Chilling out in the country? Interrogating Daylesford as a 'gay/lesbian rural idyll'

Recent scholarship suggests that the gay/lesbian idyllisation of rural places is an urban construct, constituted through metropolitan sensibilities, communities and imaginaries. We extend this work through examining the construction of Daylesford, Victoria, as a ‘gay/lesbian rural idyll’. Daylesford annually hosts ChillOut, Australia’s largest rural gay/lesbian festival, which underpins its idyllisation. Utilising data drawn from fieldwork conducted at the 2006 festival and commentaries circulated in the gay/lesbian media, we argue that not only is Daylesford idyllised in the Australian gay/lesbian imaginary, but that rurality and urbanity are hybridised in its framing as a ‘gay/lesbian rural idyll’. This is manifested in several ways: discursively, as the ‘gay capital of country Victoria’; spatially, through enabling proximity to Melbourne; materially, as a rustic setting for upmarket stores/services typically associated with the cosmopolitan inner-city. We thus show how the ‘gay/lesbian rural idyll’ is an urban construct not only in the gay/lesbian imaginary, but also when spatialised in a rural place.