They say the weaknesses you take into a crisis are your hurdles on the way out.
For the Hunter's rural districts and regional towns post-COVID-19 the hurdles look daunting.
Going into the virus the valley looked a picture after late summer rain. It still does.
But the damage from the drought and fires is not easily undone. Restocking paddocks and sowing winter crops require reserves that many farmers don't have.
Based on what happened after the millennium drought, many Hunter farmers will leave the land after the lockdown, forever.
The wine and wine-tourism sector was similarly fragile going in. Many wineries abandoned the 2020 vintage due to a smoke-tainted grape harvest.
Then the virus saw tourism in the Hunter collapse.
Restaurants closed, wineries stopped selling, accommodation bookings dried up.
As with broad acre farming, there'll be vineyards, wineries and tourism businesses that won't re-open.
Drought and fire also tainted the image of countryside living as rural nirvana.
Tree-change investors have for decades provided an exit-strategy for aged, exhausted and broke Hunter farmers.
But drought, fire and now the virus are likely to douse the enthusiasm of would-be tree changers, many of whom have also seen their nest eggs smashed by sharemarket collapse.
Paradoxically, for the Hunter's drive-through regional centres - Cessnock, Maitland and Raymond Terrace - the weakness of the coming in economy is also their strength.
For mining, coming into the virus didn't look pretty.
The boom times flowing from the construction of new mines over the past two decades are pretty much over.
The new decade sees miners in a battle to hold onto high wages and benefits.
Labour hire practices undermine enterprise agreements, falling union membership levels strip industrial power, local supply contracts dry up.
Coming out, the struggle for returns to labour will intensify.
Coming in, the aggregate effect of the Hunter's weaknesses was showing in the valley's townscapes.
Young families were exiting regional towns without jobs, while young miners saw no reason to move families away from the coast.
The drive-in, drive-out worker had become common. Smaller towns in the upper Hunter were falling over. Retailing and services businesses in the larger centres battled for customers.
Muswellbrook and Singleton struggled to hold their populations.
For Muswellbrook and Singleton, the coming in years were frustrated too by the sight of a billion dollars annually, on average, shipped to Sydney into Macquarie Street vaults, the royalties from the coal industry they host, that which blights their rolling valleys, for which they eat dust, suffer the trains and trucks, but stand speechless when asked what they get in return.
Coming out, businesses along their high streets will have lost many of the customers now resorting to online platforms and one big shop a week at a giant mall down the valley.
The number of empty shop fronts will probably grow.
Paradoxically, for the Hunter's drive-through regional centres - Cessnock, Maitland and Raymond Terrace - the weakness of the coming in economy is also their strength. For these centres, urban sprawl has become their lifeline, with building approvals at record highs.
Coming in to the virus, population growth across the lower Hunter fed the growth of nappy land, a belt of housing estates along Newcastle's western and northern perimeter.
The perimeter also saw jobs growth in construction, shopping mall retailing, food services and transport and logistics.
Coming out of the virus, the sprawl of housing and low-skilled jobs will continue. The lot of the local council planner is the rollout of sub-divisions over the lower Hunter's historic rural valleys.
Councils, always pushing against financial distress in the state of NSW, are dependent on the streams of new rates these sub-divisions create.
The virus won't resolve their addiction.
Then, coming in, is our region's chronic weakness: government disinterest. Coming out, things can only get worse. Government stimulus measures to counter the COVID-19 downturn will repeat decades of Sydney-based over-spend. The exceptions will be the state's marginal electorates. So don't hold your breath for a meaningful Hunter package coming out. Our belt of seven - 10 if you include the Central Coast - safe Labor seats is unlikely to attract interest from the Berejiklian Coalition government.
The exception might be Upper Hunter, held for the National Party by Michael Johnsen. Given the royalties his electorate sends south, surely something can land in Mr Johnsen's begging bowl.
Phillip O'Neill is professor of economic geography at Western Sydney University
READ MORE:
.jpg?w=600)
