South West Life

Harvey is clearly a country town, a rural community. The surrounds of the place are still bound up in agriculture, with beef and dairy farming the most obvious land uses, and the horticultural pursuits of citrus growing in evidence fairly liberally. Clearly there has been a timber industry, but it’s been gone for some time and evidence is not easy to see. Things continue to change too, with the arrival of wine and table grapes as important crops in the area.

We understand that the land is extremely useful because it’s flatness has made irrigation viable, and so much of the land remains productive even through hot dry summers.

The Shire of Harvey’s web site notes that "Very little of the natural vegetation or native forests still exist in the Shire. A couple of patches of remnant tuart forests are now being protected in the north west corner of the Shire. Nevertheless, the combination of the rural elements described above make the Shire picturesque in a 'settled meadow countryside' way, most popular with city folk because of the obvious park-like characters."

There are a number of Dams up in the hills behind Harvey and the place can be a Mecca for water skiers in the summer.

As the Main town in the northernmost Shire in the South West, it has a role in providing a social and service center for the farms and other pursuits. The broad main street still seems to contain a lot of utes, and this is clearly a working community, retaining the resilience and sense of community common to rural communities.

Photo courtesy of Harvey Visitor Centre

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