The park on the outskirts of town has a handful of permanents, about 50 regulars who mostly come to fish and room for about 100 others - usually a mix of holidaymakers and laborers.

Her sons manage Canberra's Kingston Hotel and The Civic Pub. Her phone calls to her boys often drop out because the reception is so sketchy.

"It's really bad," she said.

"If you want to talk to Telstra you stand out on the road there and Optus only gets about half the park."

She said there was no National Broadband Network and they still used dial-up internet to run their business.

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Ms Schwind said she liked the look of Labor candidate Kristy McBain but all the candidates "were much of a muchness" as far as she was concerned.

"Liberal - they just seem to give their money to the city and forget about us out here," she said.

"It's taken us nearly 30 years to get the new Tumut Hospital started - they were going to do that not long after I left school."

Tim Martin was even less hopeful that new representation would bring change to the region.

The Tumut River Brewing Co owner kept operations going during coronavirus shutdowns out of fear that shutting the doors would mean never reopening.

"No part of this has been easy and no part of this has been well-funded so we've always been skirting that fine line of being viable or not. When COVID came we just found other ways," he said.

He took over the big open space at the intersection of Tumut's main street when he was 27 and fed up with existing commercial industries.

"The idea was to do something big enough that it would stand on its own to attract the crowds and prop up the smaller ones if they have a go," he said.

"There has been a lot of verbal support but when it comes to actual help, no one does. Maybe that's all governments."

Mr Martin said the miles of red tape had made it very difficult to get development applications through local government.

"I take my vote pretty lightly because I don't think it's ever going to make any difference," he said.

Sandra Phitzner spends her time between Orange and Tumut, where her mum is in an aged-care facility.

On Thursday she had just cast her vote before she sat down for a beer with her friend Sue Smart.

"I voted Labor," she said. "Environmental issues are the biggest thing for me."

Ms Smart said she'd read the candidates' biographies to Ms Phitzner the night before. They both agreed religion should be kept out of politics, which they didn't think the conservatives had done.

Ms Phitzner said climate policy had influenced her vote for years, and with Snowy 2.0 under way, now felt all the more pressing.

"Just now while it's being built that's all good but it really won't employ many people when it's finished," she said.

"They're bypassing the environmental stuff to look like they're doing something for the economy."