Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, widely recognised as the Father of Taoism, observes that, “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” Yet, despite the exhortation not to be sorrowful, it is easy to feel a pang of regret at something affected by change, or some situation that has to give way to progress and, in the process, cease to exist. Australia is a land bestrewed with exotic town names.

The common, non-exotic ones are the oft-heard Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. The more intriguing ones have names like Dismal Swamp, Banana shire, Devils Kitchen, Mount Misery, Gunbarrel Highway and Useless Loop.

But the really exotic ones bear names such as Woollongong, Woolloomooloo (which if memory serves me right holds the record for the featuring the most ‘Os’, eight of them), Burrumbuttock, Koolyanobbing, Manangatang, Ozenkadnook, Pimpinbudgie, Upotipotpon, Wonglepon, Yackandandah and Mullengandra.

It is the last-named of those towns that’s been in the news recently. Mullengandra is a little village community in interior New South Wales. The census of 2011 showed that the town had a population of merely 320. Back in the 1850s, it is said, the town was troubled with bushrangers — a euphemism at the time for escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement who had survival skills to hide in the forests and live off the land while escaping the authorities.

In spite of these encounters with bushrangers, Mullengandra opened its first state school in 1871. At the end of this year, after 146 years of serving as an education institution, the school is destined to ring its bell one last time. As with everything around that’s affected by change, the school is down to just two pupils on its rolls, dropping from a whopping seven in the past twelve months. The school principal who has spent 26 years teaching pupils who lived on surrounding farms, accurately sums up the poignancy of the moment when she says it will be a hard day to lock the door for the last time.

The succeeding generations of farming children aren’t coming back, she says, to run the farms or have families like they did in the past. She probably means it as a light-hearted jest when she says it’s because, “I’ve taught them too well.”

But that’s probably a truth, too, going hand in hand with change. Change, as we know from history, is ruthless. When it moves in, it turns the landscape upside down and inside out. When the earliest tractors appeared in the late 1700s, in the first days of the industrial revolution, the unwitting farmer who went out every day to plough the fields with a pair of bullocks must have wondered with mild amusement what on earth was going on. Those who didn’t recognise change in its infancy in those days quickly got left behind. The principle hasn’t changed today. If a school only has two pupils on its records, it simply becomes no longer viable financially.

About a decade ago when someone close to me was first diagnosed with cancer, this was tested and verified at a diagnostic clinic that was (and still is) housed in what once used to be an old village church. Apart from the giveaway architecture, the beautiful stained-glass windows inside tell a story of what its once other-life used to be like. It’s easy to speculate that at some point in the recent past the parishioners ceased attending, and science with its all-seeing eyes and all-powerful microscopes moved in and took over.

As with things, so with people. Change will alter us and we, in our wisdom, must be prepared to go with the flow, adapt. It’s worth closing on an insight from the 13th century poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, who says, ‘Yesterday I was so clever that I wanted to change the world; today I am wise, so I am changing myself.’

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.