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I’m in rural Victoria this week reporting on immigration — part of
our effort to explore Australia’s multicultural present and future — and I have
to say, now I get why so many of you urged me to get out of the cities and into
the country.

This isn’t my first trip to regional Australia, and let’s put aside the “real
Australia” argument; in my book, cities and towns are both reflections of
national character.

But just as dinner parties are different with six guests rather than 60, towns
with a few hundred people do have a lot to teach about human interaction and how
a country really works.

In my experience, towns of the singular — one market, one intersection — tend to
produce a few things in abundance. Questions are among them. Visiting reporters
rarely get too far without being asked about their plans, and within a day or
so, word gets around.

If you’re deemed trustworthy, introductions are made, phone numbers are shared
and people just appear to tell their stories.

Pubs help.

Here in Pyramid Hill, we arrived and dropped our bags in a couple of rooms at
the Victoria Hotel around 3 p.m. on Monday. A few hours later, the local mayor
stopped by for a chat and a beer on her way home from work.

The local footy coach sat at the other end of the bar, beneath fading photos
from decades past, and thanks to David Demaine, our friendly publican, I quickly
discovered that the coach was married to the principal of the local public
school, Pyramid Hill College.

She appeared a few minutes later, not just at the pub, but at my table.

No wonder writers love these kinds of towns.

E. B. White, who inspired me as a child with “Charlotte’s Web” and again as a
young reporter with his signature essay, “Here is New York,” lived on a farm in
rural Maine for 48 years.

Tim Winton, even as he promotes a new novel called “The Shepherd’s Hut,” still
deliberately avoids telling anyone where he can be found in Western Australia to
preserve the peace and quiet of his coastal community.

And then there’s Gerald Murnane, the Australian literary savant who has landed
in Goroke, a stretch of remote Victoria a few hours from where I am. I’m half
tempted to try to make the trip after reading this week’s fantastic profile of
him in The New York Times Magazine. With minimal effort, I imagine I could find
a way to fit in at the men’s shed where he and a bunch of other retirees spend a
lot of time tinkering and talking.