They were determined to survive on a mix of new industry using skills, resources and community pride to work through the closure of mines, the loss of young men heading off for King and Empire to war and the Great Depression that would later hinder those who returned from war.

The town-branded butter, flour and milk were as much a source of pride as the football club, brass band and church choir. The achievements of all were faithfully reported in the local newspaper. But the lot of country towns started to change in the 1970s - television had connected them like the rest of Australia to the outside world, life's pace had been upped by the Swinging Sixties and the certainty of the post-World War Two era had started to fray to the point of fragility.

Country towns were in line to take hits from government policies. Knitting mills were the first with restructure and ultimate removal of tariffs in the textile, clothing and footwear industries. Mills closed and with them annexes in small country towns that did piece work and provided employment for a workforce of mainly local women.

Government departments shut offices as the zeal of bureaucratic centralisation whipped across the old Forests Commission, Lands Department, State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, Soil Conservation Authority and the State Electricity Commission.

Trains were on the nose for travel, car ownership skyrocketing as people discovered greater mobility. Services were reduced, railway lines and stations closed. Soon butter factories, dairies and flour mills were added to the list of casualties, taken over by larger companies and most then closed. The country identity was diminishing. But the erosion of country Victoria's identity and importance was not to be restricted to a few changes in the 1970s.