ABSTRACT
I remember, as a young girl, standing at the window of a darkened bedroom looking out over the regional centre of Armidale in country NSW. Compared to my small home town, that field of twinkling lights offered a spectacle which I was not sure I understood but was sure I wanted. It was a constellation that outshone the stars I was used to at home, a material sign that the hugely populous world that I understood vaguely from books and radio really did exist. The attractions of ‘city lights’ are often mentioned in studies of rural youth but how that attraction works is not discussed in terms that would seem relevant to thinking about country girl’s desires. In practice this attraction is less about differences between the country and the city than about lines drawn between them. My Armidale city lights would have often thought of themselves as ‘the country.’
