1. Professional supporting letters from a GP/dentist, bank, school, university or workplace.
   • Professional supporting letters must be dated, signed, include your rural residential address and rural address history, and the dates that you resided at the address.
   • The professional supporting letters must detail how you are known to the author of the letter and you must be known in a professional capacity e.g. patient of the GP or student of the school/university.
   • The GP practice/school/bank/work place/university should be in or around the same rural area you are providing support for residing in. If not, the letter needs to clearly detail how the author is able to confirm the rural address history and time periods. The professional letter of support must be official on letterhead and include, if from a GP their AHPRA registration number or official practice stamp.
   OR;
2. Documents to prove residence such as invoices for telephone, utilities, or bank statements showing your address, can be provided.
   • If you were over 18 at the time, bills and invoices will only be accepted if in your name.
   • Rates notices are not acceptable.
   • An online printed invoice will only be acceptable if dated the year it was issued. E.g. a bank statement must be dated the year you are supporting (i.e. dated 19 July 2020 if you are supporting the year 2020, it cannot be dated 2024 if you are supporting the year 2020). The professional letters of support and official statutory declarations must include the rural address history and time periods.

The professional letters of support and official statutory declarations must include the rural address history and time periods.

Please note:

• Residing is where you physically reside/live. If residing on campus this is taken into consideration and if not a campus in a rural location, it is not considered rural time and cannot be claimed as rural residing. If you do not physically live at the claimed rural location it will not be considered as rural residing, it does not matter where your family or primary residence is. We will only consider rural locations where you physically reside. Consecutive means “follow one after another without an interruption”. Please ensure you claim and support rural locations where you have physically resided.
• If you reside (physically live) more than 5 years consecutively in a rural location and prior to or after this time, reside in a non-rural location, you should not detail this non-rural time in your application nor provide documentation to support the family home where you have not physically resided. You should only claim the time you physically resided in a rural area and only provide supporting documentation for this time. Ensure the time is consecutive if consecutive has been claimed.
• If you reside (physically live) in a rural location and study via distance education, while remaining at your rural location, and this time is included in meeting the rural criteria, you must provide a letter from the university to confirm that the studies were via distance education.
• All rural residing should be included in the online application but supporting documentation only needs to support 5 years consecutive or 10 years cumulative rural residing.
• School reports are not sufficient documentation as we need to clearly see your rural residential address.
• Please ensure your documentation supports 5 years consecutively or 10 years cumulatively of rural residing and includes the cover sheet you will print off when you submit your online application.
• You cannot claim time in the future as part of the 5 or 10 years, as there is no way to establish proof that you will continue to reside in a rural setting.
• Time spent at a holiday home (second residence) or during school holidays in a rural setting, will not be considered.
• If selecting 5 years consecutive then the supporting documentation must support 5 full years (documentation is required for every year) and must be consecutive.
• If selecting 10 years cumulative then the supporting documentation must support 10 full years and documentation will be needed for each time period, one document for the start of each time period and one for the end of each time period (documentation is required for every year).
• An official statutory declaration template must be used, either your state or territory one or a Commonwealth one. You can find these by googling statutory declaration.