Going to town

Small communities around Australia are finding surprising ways to not just survive but thrive.

Story Ken Eastwood  Photos Mandy McKeesick

You know what it’s like. With the open road before you, you’re driving across a slice of the country, and you’re planning to stop for a coffee and a bite at one of the upcoming towns. You hit one little town, and it feels like you’ve hit the jackpot. There’s a hive of activity around a coffee shop and a bakery, and a shady park with a good-looking footy ground and amenities.

People are wandering in and out of the supermarket and a couple of other attractive shops, and maybe you’re imagining it, but there seems to be a smile on every face. The town you passed 30 minutes before was nothing like this.

What made the difference? Why would two towns in relatively similar locations have such different trajectories? What are the secrets to one small town’s success when its neighbour is dying?

In Monto, 2.5 hours’ drive west of Bundaberg in Central Queensland, you can find some of the answers, according to Jenny Forsyth, secretary of the Monto Magic Tourism Action Group. In just six years, it’s turned around from a dying town to a vibrant community – the kind of place people want to not just visit, but live in.

“The town was really struggling, the shops were closing and we didn’t have a new population base to replace the older people,” Jenny says. “Every second house was on the market or neglected.”

So, starting with a simple project to paint a mural on the town silos, the community decided to “make us a destination – somewhere where there was something to look at”. After the silos, they painted murals on shop walls and put timber paintings up to cover over empty shop fronts. “The beauty of that is now we don’t have any empty shops to put them in,” Jenny says. Within six months, she says, things began to turn around, with the real estate market booming and new shops and businesses opening. The 2021 census doesn’t show any rise in population, but Jenny reckons this year’s census will show a big increase from 1,156. “It was brilliant. Now there’s very little for sale and people from all walks of life have come here, because they like the feel of the place. It’s just vibrant. People say, ‘You walk up the street now and you don’t know anyone’ and I say, ‘Isn’t that great!’”