A fellow mounted on a large Harley-Davidson motorcycle was taking pictures of her front window.

Her expression suggested she wasn't much interested in making good on the promise of her footpath-mounted campaign placard, which featured the words: "Here to listen to you."

"It's only me, Soph," I said, flipping up the helmet. "Any chance of coming in?"

Mirabella appeared to have swallowed something unappetising.

"No, no, look, I've got a 20-minute meeting and I just haven't time," she said, backing away and disappearing into her office.

Mirabella once might have knocked aside a Mack truck if it had threatened to get between her and a media interview. Times have changed.

It wasn't as if I hadn't been warned. When I'd called to inform her I was planning to travel through the electorate on a sort of 2016 election-campaign Motorcycle Diaries,  she had said she wasn't doing any more interviews with the national media, thank you.

She was concentrating on winning every vote possible and wanted no distraction. She's struggling to regain the seat of Indi, which she held from 2001 until she lost it in 2013, the only Liberal seat to fall in that election.

Things haven't been going well since her self-inflicted hit when she claimed the Wangaratta Hospital had lost $10 million in federal funding because the electorate had turned its back on her.

Around the corner and up Wangaratta's main street, however, the sitting Member for Indi, Independent Cathy McGowan – who tore Indi from Mirabella's grasp in 2013 – was perfectly happy to be bothered by a biker reporter.

She was surrounded by a boardroom of senior supporters and advisers all eager to impart how McGowan had "democratised" Indi politics.

Supporters wore the team colour, orange, and thus had no difficulty striking up conversations with other supporters all over the place, building the movement. If that sounded a bit, well, cuddly, McGowan and her close advisers had no apologies. It worked, McGowan said, and produced results.

There was, for instance, a problem with mobile phone "black spots" all across Indi, a beautiful electorate of hills, valleys, mountains and plains sprawling from Kinglake, a hamlet on a ridge just north of Melbourne, clear to the Upper Murray in the far north-east of Victoria.

McGowan had harnessed the knowledge of far-flung constituents, drawn up a map of the most pressing problem areas, persuaded Telstra to compare its map with hers ... and got 30 more phone towers, with more to come.

When the Communications Minister Mitch Fifield turned up the next day to support Mirabella's campaign, he all but confirmed it, travelling to Indigo Valley – McGowan's home territory – and declaring it was on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's "black spots" program.

Right next door to McGowan's Wangaratta electorate office is campaign headquarters for Marty Corboy, who is standing for the Nationals.

He could hardly be more different from McGowan and her followers but, in the way of country folk, they get along without rancour.

Corboy is a very conservative Catholic from a family of 10 who, at the age of 36, already has six children and a seventh on the way. Home schooling is the Corboy way, and an early experience with political candidacy was with the Family First party.

He says he discovered Family First wasn't for him, and departed for the ranks of the Nationals.

He uses Facebook, too, but his site has only a few hundred "likes" compared with the 7000 on McGowan's (Mirabella's site has about 4500).

Corboy is heavy on traditional placards wired to roadside fences all over the electorate to build a presence. The question facing Corboy's boosters is how his socially conservative stance may fare in Indi's biggest city, Wodonga, where 40 per cent of the electorate's voters reside.

Wodonga, a relatively progressive city with a concentration of educational institutions, turned out in large numbers for McGowan in 2013.

Interest in Corboy's campaign rose significantly, however, when the Nationals' leader Barnaby Joyce blew into town and effectively wrote off Mirabella's chances of regaining Indi.

Corboy, said Joyce, was the Coalition's chance in the electorate. Considering Joyce is also deputy prime minister, the mention of the "Coalition's best chance" seemed particularly pointed. He supported Mirabella at the last election.

Meanwhile, Ken Jasper, a wily old Nationals man who sat in state Parliament for the party for 34 years and holds much sway in the Indi area, supports Corboy, too.

This is a clearly strategic move: Jasper caused something of a sensation and much anger among Coalition supporters in 2013 when he backed McGowan.

Though Liberal frontbenchers have visited Indi to support Mirabella's campaign, the drop in confidence at senior Victorian Liberal Party level – where crucial funding is held – has become an open secret.

Indeed, Mirabella implied on a much-criticised 7.30 interview that she suspected Victorian Liberal Party HQ was leaking against her. And as far as her relationship with the party in Melbourne went: "Quite frankly, it doesn't matter what Collins Street says. It matters what the people of Indi say."

And that has been her problem. When Mirabella came to Indi in 2001, it was among the safest of Coalition seats and had been held for most of the previous century by either the Liberals (and its predecessors) or the Country Party.

Her popularity initially surged and, in 2004, she won the seat with a mighty vote of more than 66 per cent. But then began a slide, election by election.

She has since admitted she had devoted too much time to Canberra politics and to being a warrior (of the right), and has promised to pay more attention to the electorate.

The grassroots campaign of McGowan and her followers swallowed many Liberal votes that shifted from Mirabella in 2013, and many more that might have gone to the Nationals if the party had run.

The decision by the Nationals to run Corboy changes the mix and adds a layer of uncertainty and difficulty in predicting a result.

The base "rusted-on" Liberal vote cannot be discounted, and nor can that of the Nationals. Mirabella got the highest vote in 2013 at 44.7 per cent. McGowan got 31.2 per cent. It came down to a swag of preferences from minor parties.

This time the Liberals and the Nationals, the traditional Indi powers, will swap preferences, granting one or the other a stronger chance than if only one was in the contest.

McGowan will need a strong lead if she is to hold on.The betting markets have McGowan way out in front, although more sober long-time observers in Indi find it hard to believe she is priced by Sportsbet at $1.15, Corboy at $6 and Mirabella at $11.

Sometimes, however, you need an old hand to judge what may really be going on.Tim Fischer, former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, spends much of his time these days on the cattle property run by his wife, Judy Brewer (who is a first cousin of McGowan), in the glorious rolling hill country south-east of Wangaratta.

Wearing his political pundit's cap, Fischer has no good news for those trying to wrest Indi from McGowan, least of all for Mirabella.

​"Leaving all my biases aside for the moment, clearly Cathy McGowan is well in front," he says. "Marty Corboy is closing the gap and it would seem he's lifted the Nationals vote ahead of the Liberals."

Fischer treats politics philosophically these days. He and Brewer's eldest son Harrison takes some delight in announcing in his father's presence that he is going to vote Labor.

Harrison is 22, which happens to be the same age as Labor's outsider candidate for Indi Eric Kerr. It may have been interesting to ask Mirabella about a lot of this. But alas. She wants no distractions.

This article originally appeared at The Age.