Mountains of grain tower over plain

The town is the hub of a vast transport network that collects wheat and barley from the Riverina.

It's in Urana shire, whose council has counted 400 trucks a day rumbling through the town.

Mayor Margaret Buntin acknowledges the industry's importance but her shire council has to patch the roads damaged first by floods and then by the trucks, and government funds are never enough.

At Oaklands there are mini-mountains of grain known as bunkers, laid out on flat earth one after another.

They are protected by tarpaulins until the next batch is ready to be railed to Victoria and beyond, or taken out by truck.

Two sets of grain silos dominate the landscape of Oaklands, dwarfing the town's concrete water tower supplied by pipe from Boree Creek.

Cargill's GrainFlow operation is managed locally by Phil Goldsack and is expected to handle between 200,000 and 250,000 tonnes of wheat, barley and canola this season.

GrainCorp's former Australian Wheat Board centre is managed by Wayne "Sporty" Smith.

Closure of other silos has led Oaklands to develop into a large centre linked by rail to Benalla and the port of Geelong, and only last month Cargill announced a 50,000-tonne storage expansion.

Peter Kerr, 67, is a member of a family that has been growing wheat, barley and maize and raising sheep in these parts since 1904, and there are lots of Kerrs around Oaklands.

He's one of 13 children, and his father, Charlie, was one of nine children.

Mr Kerr, who now lives in town with wife Barb, said farms of 600 hectares used to be common, but now they have to be more like 6000 hectares to be viable and some are 15,000 or 20,000 hectares.

Mergers haven't meant takeovers by large corporations, so families long associated with Oaklands have remained.

Those who have stayed take pride in saying how well their offspring or siblings have done, whether scattered around Australia or overseas.

Oaklands is home to 40 to 50 trucks and their drivers employed by the depots of Day, Beale or Doyle.

So what keeps this tidy town ticking?

Entry signs claim Oaklands has 350 inhabitants, but locals say that figures includes the farming families and the town has more like 250 to 280 residents.

Oaklands Central School, with 78 students, teaches children from kindergarten to year 12.

Principal Jenny Kerr retired last week after 31 years, four as principal, though she will remain at Oaklands, and from January the school will share a principal with Urana.

While the school draws students from a 30-kilometre radius, its future depends on newcomers such as Emily Moar, 2, whose mum, Tarin, runs the Oaklands Health and Fitness Centre.

Mrs Moar is from Western Australia but arrived six years after she married Shane Moar.