Social and Economic Change in Rural Communities: The Lachlan Region of New South Wales Between the 1920s and 1940s

Using the Australian wheat belt region called the Lachlan Catchment, this chapter analyses the causes and consequences of population decline in rural Australia. While the Lachlan has distinct characteristics, there are general lessons to be learned for rural areas across the developed world. The economic depression of the 1930s, the Second World War, the march of farm mechanisation, and a drought lasting several years, conspired to accelerate change in the 1930s and 1940s in the Lachlan. The outcome was dislocation and severe hardship for some less mobile pockets of the population, particularly the older members of society, at a time before the introduction of government-provided social security. Despite an analysis of the various effects and highlighting similarities with other regions, there remain some unanswered questions such as why some towns in the Lachlan continue to be prosperous while others nearby have disappeared, remaining mere ‘localities’ on the map. By contextualising the observations in the Lachlan within the international literature, conclusions are drawn on general concerns about the social impacts of rural decline.

Keywords: Rural towns, demographic change, aging population, isolation, farm structure, postgraduate, undergraduate, researchers, academicians, practitioners, professionals, dry land agriculture, wheat belt, drought, seasonal rain, migration, rural labour market, farm consolidation, Second World War, economic depression.