Farm wives no longer have the same capacity to put large amounts of volunteer time into their local community. They don't have the time and energy they used to and are preoccupied with keeping their families together and dealing with their own financial and other stresses. As a result communities are finding it harder to produce the volunteer labour they once had. In economic terms this is a major issue when one considers the contribution this has traditionally made to rural communities. One quite poignant example of the decline of rural community life is in the area of sport.
Many small towns have impressive sporting facilities such as stadiums, golf clubs and so on.
Sporting clubs have traditionally played a very important role in the life of rural communities. Yet these days some towns have difficulty even getting enough young people together to form a sporting team. It is not uncommon nowadays for towns to have to combine in order to put a team together. Set against the background of the rather grand sporting facilities in many small towns this is a quite a powerful symbol of the 'dying town syndrome'. Industry in the Wheatbelt area consists predominantly of wheat and wool plus mining to a lesser degree.