About 20 years ago I moved to a small country town (ca 1500 people), bought a house and started a business. People said you must be crazy, this town is dying. It's true that the big bank closed its branch two weeks after I arrived, but then we raised a couple of hundred thousand and enticed Bendigo Bank to come.
Since then the town has boomed - more people have come here and started businesses, and employed other people. NBN would help - my business and others are heavily dependent on the internet especially now that postal deliveries are down to 2/week, and mail goes interstate to a capital city to be sorted!
It helps that we're on a tourist route and closeish to a regional centre (but a long way from the next). Why should towns like ours have good services? Well, not just for ourselves. You have an accident 100k up the highway, then you will be very, very glad that we fought for years and raised a lot of money to get an ambulance base here.

It wouldn't want to be much of an accident Cossomby, if the ambulance was coming from 100K away. I live between 20 & 24K from 4 different towns, each with an ambulance base, & have yet to see an ambulance take less than an hour to get here, even for heart attacks.

Of course, those who want better service should stay in suburbia. You can't expect fresh air, good neighbours & good services, no matter what Bill says.

Still I agree good, well placed towns can still grow. We built a house on 20 acres of orchard on the outskirts of Young [NSW] in the mid 50s. I went to have a look at the old school & town a few years ago.

The high school that had 300 kids now has 780, & it took me ages to find the house. It & the other nearby orchards have been engulfed by the expanding town. Even the old fashioned main street shopping area has grown an extra block down the road.

Where I am now, is the almost exact middle of nowhere. As our areas first rural watch coordinator about 15 years ago, [like neighbourhood watch] I had 13 homes to coordinate. Now it has been spilt twice, & there are over 70 homes, & counting. People really do want acreage today.

I'm starting to feel crowded, & thinking Jandowae might be nice this time of year.

Yes hasbeen, Jandowae is a great little town, one I often pass through when I go to Miles.

Jandowae made the map quite a few years back when the local council offered land for $1 that's one dollar per lot to encourage newcomers.

Still not a real lot there and it is one town that has not been effected much by the gas industry, not sure why. Its also a great example of a town to perform a cost benefit analysis.

The town is about 100 to 150 km north west of Toowoomba, the nearest regional city for those who don't know. However, to take the likes of the NBN there, you would be lucky to pass by 300 potential customers, so its hardly what I would call, money well spent. Besides, i'm only guessing, but a house on an average block is in the range of $150 - $250K, a far stretch from the $600's you pay in say Brisbane. So of cause you don't get the bells and whistles, but then you don't pay for them either.

It's a case of one or the other, but you cant have both.

Is infrastructure a matter of cost, or the lives or potential businesses of small towns would be greatly enhanced with proper NBN.

Australia is currently the 30 th down the list of countries with fast broadband technology.

'You see it's only when city folk move to the bush, (usually due to very low buy in costs), then sit there whinging about the lack of services, that the problems occur. T

fair enough Rehctub but usually it is city people moaning about traffic, public transport and house prices that I hear. They expect to be able to buy a house close to town and jobs and have pristine bike paths to get to work. On the whinge factor and having lived in the city and bush I would think that the city folk are a mile ahead with their entitlement mentality.

If more city folk had a clue about the bush, many of these towns could become prosperous privately owned retirement paradises. For city home owners, moving to a country town would be better than winning the lottery, with the wealth it would free. Even many non home owners could afford to buy in these towns, & live much more cheaply than in the large cities.

When I first semi retired I bought a house in Burrum, near Howard. An ex railway house, it cost just $12000 when in a town like Maryborough it would have brought $50,000 or $120,000 in Brisbane. It allowed me to take a year to decide what next.

The town had died when the power house closed, the coal mining supplying it died, & the railways moved on. It is a great area, with good health care & recreational facilities nearby, & is now growing again as the smart tree change & retirees move in.

Probably not great places if you get past driving age, but then at that age, carrying a weeks shopping home to that expensive home in the city on a bus, would not be that easy either.