IN A nation that prides itself on work, profit and material gain, people can lose heart if they're not profit makers.

Let's face it, we all need a dollar to survive, but what's our worth when the dollars we acquire are few?

It's a big question for farming communities, after years of inadequate rain have cut their capacity to produce crops or livestock that once might have made them handsome or reasonable profits. What's next for them?

What might happen if they invested in imagination and creativity just as devoutly as they have invested in roads and cars and all the trappings of 21st-century living?

Might not they discover something just as worthy? A little soul? A lot of spirit perhaps?

If you think such concepts are too highfalutin and off-the-planet for farmers and country towns, then visit Moulamein.

Once the centre of rice growing and large pastoral holdings, the town of 500, 70km north of Swan Hill and at the cross roads to Barham, Deniliquin, Hay and Balranald, has sprouted an art group in its recent droughty bleakness.

Such is its appeal that an exhibition by that group filled the pub to overflowing with people about a year ago.

Farmers, their creative souls stirred, flocked like moths to a beacon.

One car load of travellers on their way to Mildura happened upon their art exhibition, pulled in, bought four paintings and stayed the night.

All this so inspired its members that 12 months on, they've opened an art gallery, bought a coffee machine, run some barista courses alongside classes in life drawing, textural art, mosaics and cheese making.

Up the Hay road, farmer China Gibson, upon cleaning out his shed, caught the bug and made a sculpture at his front gate.

Barb Harris, 46, a sheep and cropping farmer and art group secretary, says people "just came out of the woodwork" when a few women - the group of 13 includes one bloke - decided 18 months ago to get together and sit on the left bank of the always flowing Edwards River and paint.

Most had no idea how but their need for something beyond the straitened circumstances of their lives was a force too great to suppress.

"The basic agenda," says Barb, "is to lift people's spirits in the drought and keep them going out and participating."

What Moulamein has done by force of circumstance, and with funds from a group called Your Community Cares and its local Wakool Shire, is to turn to creativity and imagination.

It is, says Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery director Ian Tully, discovering the richer-than-gold value of investing in those intangible qualities.

He says Australian farmers are facing enormous challenges brought about by the changing climate, reduced water availability and the closure of agencies and industries.

He says creative industries could help, and he so believes in this potential that he's bringing together creative entrepreneurs for a half-day seminar to share how the arts can inspire farming communities to promote health and well-being - and perhaps turn a few dollars - in difficult times.

Among the entrepreneurs are Dr Ian Hunter, head of Britain's Littoral Arts Trust, who works with small farming towns, South Australian farmer James Darling, Clunes book entrepreneur Tess Brady, filmmaker and artist Malcolm McKinnon, whose projects in Victorian rural communities are winning attention, lolly shop entrepreneur Tim Hayes and Moulamein's Barb Harris.

    CHECKLIST
  • The half-day seminar on November 25 costs $40.
  • Get along and stir your imagination.
  • Details, ph: (03) 5036 2430.