Rural and regional towns and farming communities most often constitute the majority of drought declared areas. These areas and the families who reside in them are commonly distinguished by specific social ideals and norms which mean that they experience drought differently from others. The duration, insidiousness and pervasiveness of droughts also result in unique social impacts when compared with other climatic extremes (e.g. floods, bushfires, cyclones, etc.). In Australia, these key experiences of drought can be identified from existing social analyses of rural and regional areas so as to improve understanding into the characteristics of drought that cause the most impacts to humans. This is a necessary step towards increasing resilience against existing and future drought risk. The research focuses specifically on how drought impacts the wellbeing of people in rural communities in non-metropolitan New South Wales and the degree to which changes in wellbeing are associated with resilience or adaptive capacity. Importantly, in line with recent hydroclimatic studies that demonstrate that all droughts are different, this work quantifies how wellbeing varies in space and time in relation to different drought metrics (e.g. frequency, duration, intensity etc.) and also includes analysis on the various drought indices and their suitability as indicators of wellbeing.