About 15,000 kilometres away from Dolly Parton’s beloved Smoky Mountains home in Tennessee, there’s a small town in rural Australia that will always love her.

Narromine, a farming community of 4000 people in central NSW, is home to the Dolly Parton Festival, which fills the wide country streets with her music every year.

Organiser Susie Rae said the town would hold a minute of silence to honour the queen of country music at the festival on October 10, after Parton’s death at the age of 80 this week.

Parton’s family announced the death of the irrepressible entertainer – known for hits such as 9 To 5, I Will Always Love You and Jolene. A statement from her representative on Tuesday said she had faced a “brief battle with cancer”.

Rae, who founded the event in 2022, said Parton’s music, love and generosity breathed life into the community after it endured a prolonged drought and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“For our very first festival we had over 2000 people in the street,” Rae said on Wednesday.

“It was just off the cusp of Covid and I remember standing there with [a local politician] and he said, ‘Susie, I haven’t felt the power of love like this for a very long time’.

“I said, ‘Well, that’s Dolly’.

“It was incredible.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a well-known music fanatic, paid a special tribute to Parton on Wednesday, posting a photo of the pair embracing and laughing.

“There are a lot of broken hearts in Australia and across the world today,” he wrote.

“Wherever you are, turn your stereo or your phone to Dolly, then turn the volume up.”

He also revealed Parton was the centre of a career highlight. Albanese was transport minister when he got her enormous tour bus moving in 2011 after it was initially deemed too big for Australian roads.

The world was a better place with Parton in it, he said.

“A singer and songwriter of rare power and talent, she also shone brightly as an actor, author and philanthropist,” he wrote.

“And the big, radiant heart of the Dolly universe was a personality as strong as it was compassionate, a vivacious woman of great humour and a sense of humanity sustained in no small part by the humble strength of her roots.”

The power of Parton’s Imagination Library, which delivers free books to children in the first five years of life, has also been felt deeply across Australia, particularly in rural areas.

More than two million books have been delivered to 151,000 children in 480 communities since it began in in Australia in 2014, according to the library’s website.

A 2023 study found Aussie children linked to the program are being read to more often, for longer and have more books, while 90 per cent of caregivers spent more quality time reading to their kids.

Melbourne artist Ginger Taylor, who has a cult following for her bold pop culture prints including Dolly-inspired designs, said she had long feared the singer’s death.

“I can’t even put into words the impact Dolly has had on me as a person,” Taylor wrote.

“Thank you for everything you’ve ever done. I will always love you.”

The City of Melbourne, which gave Parton the keys to the city in 1987, also shared a photo of the singer from the Victorian Performing Arts Centre Collection.

“Dolly Parton gave the world the keys to her heart through her songwriting, signature style and philanthropy – touching millions across the globe. Giving her the Keys to the City was the least we could do,” a post on Instagram read.

-AAP