RURAL REVIVAL?
Perspectives on Rural Policy and Planning
Series Editors:
Andrew Gilg, University of Exeter and University of Gloucestershire, UK
Henry Buller, University of Exeter, UK
Owen Furuseth, University of North Carolina, USA
Mark Lapping, University of South Maine, USA
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Participatory Rural Planning
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Rural Revival?
Place Marketing, Tree Change and Regional Migration in Australia
JOHN CONNELL and PHIL McMANUS
University of Sydney, Australia
First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright John Connell and Phil McManus 2011
John Connell and Phil McManus have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rural revival: place marketing, tree change and regional migration in Australia. (Perspectives on rural policy and planning)
1. Rural population--Australia. 2. Rural-urban migration--Australia. 3. Urban-rural migration--Australia. 4. Place marketing--Australia. 5. Country Week (Organization)
I. Series II. Connell, John, 1946- III. McManus, Phil, 1966-
304.6'2'0994'091734-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Connell, John, 1946-
Rural revival?: place marketing, tree change and regional migration in Australia / by John
Connell and Phil McManus.
p. cm. -- (Perspectives on rural policy and planning)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-7511-2 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-3156-0720-7 (ebook) 1. Rural-urban migration--Australia. 2. Urban-rural migration--Australia. 3. Rural renewal--Australia. 4. Rural development--Australia. 5. Place marketing--Australia. I. McManus, Phil,
1966- II. Title. III. Series.
HB2135.C66 2011
307.2'60994--dc22
2010048853
ISBN 978 0 7546 7511 2 (hbk)
ISBN 978 1 3156 0720 7 (ebk)
ISBN 978 1 3170 6072 7 (ebk-ePUB)
Contents
List of Figures
1.3 Population change in
New South Wales and Queensland 2001-6
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
This book could not even have been contemplated without the genial and enthusiastic support in so many ways of Peter Bailey, the CEO of Country Week (now the Foundation for Regional Development Limited). He took us under his wing when we attended our first Country Week Expo in 2006, supported our students, Amanda Tsioutis and Marita Cuomo, when they undertook subsequent theses on various facets of Country Week, and stimulated our various efforts at analysing the strategies and successes of Country Week. We also owe his wife Jenny grateful thanks for her similar constant support.
It goes without saying, but it cannot be allowed to do, that we could not have done very much without the assistance of the various councils and other groups who attended the Expos and were always happy to make their views, ideas and documents available to us. Over the years we came to know some of them well, but perhaps none more so than the ever innovative team from Moree and the enthusiastic crew who always brought Elvis out from an active retirement in Parkes.
Equally we, and our students, would not have got very far without the willingness of visitors to the Expo to fill in questionnaires, and submit to multiple questions, and the willingness of recent residents in Oberon and Glen Innes to answer questions. Inevitably this also means that we are extremely grateful to Amanda and Marita, and to Lionel Brown who led the way, for permission to use some of their work and insights in this book. We are also grateful to Nathan Wales and Andrew Wilson for assistance with the maps.
Phil would also like to acknowledge the support of Jennifer Barrett and Caitlin McManus-Barrett researching and writing a book means time away from other roles and activities. John apologises to the Queens Park football team for not being on that particular paddock more often. They may not have noticed. Hopefully this book shows that it was time well spent. Speaking of time, we would like to thank the patient people at Ashgate for commissioning, supporting and waiting hopefully for this book.
Unless otherwise stated quotations are from visitors to Country Week Expos, council officials at the Expos or from leaflets, local newspapers and other council promotional material, as is relevant. Most have been given appropriate anonymity.
John Connell and Phil McManus
School of Geosciences,
University of Sydney.
2011
Preface
Is it possible to re-populate and otherwise support declining rural and regional areas? If so how might this best be done? This is a crucial and complex issue for many countries that have experienced both rural decline and metropolitan congestion. This book examines the problems of regional development in Australia, centred on population decline and stagnation, and particular efforts to achieve a population turnaround that might re-populate the inland: referred to by some as a tree change. Re-populating rural areas to secure rural revival is an issue that has become important in many developed countries. The response in Australia, through the concerted and partly combined efforts of concerned councils, enables critical appraisal of strategies that challenge rural decline and urban migration.
In a broader context ideas of rurality and urban-rural migration are being questioned in a number of countries and theoretical contexts. This book extends and links issues of rurality, counter-urbanisation, contested notions of rural gentrification and lifestyle migration, and rural place marketing and place branding, to explore an innovative, organised place-marketing activity that simultaneously involves cooperation and competition among participants. This activity, the annual Country Week Expo, became known as the Country and Regional Living Expo late in 2009, but here we retain the name Country Week (CW), its name at its inception in 2004 and while most of our research was undertaken. As the Country Week Chairman, Anthony Fox, noted in his opening of the 2009 Sydney Expo, these events are unique in Australia and he had not heard of them taking place anywhere else in the world.
