"The time will come in your life when the voice of God will thunder at you from a cloud, ‘From this day forth thou shalt not be able to put on thine own socks’.” And the older you get, the more you will realise that this is true.

I don’t want to be gloomy but the failure of mind and muscle will get us all in the end.

In Glen Innes, both the old people's homes are expanding, and I suspect it’s a pattern across New England - the populations of country towns are getting older.

The pull of the cities is ever stronger. In some countries like Germany, small towns retain vibrant economies where there is work.

Ambitious youngsters stay because there is a future.

In Australia, as in Britain, the magnet pulls people and money away from the country.

The figures don’t lie.

In NW NSW census day in 2016, a third of the population was over 60, with the really big jump compared with five years earlier in people older than 85.

The big exodus was of the middle aged. And teenagers.

Ageing country towns will have more of a burden to be shouldered by fewer people - more people needing hospitals and doctors and old people’s homes.

That is a cold reality.

The Regional Australia Institute says that in many country towns immigrants are making up for the decline of Australian born people.

Pretty well everywhere - Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Armidale, Walcha, Inverell, Moree - populations rose between 2011 and 2016 but only because foreign immigrants outnumbered those who left.

These foreign born immigrants tend to be younger, tend to be up for work and so for paying taxes.

In some years time - though probably fewer than I like to think - it will be the taxes of the newcomers with darker skin and different shaped eyes who will at least partly pay the wages of the nurse who helps me pull my socks on. I will be grateful.