ABSTRACT
The magazine Live the Dream exclusively focuses on middle-class professionals. Image and reality are some distance apart, and that reality in regional Australia is rather prosaic. The Expos are innovative engagements between urban residents and rural communities that cross many perceptual divides between city and country, and encourage direct contact between people rather than engagement mediated by newspapers, radio and television. Half of Australia's export wealth comes from commodities mainly grown or extracted in rural and regional areas while two thirds of the nation's continental water supplies are managed by farmers. Agriculture may generate little employment but it is vital to the economic and social health of many rural towns. Even more importantly, migration is often underpinned by structural issues that provide economic security, and Country Week (CW) is not likely to significantly contribute to that given the relative importance of commodity prices, government planning, corporate investment decisions, and wage bargaining.
