The Patchewollock long-timer said pubs were re-opening, tourists were returning and city slickers were looking for new rural pastures.

"I was talking to a real estate friend and house inquiries for little towns like Patchy, Hopetoun, Ouyen are booming," he said.

"All the people in Melbourne just want to get out of the rat-race. So every cloud has a silver lining.

"I think it will have a big impact on rural Victoria - it will benefit it enormously."

In recent weeks gray nomads and tourists have hit the road again and are heading out bush. They go in search of silo trails and nature.

Enter a new book - part travel guide, part coffee-table book/souvenir - "The Mallee - A Journey through north-west Victoria", which is an elegant pictorial guide to the area.

Its story follows the old Mallee train lines, the remnants of which snake across the vast landscape, passing by lakes, through towns and national parks. They make perfect tourist trails.

Long-term residents, new arrivals, birth and decay, nature and history along the train tracks have all been captured during the 2 1/2 years of the project.

"The Mallee" was the brainchild of Adam McNicoll. The Manangatang boy roped in photographers Jaime Murcia, Andrew Chapman, Melanie Faith Dove, Erin Jonasson and Noel Butcher to shoot the area - no holds barred. There was no agenda. They shot what they found.

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" I grew up in Manangatang and I am a very proud Mallee boy. Over a number of years I had been thinking about ways I could stay involved with the little town I grew up in," he said

"I did a book for the Manangatang centenary in 2011 and when I did that I met some cool people, like Andrew Chapman, a legendary photographer who has worked on this Mallee book and Phil Campbell, a book designer and photographer."

"I kept thinking about how could we do something about the whole Mallee.

"Then I came up with this idea of a book to follow the old railway lines, because I knew that would have a powerful nostalgia element to it, and recruited some of my favourite photographers and went from there."

The photography took about 2 1/2 years to complete and tapped into the photographers' interest in "passion projects".

"I said to a few of them, why don't you go take photos of Mallee," Adam said.

He credited Chapman and Murcia with kick-starting it. "They rang me one day and said 'We're on the way to Rainbow and we're making a start.' I said 'Great'."

He told them to make it a snapshot of the Mallee as it was, not how they wanted it to be, "and see what we come up with".

The result was a documentary and a trip guide. It can be used to plan a holiday, on the road and then kept as a souvenir of adventures taken. The coherent journey of the book - the train lines - provides both a narrative and a historical point of reference.

"There is a whole new market for this book I didn't expect," he said, citing the lockdowns and people's limited travel options as a boon.

"I went out to the Mallee last week and I couldn't believe how many caravans were out there. And once restrictions lift in Melbourne they will be heading out into Victoria."

Michael Gooch and Louise Nicholas moved to Patchewollock two years ago from Sunshine after buying a 168 acre property that abuts Wyperfield National Park and started an eco-tourism business. They feature in the book.

"We both have day jobs as well and run Explore the Mallee," Michael said. "We predominantly get a lot of day trippers."

They mainly get "bird nerds", photographers and people who are interested in nature in general, wildflowers in spring and learning about the Mallee.

"It's really interesting being in a semi-arid area," Louise said. "You get a bit of a crossover of desert stuff but also woodland environments and habitats. You get a nice little mesh of the two and get interesting plants, birds and animals that people are unfamiliar with. We are still learning a lot about it."

They get two types of visitors - the people who are first-timers to the area and the "Mallee addicts", including birdwatchers who can spend all day in a hide.

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"The people who do come up are surprised," Michael said.

"For example, people assume big trees are old trees, but a lot of the small Mallee trees are still very, very old."

The lockdown has been "tricky - you can't really plan" for the business, but that is changing.

"We've been overwhelmed with bookings now that regional Victoria has come out of lockdown," Louise said.

"We've been really flexible with that. We know that people are finding it difficult to plan. We've been accommodating people's restrictions."

Michael said the book would be a "hook" for visitors, to see what the area was like, meet the locals - and maybe want to stay.

He's not sure the exodus from the city will get quite as far up as Patchy, but he says communities know they need an influx.

"I think a lot of the time it's all about how we do it. When it's such a mono-industry up here, of farming, how do people get a foothold?" he said.

"You need to be bringing in people with different employment mixes and skill sets."

Michael "Booza" Robertson is an advocate for the Mallee and still runs the family farm at Tempy. You can't miss him in the Patchewollock section.

"The Mallee is a magnificent place with some beautiful scenery and the book showcases that in a magnificent way," he said.

Tourists and locals have long shared yarns and drinks at the Patchewollock Hotel's bar, but as the lockdowns hit "everything stopped dead".

"It went from having, in Patchy, believe it or not, up to a 100 caravans a day - the silo trail was absolutely fantastic," Michael said.

"They followed the trail up. It had just got it's brand out there, it was working brilliantly, great interaction between tourists from overseas and Sydney and wherever to interact with the locals. Then bang. Everything stopped dead.

"When I say stopped dead, our music festival is on the third weekend in October: that is cancelled. That was 4000 people turned up, 380 caravans last year. Canned.

"The Mad Dog Morgan festival on the June long weekend: cancelled. Camp fire cook off: cancelled. Sheep dog trials: cancelled.

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"And no tourists in the pub. And the pub only doing takeaways Friday, Saturday nights.

"It's been a huge full stop."

He said that tourists were coming back in dribs and drabs, but people were still wary of travelling and "to be honest the locals are wary of the travellers - it's a double edged sword".

He expected an "absolute explosion" of people in regional Victoria once lockdowns ease because "they won't be able to go anywhere else for six months at least".

"Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower might have some appeal, but the Patchy pub, Wyperfield National Park, the sand hills, the natural native fauna and flora, the Pink Lakes - Adam has just bought it all to life, " Michael said.

"I think people who read the book will find it's like growing up looking at books of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, you will just want to go and see it."

The lockdown has been difficult for the area and when the pub shut "it was diabolical", with a spike in social isolation.

"A problem shared is a problem halved," he said.

"The pub plays a huge part of bringing the community together and because we couldn't have the social gathering it was terrible."

He said that people were heading back, but tentatively.

"The Friday night raffle could draw 100 people," Michael said.

"Everybody flocked in to catch up with family, kids running around ... it's a real community atmosphere. But it hasn't got back to that. It's just been baby steps.

"It's not back to the rollicking days."

"The Mallee" is available through www.tenbagpress.com.au or at stores throughout the Wimmera and Mallee. Follow on Instagram: @themalleebook / facebook.com/themalleebook

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