Locality matters: the influence of geography on general practice in Australia 1998-2004 is the 17th in the General Practice Series produced by the Australian General Practice Statistics and Classification Centre, University of Sydney, a collaborating unit of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. It reports results from six years of the BEACH program, April 1998 to March 2004, using data reported by 6019 GPs on 601,900 GP-patient encounters. Each of the seven geographical categories of the Rural, Remote and Metropolitan Areas (RRMA) of Australia are compared with the national average, in terms of GP and patient characteristics, patient reasons for encounter, problems managed and treatments provided. Results are further analysed using the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) Remoteness Structure. Summaries of results for each RRMA category and a summary of trends with increasing remoteness across ASGC categories are provided.