Photographs by John Kiely
Commentary by Daniel McOwan
The Western District's history is closely tied to the history of Victoria. It was this area that the Hentys moved into in the 1830s soon after Batman declared the site for Melbourne. To many Victorians, the Western District conjures up images of rich pastoral lands, stock that could illustrate a breeder's manual, genteel life styles, and large properties with colourful histories. Undoubtedly this was the reality for some pastoral properties, but life in western Victoria is now far less idyllic: the decline in the rural economy has led to smaller, older, rural populations.
Since the early 1 980s the population of Hamilton, the civic and economic centre of Western Victoria, has declined at a rate of 1.1 per cent per annum. Rural incomes, the number of people deriving employment from the land and the number of farmers in the district have similarly diminished. This is not to say that there is no optimism. Rural people are of necessity marvellously resilient and self-reliant. The changes they face now, like changes in the weather, have been taken in their stride and annually adjusted to. Nonetheless, with the population aging and declining, its dynamic is altering in unprecedented ways.
Overall a slow change is washing through our community-our ‘family’. The exhibition People in Place-Images of Western Victorians is a record of people in this part of Victoria from 1996 to 1998. The many images of older people not only reflect the population of the Western District; they capture the effects of history. Their faces and their demeanour tell the stories of their lives, just as the buildings around them reveal the changes time has wrought.
