Dubbo, Gilgandra, Gulargambone, Coonamble, Lightning Ridge, Moree: Pick the odd one out of these six towns in northern New South Wales that five members of the FCA visited in April courtesy of the Department of State and Regional Development.

It could be Dubbo, the central west's boom town, and the only one of the six with not just a zoo but a parking problem.

Is it Gilgandra, which has a fascination with windmills and quilt making, and which in 1915 got on the front pages of Australian newspapers by organizing the first of the Coo-ee recruiting marches.

Then there's never-say-die Gulargambone, which has fewer people than many Sydney streets, fewer shops than it has letters in its name, but has nevertheless managed to keep its hospital and its school - and which must be the only roadstop in the country with volunteers running the petrol station.

why not Coonamble, half an hour further up the Castlereagh Highway? It's very likely the only town where the chief of police doubles as the mayor. It hosts a Rodeo and Campdraft over the June long weekend that is the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Lightning Ridge has lots of reasons to stand out from the pack. For a start, the name doesn't have the Western Plains ring to it that the others have. It could be the name of a heavy metal band (which it is) or a blues guitarist (which it isn't). In terms of civil amenities, it has one of only three oil lamp museums in the world and an art gallery that's 11 metres under the ground.

And, finally, there's Moree, a town big enough to warrant a bypass for the 1,500 trucks that pass through every day on the inland run between Brisbane and Melbourne. It also boasts Hot Mineral Baths next to its Olympic-size swimming pool - a pool that has a unique place in Australia's social history.

In 1965 Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins and his chums from Sydney University were refused entry to the Moree pool. They were pelted with eggs and tomatoes, scenes from what became known as the Freedom Rides that chimed with US civil rights campaigns, and which led to the dropping of the Moree pool colour bar.

Moree and Gilgandra both have a place in the history books, so they cancel each other out. Dubbo is a massive truck stop, and so is Moree. Gulargambone is losing people, as is Coonamble, so nothing different there.

The stand out of the six is Lightning Ridge. But not for its antique oil lamp display or its subterranean art gallery. The Ridge, as the locals call it, is different because the talk is all about opals and not about the drought.

Strike up a conversation in Dubbo, Gilgandra, Gulargambone, Coonamble and Moree and it won't be long before you are told when the last big rain came and how different life would be if the skies open soon and farmers can put a winter crop in.

They don't talk about the drought in the Ridge. At the bowling club, the top topic is what to do about a market in the doldrums and how sweet life will be when the world puts a higher price on the black opals that are the town's reason for being.

Working Foreign Correspondents in Gulargambone, NSW Photograph Copyright: Sid Astbury

Cotton fields in Moree