Representing the queer rural home: lesbian homemaking in rural Tasmania, Australia

While dominant queer narratives of place centre youth and rural-to-urban migrations as coming-of-age rites of passage, in this chapter we trouble these narratives by considering lesbians’ rural homemaking later in life. Through in-depth interviews and participant-produced photography with 13 women over 55, we consider how older lesbians negotiate the gendered dynamics of rural homemaking, what home means to them, and how they use their homes to create a sense of identity and belonging in rural communities. We identified three overarching themes: (1) Homemaking, Identity, and Pride; (2) Homemaking and Generativity; (3) Homemaking as Community Building. In contrast with notions of lesbians as being ‘out of place’ in rural communities, we argue that rural homemaking is an integrated process of self-expression, community building, and place making. By visually representing their lives in rural communities, our participants challenged the invisibility of older lesbians and demonstrated how the rural can offer rich possibilities for ageing-in-place.