Abstract
Between 1926 and 1935 the Better Farming Train made seven trips to the Victorian Mallee region. Modeled on North American examples, the mission of the Train was to spread the “doctrine of better farming” to this wheat-growing region. The Train carried to the Mallee ideas about the promise f science and the hopes of modernity. It championed particular ideas about agricultural development, settlement, and the role of female labor in carrying out the yeoman ideal of the small farmholding. Although the product of a specific time and place, it also tapped into a long-standing belief that the mallee lands could be developed through correct settlement, the advances of technology, and the application of science. The Train was more than a moving collection of exhibits; it also freighted a way of imagining the Mallee that saw in the prospect of golden fields of wheat a way f redeeming the land and forging a modern nation.