Hope and despair in Elmore

When the 27 students at Elmore Primary School were asked to dress up as what they wanted to be when they grew up this week, the school was awash in flannelette, blue jeans and akubras. 

“I want to be a cowboy,” six-and-three-quarters-year-old Patrick Henry Ward said. 

But principal Michelle Griffiths wants to demonstrate to her students that there are more career possibilities in the country town than driving tractors and herding sheep. 

In recent weeks she has taken the students on field trips to the nearby Fosterville Gold Mine and a local farm. 

“What happens in small towns like Elmore is that we lose all our best and brightest to bigger towns and cities,” Ms Griffiths said.

“I want them to see that there are career pathways here, that it’s not just about being a farmer. 

“Because there are so many professions underpinning farming, whether that’s as an agronomist or as a vet. And the same goes with mining, there is a wealth of professions which underpin it, from geology to engineering.

“So we hope to show the children that, even if they leave to see a bit of the wider wold, they can come back to the lovely town of Elmore and make a contribution.”

It seems to be working. In a sample of four students, Kaitlyn Pollock and Hamish Worme said they wanted to be veterinarians.

Paige Simmie wanted to “help homeless people”. 

The town is in need of an injection of hope and goodwill – in recent times its tight-knit farming community has been rocked by drought and suicide. 

Sharron Andrea is the manager of the Elmore Events Centre which hosts the annual Elmore Field Days, a celebration and showcase of farming which draws crowds of 35,000 to the town of 900 people. 

“I certainly hope there’s a future in agriculture for our kids,” Ms Andrea said. “Farming is the lifeblood of our community and if we don’t produce our own food as a country then we’ll have to import it.

“To us, that just doesn’t make any sense.” 

But Elmore and farming communities around the country are under increasing strain. Some are at breaking point. 

The field days’ theme for this year is mental health. 

“Farmers are suffering after years and years of drought,” Ms Andrea said. “Some people sail through it, others don’t. 

“We’ve had a few suicides in our community.”

Farmers, Ms Andrea said, don’t want to be seen to ask for emotional support even in the midst of crippling despair.

The event aims to break that stigma. 

At Elmore Primary Health – which is partnering with the event centre on this year’s theme – they have a another means to circumvent it.  

Its two psychologists do home visits. And it’s not just mental health services which the centre caters for – it also provides dentistry, physiotherapy, general practice, X-ray and podiatry services. 

Which is all a very long way from the situation in 1994 when the hospital closed down, practice manager Kathy Tuohey said.

“Elmore was without a permanent GP service for four years,” Ms Tuohey said. “People started moving away from town. Our health declined, people wouldn’t travel as often to Bendigo to see a doctor.” 

Ms Tuohey describes the response as a first of its kind, which could provide a private/public model for rural communities around the country. 

Its partnership with Allied Health in Bendigo – a public institution – allows the centre to bring services out to the community which aren’t required on a daily basis, weekly Tai Chi classes, for example. 

It applies for, and receives, government grants which help fund expansions. At the same time it has successfully recruited general practitioners – five are currently based in the centre. 

Two decades later the model has been rolled out to seven other towns, and Elmore has gone from a town with no GP to the hub for a network of centres which serve Rochester, Lockington, Strathfieldsaye, Rushworth, Boort and Heathcote.

Ms Tuohey said the centre’s success had reversed the trend of people leaving town.

“Now they are selling their homes in Melbourne, buying a place with twice the backyard for half the price and using the left overs to buy a caravan and travel to Queensland for a few months every year,” she said. 

And she said the town would benefit from increasing that trend by building a retirement village.  

“It would mean more work for doctors of course, more volunteers for the town, it would mean people who lived their whole lives in the area could stay and be able to play bowls here, and golf,” Ms Tuohey said. 

At the events centre, Ms Andrea also had suggestions on how to develop the town.

Among them, grants to expand the equestrian facilities and increasing the frequency of the Melbourne-Echucha train so the centre could capture larger crowds and offer more events – concerts and a ‘screen on the green’.

But it was the town’s younger generations which concerned her most.

She said farmers needed support to switch to sustainable and organic practices to secure an agricultural future for Elmore and that more of its young people would need to attend agricultural colleges to equip them with the skills to “sail through” tough times. 

And the woman in charge of Elmore’s children had a succinct answer to what would best help her deliver on their potential: money.

“We need Gonski – or equivalent funding,” Ms Griffiths said.