Category Archives: Rural Australia

Go bush for the books: Rosalie Ham reckons you never know who you’ll run into

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The Dressmaker author says literary events in country Australia are all about ‘discussing, catching up and laughing’. Here are some planned for 2022

Rural readers are in for a bumper crop of established and emerging writers festivals taking place in country regions throughout 2022, a harvest that also offers plenty of flavour to city-dwelling book lovers seeking literary-themed getaways.

Jerilderie-born author of The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham, says events in the bush have always provided a great excuse for a reunion of like minds. Her extensive literary circuit all began with an invitation to talk at a writers festival in country Victoria.

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Before Covid, moving to the country to get a horse felt like a career-killing move | Calla Wahlquist

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It took a pandemic and work-from-home order to convince me it’s possible to keep working and live where you want to live

I have spent a lot of time picking up rocks. This is not what I dreamed about doing as we sat in Melbourne during the city’s sixth lockdown and waited out the three-month settlement period to move to our new farm in central Victoria. That time was spent on cottagecore fantasies and planning out wildly unrealistic renovation schedules.

Then we took possession in October and I’ve been picking up rocks ever since. Rocks and sticks and, for one particularly disgusting week before we had scrubbed down the house, a series of dead starlings that had become stuck in the fireplace and under the oven.

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The six ages of driving – or how I went from heroin alley speed junkie to terrified city motorist | Brigid Delaney

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One driving instructor told me he’d driven with murderers who were safer than me

The amusement arcades in Russell Street were the place in Melbourne to buy heroin in the 90s and early 2000s. But I went there to learn how to drive.

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Regional health experts and local mayors fear NSW reopening could spread Covid

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Tweed shire mayor says ‘many regions are facing the very real likelihood of their first Covid-19 outbreak’ ahead of the state lifting travel restrictions

All 10 local government areas in New South Wales with double-dose Covid vaccination rates below 50% are regional, with six of the 10 currently affected by outbreaks.

This could leave those areas at greater risk of adverse effects on health infrastructure and businesses in these areas, as NSW plans to reopen.

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Is there a link between motor neurone disease and blue-green algae? NSW expert calls for closer look

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A neurology professor wants MND to be listed as a notifiable disease to help investigate suspected environmental links

A top neurologist has called on the New South Wales government to list motor neurone disease (MND) as a notifiable disease amid suspicions a cluster of diagnoses in the state could be linked to something in the environment.

Prof Dominic Rowe, a neurologist at Macquarie University, has treated 889 MND patients – many from the NSW irrigation town of Griffith – in the past decade.

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NSW buys 60,000 hectares of farmland near Broken Hill for outback nature reserve

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Purchase of Langidoon and Metford sheep stations is the second-biggest national parks land procurement in NSW in the last decade

The New South Wales government has purchased more than 60,000 hectares of farmland near Broken Hill for an outback nature reserve, home to at least 14 threatened species.

In an effort to expand conservation efforts in the traditionally underrepresented far west of the state, on Monday NSW environment minister Matt Kean announced the government had finalised the purchase of the neighbouring Langidoon and Metford sheep stations.

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The Nationals’ victory in Upper Hunter byelection may owe more to Berejiklian and Hanson than John Barilaro | Anne Davies

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More Labor voters prefer the premier than Jodi McKay, while One Nation’s spirited campaign in the NSW seat doomed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers to electoral failure

New South Wales Nationals leader John Barilaro has proclaimed “the Nationals are back” and all but declared victory for Dave Layzell in the coalmining and rural seat of Upper Hunter – but he should probably be thanking One Nation.

For Labor too there will be some soul-searching and pressure on opposition leader, Jodi McKay, to consider her future. Speaking on Sunday afternoon, McKay said she was “devastated” that people did not vote for Labor and that the party was shocked that it had “failed to connect” with the voters of the Upper Hunter.

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‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia

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Locals who have endured months of mice and rats getting into their houses, stores and cars are praying heavy rain will help wipe them out
Warning: graphic images may disturb some readers

Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another – an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least.

It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams.

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Australia’s dingo fence from space: satellite images reveal its effects on landscape

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Dingoes eat kangaroos and kangaroos eat grass. So on the side of the fence where dingoes are rare, there is less vegetation

As one of the longest structures in the world, the dingo fence is an Australian landmark. It stretches more than 5,600km across three states, including 150km that traverses the red sand dunes of the Strzelecki Desert.

Since it was established in the early 20th century, the fence has had one job: to keep dingoes out. The effect of this on the environment has been enormous – you can see it from outer space.

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When Daft Punk went to Wee Waa: the strangest album launch of all time

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The tiny Australian town was surprised but got into the spirit, selling daft pork sausages and random access rissoles while celebrating a dusty agricultural show it will never forget

In April 2013 word got out that Daft Punk planned to launch their album Random Access Memories from a regional Australian town barely anyone had heard of.

Dubbed the “cotton capital” of Australia, the small town (population 2,000) with the evocative name of Wee Waa in the Narrabri shire of New South Wales was not much known as a dance music hub. The news, which began with murmurs about Sony label reps scoping the area for locations, seemed just bizarre enough to be true. Daft Punk, after all, were never great adherents of the traditional album rollout – and, with the revered French duo announcing their split this week, it’s worth taking ourselves back to their strangest one.

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Michael McCormack says agriculture could be excluded from 2050 net zero emissions target

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Deputy PM says he’s focusing on now, not 2050, as Coalition’s climate skirmishes go on

The Coalition is facing an increasingly testy party room as it struggles to land on a climate policy, with the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, declaring he is “not worried about what might happen in 30 years’ time”.

The deputy prime minister said excluding agriculture from Australia’s attempts to reach net zero emissions by 2050 may be one option.

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Australian politics live: Coalition to put forward IR changes; cruise ship ban extended

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Fair Work Commission to be given power to approve agreements that don’t guarantee workers are better off overall. Follow all the latest updates

Earlier, the Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary, Sally McManus, set out the union movement’s objection to the “extreme” industrial relations bill.
Those are:

On the other side of that debate:

Take the sand out of your ears – and let's hope we can soften your hearts. Because all this legislation does is push people further and further in the ground. Please Senators, vote no to this horrendous legislation. My full speech: https://t.co/MTYbj02hyw

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Queensland braces for record-breaking heatwave as Sydney enjoys short-lived reprieve

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Towns west of Brisbane to swelter over next three days as western NSW continues to suffer and Sydney’s temperatures forecast to rise again on Tuesday

Queenslanders are in for a record-breaking hot day on Monday as Sydneysiders get a short-lived reprieve from the heat.

Dean Narramore, a senior forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology, says much of southern Queensland will be experiencing an “extreme” heatwave over next three days.

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‘Smelly and create great stains’: emus banned from pub in outback Australia town

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Kevin and Carol, friendly emus who wander the town of Yaraka in Queensland, have been barred from the only pub after leaving droppings on the floor and stealing toast

It can’t be easy being an emu in outback Australia at the best of times what with the heat and the perennial droughts.

But to be banned from your local pub for bad behaviour must now be added to the list of grievances inflicted upon the big birds.

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Abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many Australian women | Gina Rushton

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A dearth of political leadership means abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many women

It has been 24 years since the federal government chose the partial privatisation of Telstra over the rights of Australian women to safely terminate a pregnancy with abortion drugs. In 1996, anti-abortion independent Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Senate, agreed to support John Howard’s one-third float of the telecommunications company if the government amended legislation to give the health minister veto to prohibit the import, manufacture or use of abortion drug RU486 (mifepristone).

A perpetual dearth of political leadership in the subsequent quarter century has meant the drugs remain inaccessible, unaffordable and at times unsafe for many women in Australia outside of a certain income or major city.

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Power cuts that left Aboriginal people on NT islands with no food were widespread

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Population received no emergency support and scant information during three-day outage in Northern Territory, says resident of one of the areas hit


Telecommunications outages that left Aboriginal people living on islands off the Northern Territory coast without food, fuel and essential supplies for almost three days last week were more widespread than originally reported, fuelling concerns about the network’s ability to support contact with remote communities as fears over coronavirus spread.

Telstra has confirmed the NT mainland communities of Borroloola and Numbulwar were affected by the same outage, while the Cape York community of Kowanyama was also without telecommunications for three days.

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Drought-breaking rain brings joy to some Australian towns, but many dams still await relief

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Heavy rainfall across New South Wales and Queensland boosts rivers and allow farmers to plant crops for the first time in several seasons

Heavy and widespread rain across three states is bringing joy to parched towns with some farming regions receiving “drought-breaking” rains.

Further rainfall from ex-Tropical Cyclone Esther was delivering water into regional water storages and rivers, with farmers able to plant crops for the first time in several seasons.

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Sports grants scandal: rural areas received less than $10m of $150m funds allocated

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Labor says National party seats shortchanged after projects in Liberal-held, non-rural seats got nearly $110m

Labor is accusing the government of shortchanging rural areas through a $150m sports fund that was overwhelmingly spent in marginal seats during the election campaign.

The $150m female facilities and water safety stream program, announced by the Coalition less than two months before the election, was funded in the 2019 budget for the purpose of female change rooms and swimming pool upgrades, but was all allocated in the election campaign.

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NSW, Victoria fires live: Australia bushfires cause tens of thousands to flee in mass evacuation – latest updates

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Victorian premier Daniel Andrews declares state of disaster for East Gippsland, urging people to flee bushfire zones, while Scott Morrison is abused by fire victims in Cobargo. Follow today’s live news and latest updates

Pity the poor #Australians, their country ablaze, and their rotten @ScottMorrisonMP saying, “This is not the time to talk about Climate Change. We have to grow our economy.” What an idiot. What good is an economy in an uninhabitable country? Lead, you fuckwit!!

Greg Mullins says he has never seen a bushfire situation this serious. He was in Batemans Bay on New Year’s Eve in charge of an RFS crew and, “I’m still shocked.”

This is what 29 other fire and emergency chiefs, former chiefs, and I, tried to warn the prime minister about back in April and May. And we weren’t listened to.

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