Fields of discontent

Thin black lines divide the district almost equally into individual properties of between 260 and 280 hectares. Stand in front of the open fire at the Werrimull Hotel and count the blocks one by one and you'll get to about 700 - if you can stand heat.

Scan the individual blocks and you'll see the names of the 1920s settlers, names like ''Scotty'' Gray, G. S. Hards and G. J. Douglas.

Advertisement: Story continues below Back then the government encouraged families to live in the Millewa - about an hour west of Mildura in the Mallee - under its ''closer settlement scheme'', a program that carved up enormous pieces of land to lure settlers to the bush. Other large pockets of Victoria were also sliced up for closer settlement.

In the early years Werrimull had a population of about 1000 and became the centre of the Millewa. It had a bush nursing hospital, three churches, government offices, a doctor, police station, local hall and a bank. According to a local history available at the hotel, the wider Millewa district was serviced by a railway line stretching out from Red Cliffs with ''stations every six miles'' and a staggering number of schools, ''nearly 40''.

How times have changed. Now, the entire district has just one school, the Werrimull P12. Unlike their city cousins, Werrimull locals don't have to fret about the quality of the local hospital, or the punctuality of the train service. These services are long gone. Today, the Werrimull township is home to only about 50 people.

But there is one key local service they do worry about. The Millewa pre-school in Werrimull is a charming country kindergarten that faces a large funding shortfall each year. Because of this, the 14 children have had classes cut back to only one day a week, down from 1½ days at the start of the year and two days a week three years ago.

To open for two days now, the kinder would have to have raised $42,000 on top of government funding - almost $1000 for every person in Werrimull. It's a sum that simply cannot be raised via the occasional sausage sizzle outside Bunnings in Mildura (an hour's drive away).

The Millewa is in the top north-west corner of Victoria, nestled between the South Australian border, the Mildura irrigation district, the Murray River and the Murray-Sunset National Park. It's the part of Victoria furthest away from Melbourne in one of the largest electorates (Mildura) in the state

It's closer to Adelaide than Melbourne, so some locals go to the South Australian capital for specialist medical treatment or to study. And at home or at work, some radios are tuned in to South Australian rather than Victorian stations.

Politicians don't venture into the Millewa too often, and when they do, they don't bring a funding solution for the local kinder with them.

Local mum and treasurer of the kindergarten committee, Jess Hards, stands in the shade of the kinder playground and talks about the financial challenges of keeping the place open. As she talks she nurses six-month-old Mia, while her other two daughters, Kaitlin, 5, and Ella, 3, climb happily over the outdoor equipment. The older two attend kinder here every Wednesday.

''It's around 20 grand that we manage to raise a year. And it has been for the last couple of years, but every year's the same. I think there are 14 kids in the kinder at the moment. I've got two kids here and most of them have got a couple of kids, so it's the same families that are doing the work,'' she says.

And in a small country community - one that also supports the local school and sporting clubs - there is a finite pool of money available. ''You've got to flog the same people every year,'' she says, clearly frustrated.

Some families have to travel long distances to get to the kinder, the only one in the Millewa. One family does a round trip of 100 kilometres.

''Our kids deserve the opportunities that the children in town get and they deserve an education,'' Jess Hards says. ''And these days it (education) does start now, it doesn't start once they get to school.

''They need to change the way they fund kinders. And instead of funding per child, fund for a teacher,'' she says. ''And at least have a look at the way they fund rural areas.''

Natalie Symes, president of the pre-school, says it is a crucial building block of the community. ''If you don't have the kinder you don't have the school, if you don't have the school you don't have a community - so it's essential. And if you don't have those two facilities it means splitting up families - and who wants to do that,'' she says.

Symes says the kinder gives children a regular opportunity to play with other children aside from their own siblings. ''Being in the area that we do live in we don't have play-groups and those sorts of things. The interaction that the kids get at kinder is pretty much really the only time they get to catch up with each other and have a play with different people.'' In a bid to cement its future, the pre-school community is investigating whether it might be possible to merge with the local school.

When Millewa locals come to vote, the predicament of the Millewa kinder could influence some.

But there are plenty of other issues in the west of this electorate that will also shape voting intentions - the state of ''The Millewa'' road running east-west through the district and its lack of a bitumen shoulder, the controversial $692 million north-south pipeline built to suck water from the Goulburn River but now sitting idle, the government's response to the expected locust plague and the lack of local health services.

On balance, they are issues that are much more likely to hurt Labor than help it.

About 15 minutes south-west of Werrimull, grain grower Ron Hards farms 2830 hectares with his wife Meg, son Nick and daughter-in-law Jess. The 64-year-old watches politics closely, and it's clear that with the Brumby government he doesn't like what he sees.

''I'm pretty disgusted with Labor's attitude over water. I think that was the biggest issue in recent times. And the fact that they built that pipeline into Melbourne was an absolute disgrace. They put Melbourne above everything else and the water supply for their (dams).

''The restrictions were almost laughable down there and the rest of the country had to suffer and survive how best they could.''

But while Hards believes building the north-south pipeline was an ''abominable'' decision taken without regard for the permanent orchards and grapevines worth millions of dollars, he thinks Labor will cling to power.

''I don't think the opposition is good enough at this stage to take over, unfortunately. They just haven't been vocal enough, they haven't been out there and the policies just don't seem to be flowing like they should be at this stage of an election process. I don't think they've demonstrated that they're a viable opposition.

''But who knows, if people have got their back up like I have with bloody Labor governments, you never know what'll happen. And I think there's a fair few upset people out there,'' he says.

Ron Hards has his ''back up'' with the Brumby government over more than water issues. He remains bitterly disappointed over the closure of the Victorian Department of Primary Industries' research centre at Walpeup a few years ago. The dryland farming research centre was in the Mildura electorate and a crucial contributor to the local economy. The decision to close it, he says, was ''deplorable''.

Hards says Labor has hidden behind Kennett government decisions despite being in power for 11 years - it has failed, for example to reopen the Mildura railway line despite promising to do so.

''I think we're a long way from Melbourne and literally forgotten. If we don't make a noise they don't worry about us,'' he says.

Grain grower Jim Pickering thinks the Millewa has a better chance of getting funding if the Coalition wins office and if the Nationals' Peter Crisp hangs on to the seat of Mildura.

Pickering is president of the school council of the Werrimull P12 School, and after a major revamp courtesy of the federal government, he is happy with the condition of the school.

But he is concerned about the state of the Millewa's gravel roads, which after the council amalgamations of the 1990s, he says don't get as much attention as they used to.

''We've got three buses for our school that pick up kids and over three-quarters of their journey is on gravel. So that's why the gravel roads have got to be better,'' he says.

''We seem to get the froth out of the beer glass and the rest of it goes into the built-up areas where the votes are. That's the way I look at it, as far as the shire side of it goes.''

Back in the Werrimull Hotel a gigantic rib-eye steak (in keeping with the size of the Millewa) is delivered to a hungry diner. He glances up at the map showing pioneer properties of the 1920s. Immediately next to it is another map of the Millewa, representing farm ownership in 2005. Clearly, the farms are much bigger now - some more than 10 times larger than the original 1920s blocks - so the number of family names on the 2005 map has dropped to about 70.

Laminated copies of the Millewa maps sell for $42 and, like the sausage sizzles organised by the energetic kinder parents, the proceeds go to the Millewa pre-school.