FOR LOCALS AND LOCAL LEADERS

Have you got big ideas for your town?

You look around your town and you can see potential. You have ideas, maybe dozens of them, that you haven't told anyone about.

You're not trying to save your town. You love your town. You just want more for it.

No Better Place, our guide for people in regional communities, was written for exactly that restlessness. You don't need to be a farmer, a backer or a community leader to use it. You need to care about where you live, and be willing to dream about what's possible.

A woman in a small town

Picture a woman in a small town in regional Australia. She runs a business in town. Her kids are at the local school, she's on a committee or two, and she knows most people in the district by name.

She loves this place. She chose it. She could live anywhere, but she lives here because the air is clean, the people are real, the kids ride their bikes to school, and on a clear night you can see every star in the sky.

She isn't trying to save her town either. It's fine: not dying, not booming. It's steady, comfortable, a good place to live.

But she has a feeling she can't shake. A restlessness. Not unhappiness. Something more like this: she can see potential that nobody's acting on.

She drives past the old dairy on the edge of town and thinks, that could be something. She hears about a young family leaving the district because they can't afford land, and thinks, there must be a way. She reads about a town two hours away that started a community energy project, and thinks, we could do that here.

The notebook nobody has seen

She has a notebook. She writes in it at the kitchen table after the kids are in bed.

Ideas. Fragments. Questions.

What if we tried this? What if someone started that? What would it take to make this work?

The notebook has been growing for years. She's never shown it to anyone. She's not even sure the ideas are any good. She just can't stop having them.

She isn't a real person. She's an illustration of someone you may well know, in towns right across the country. Maybe it's you.

Why regional Australia

Regional Australia is where nature lives and food comes from. It's where communities know each other's names, and where the things that actually matter, land, water, soil, family, are right in front of you every day.

I want to know the food on my plate came from a place that's thriving, farmed by people who are supported.

That's not a fantasy. It's what regional Australia could be if enough people backed themselves to make it happen.

What one person can do now

I'm more excited about what's possible than I've ever been. The tools available today, the technology, the connectivity, the knowledge, mean a person in a small town can do things that would have been impossible ten years ago.

This guide is about the person. You. The one who cares enough to imagine what's possible, and brave enough to go after it.

So, what's the old dairy on the edge of your town? The thing you drive past and think, that could be something.

The full guide, No Better Place, is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.

You can build your own plan at cultivatefarms.com/plan.