ABSTRACT
Vacant and dusty flour mills dominate the landscape of many country towns in central and western New South Wales, an emblem of so-called 'dying town' syndrome. A closer look at wheat through the lens of mobility shows the mills to have been points of both movement and friction. A fundamental concept in the movement of wheat is fungibility, the property by which individual units of something are mutually interchangeable. Pawson aims to cut across the unidirectional flows implied by Crosby's title Ecological Imperialism, showing that plant movements in modernity have not all diffused from a colonial centre. The activities and sounds of the mill are part of the activities and movements of the town's people as they manoeuvre around freight trucks and wait for rail haulage to pass at the crossing. The process of movement is enabled by a complex network of people, machines and information.
