ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way that architecturally unprepossessing small halls, often marginal community assets, host some of the most powerful and contradictory ideas about belonging and being in country places. Small community halls in Australian country towns have distant precedents in guildhalls, town halls and civic centres of Europe and city halls of the United States of America. In Australia, they also enjoy strong historic associations with nineteenth-century schools of arts and mechanics institutes. Murrah Hall is now part of a network of small halls managed by the Bega Valley Shire Council, under its General Halls and Buildings Committee. According to local press coverage of the opening of the Murrah Hall on Friday 11 September 1903, ten years had gone into lobbying and planning for it. By 1909, minutes refer to the 'Murrah Progress Committee', suggesting a more expansive brief.
