'Staying Bush' - The Lives of Gay Men in Rural Australia

This study explored the experience of what it is to be a gay man and to live in a rural community. The findings of this study show that these men were able to live in rural locations by effectively employing a diverse range of strategies to both combat the difficulties of rural life and to enhance its advantages. The bush was the place in which these men could find themselves, be themselves and also find others like themselves. This book documents a largely unreported aptitude and adeptness by rural gay men to live contented lives in rural areas. It suggests that their close affinity with place gives them a sense of belonging. It also suggests that these men had the capacity for agency - the individual's ability to exert autonomy over his life - that drove their determination to control and improve their own lives and live them the way they chose. This is a perspective that has been untold in previous narratives of rural gay men. That gay men can live fulfilled lives in the very places they are too often said to have fled evokes an innovative understanding of what it is to be gay in the bush.