Community Sustainability in Rural Australia

In 2000, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia was awarded a grant by the Australian Research Council under its Learned Academies Special Projects Scheme to carry out research on 'The Sustainability of Australian Rural Communities'. Six university-based teams from across Australia convened in Canberra in February 2001 to develop a shared conceptual framework and to outline a methodology for the research programme. Subsequently, over several months during 2001, each of the teams undertook an investigation of sustainability in the context of a particular rural community - Narrogin in Western Australia, the Gilbert Valley in South Australia, 'Tarra' in Victoria, Tumbarumba and Guyra in New South Wales, and Monto in Queensland. Each of these studies was guided by the agreed conceptual framework and methodology. The six case studies were published in 2003 under the title Community Sustainability in Rural Australia: A Question of Capital? Collectively, the case studies offer insight into the difficult circumstances that these small communities face, but they also point to the various factors that have enabled them to survive in the face of their many challenges.