Page 113 Questions

1) Drought causes economic hardship for the agricultural population which has an effect on businesses ,jobs and the local economy

2) Neighboring grazers bought out the soldiers land. This resulted in farm areas increasing but the number of farms decreasing.

3) The soldier settlers selling their farms, collapse of the wool industry and rising costs in agriculture.

4) Mechanisation has increased the rate of unemployment as machines can now harvest up to 150 hectares a day where as older style versions could only harvest 30 hectares a day. The advancement in technology had resulted in job losses occurring.

5) Lifestyle factors such as the improvement in roads and transport have contributed to a decline in small country towns as the new roads bypass the small towns. Roads and transport enable people to access the larger towns which have lower prices.

6) Three pieces of evidence which show rural decline in Gulargambone are the loss of services - petrol stations, cafes, banks etc, population decline and ageing and lifestyle expectations.

8) The population trend over the past 50 years has fallen dramatically. Since the 1960's only 400-500 people have lived in Gulargambone.

9) The population pyramid shows exactaly who lives in Gulargambone. Younger children stay in Gulargambone as they live with their families however as school is finishing they look to getting a degree and leave Gulargambone to seek work. The age group of 20-30 is low as people have completed their degree and are working and live near towns, they start a family and live near a town. After their children have left home and the elderly are looking to retire they remember their quiet rural town of Gulargambone and they return home to see out their days.

10a) The trend in enrollments has dropped rapidly since the 1960's, parents want their children to get a sound education and move towards larger towns with better education programs.
b)

11) One social factor to explain why the enrollments are low is that parents want to start their family near a major town with a firm education system. One economic impact to display the low enrollments is that the economy of Gulargambone is quite low, not many jobs besides agriculture, so children often work on the farms to help provide a living for their family. One environmental factor is drought