Graduate teachers' preparedness for working in rural settings are mediated by the development of pedagogical expertise, professional engagement with parents and the community, and broader notions of preparation to teach in rural contexts. The Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education (SETE) project is a four-year longitudinal study tracking teacher education graduates in Queensland and Victoria to investigate the effectiveness of their programs in equipping them to meet the learning needs of students in a diverse range of school settings. A sub-set of the SETE data was examined to explore graduate teacher preparation for rural schools, specifically the authors analysed 1,539 point-in-time survey responses (April 2013) and findings from a case study exploring two teachers' transitions from teacher education into teaching positions at a rural primary school in Victoria. The case study is read iteratively with survey analysis to grapple with the issues associated with graduate teacher preparation for rural schools.