ABSTRACT
This chapter explores family mobility narratives from professional families who manage education strategy and career projects across time and space within a surplus of potential career locations. Government departments responsible for delivering human services across Australia's vast space and low population density have developed institutional solutions for 'gamekeeping' a professional workforce in rural and remote localities. Teachers in the Queensland public sector are expected to fulfil an obligation of country service and, by doing so, are rewarded with 'transfer points' that promote their chances of achieving a desired location later. As a social phenomenon it folds back recursively on itself in the way human services such as schools in remote towns are deemed to be of insufficient quality to attract and retain the professionals needed to staff them. The conclusion reflects on how the relative spatial autonomy of the professional families and their selective mobility under circumstances of their own choosing differs from that of the ADF families.
