ABSTRACT
This chapter explores, the Country Week (CW) that is designed to address the perceptions of both rural decline and the regional promise in NSW and in the Queensland, and recent population mobility in the regional Australia. In order to do that it is first necessary to examine the rural history. It examines the origins and development of the discourses about the problematic countryside, the 'rural' and the 'bush', and their link to rural and the regional development. The chapter considers the relevance of these discourses, and points to the diversity within rural and regional areas and the contrasting fortunes of different locales. Where agriculture retained vitality production often changed. Sheep numbers in the NSW have again declined to their lowest levels in a century, cattle production has fallen and many abattoirs closed in the last two decades, while the area of wheat cultivation has expanded.
