it, but they get tired. For businesses, the larger regional centres have the capacity to attract tourists and therefore the foot traffic needed to support them. But the small towns often do not.
We can’t leave our small towns behind. Historically, they have been vital to the uniqueness of what it is to be Australian. The good-hearted rivalries, the beloved characters, Anzac legends, indigenous cultures and the special relationship with the landscape, make for the most beautiful storytelling. There are living communities and uncovered histories that need to be captured. Unfortunately, rural and regional media is now struggling to tell them. Country media has dramatically shrunk, with more than 100 regional news outlets closing since 2020. The traditional advertising model for local newspapers has been broken, with off-shore giants such as Google and Meta now reaping the benefits of our stories.
Therefore, we need to invest in our journalism and storytelling platforms. There are still good ones out there, paddling hard for rural Australia. And we’d like to add one more to the mix: The Town Criers (link) podcast.
For this, I have roped in Damian Callinan, a comedian and actor, who loves rural Australia… and more importantly, actually gets it. We’ve come up with a new podcast concept to tell the unique stories of smaller towns, with populations of under 10,000. It’s modelled from Damian’s highly successful live show, ‘Mayor for a Day’, where he tailors the routine to the audience with his razor sharp (and downright hilarious) observations of a town. These comedic moments are woven into rich storytelling, where we interview local heroes (as nominated by the town), take the Mayor for a spin around the main attractions and uncover the things that make a town so special.
The idea is for the end result to be a fun and emotive listen for locals and anyone connected to the town. Community members and former residents will enjoy hearing their much loved town so accurately captured. But also, the podcast is designed to be enjoyed by outsiders too. The entertaining listen will mean episodes are picked up by people from elsewhere, who then might consider venturing beyond the regional centres, to that fun, quirky town they had heard all about. So it’s a podcast for the community, but also a platform for them too.
If we still had town criers today, they’d definitely have a podcast. So this is our modern twist, on shouting out for the rural towns of Australia.
Would you like the Town Criers to come to your town? Contact us here.
Kirsten Diprose is a podcaster and former ABC journalist. She runs a podcasting company, Rural Podcasting Co. and created a podcast for rural women: Ducks on the Pond. She is also studying a PhD looking at local news sustainability for rural and regional Australia. She lives on a farm in south-west Victoria with her husband and two boys.