This article examines the burgeoning genre of Australian rural romance novels. It argues that rural romance shares significant and defining generic features with romance fiction and other popular literary forms such as the Western and the colonial romance and adventure story, but also reworks conventional forms to address current socio-historical conditions in rural Australia. It does so in the cultural and political contexts of Australia's position as a post-colonial nation, grappling with ongoing issues of inheritance, belonging and authenticity. It includes case studies of a number of novels set in the Mallee eco-region of South Australia and Western Australia, exploring how the Mallee setting is used to make claims of uniqueness and legitimacy, drawing upon that region's specific place in Australian settler histories.
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