What is keeping people strong in isolated and under-populated locales, and how much of that is cultural? In 2008 the Cultural Asset Mapping for Regional Australia (CAMRA) project was born with the very simple question: ‘how can we best map regional culture in contemporary Australia so that we can assess that culture’s value?’ In the five years that followed, what transpired was an unpredictable journey into unlikely places and too-often neglected communities across regional Australia, from western Sydney to the central desert, from east coast surfboard-shapers to Torres Straight hip-hop musicians. Their experiences, stories and insights confronted existing assumptions, and challenged many of the cherished precepts of cultural policy and creative industries research.