News

Hundreds of thousands of people around Australia followed Farm to Fork with Manu – a digital mini-series campaign by Ingham’s - taking a peek behind the scenes in our country’s poultry farming and processing industry to see how our nation’s top-selling meat-protein, chicken, makes its way from the farm to your fork.

A smart irrigation system powered by artificial intelligence will tell sugarcane farmers when and where to water their crops in an advance that could one day revolutionise agriculture – and help preserve the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

This Christmas, the spotlight is on the 17,390 local businesses across the Toowoomba region, as Groom’s Gifts, spearheaded by Groom MP Garth Hamilton, returns for 2024. Groom’s Gifts supports small businesses and rewards shoppers in the lead-up to Christmas.

Local Member for Condamine Pat Weir received glowing recommendations from his party’s leaders and the Opposition as he was declared Speaker of the 58th Parliament of Queensland last Tuesday without a contest. Being appointed as Speaker is not always smooth sailing, as former Premier and now Opposition Leader Steven Miles said in parliament, since 1908 there have been 22 contested ballots for Speaker and 19 uncontested.

NSW Crown Lands has employed the NSW Department of Works to create a Cloud Point Survey via Photogrammetry using drones, GPS Satellite terrestrial laser scanning within five millimetres of accuracy in preparation for major restoration works at the historic Dome Pavilion at the Narrandera Showground.

Communities from across the Riverina region are being urged to get behind their local volunteer finalists for the 2024 NSW Volunteer of the Year Awards to be held in Sydney on Tuesday December 10. They include the Riverina Volunteer Team of the Year the Barellan Working Clydesdales Committee.

Lockhart shearer Nicki Guttler will attempt the Women’s 8-Hour Merino Lamb Shearing World Record at Parkdale Merino Stud near Dubbo on December 21 2024. The current record of 395 lambs was set on November 17, 2024 near Yass.

Electricity distributor AusNet has spent almost $60 million on vegetation management and maintenance programs in the last 12 months, to prepare the network ready for summer. AusNet Executive General Manager Distribution, Andrew Linnie, said it’s important that the network is ready for severe weather events.

Tangible progress has been made with the Local Development Strategy (LDS) ‘Innovation Upper Murray’, with several opportunities now at Stage 3 of the process - developing projects, with community members and experts, through Innovation Working Groups (IWG).

If the plan was to accelerate environmental degradation, wipe out family farms, increase costs, and dramatically reduce water availability, then the Murray-Darling Basin Authority would have achieved top marks ... While the Wentworth Group has been advocating for more water buybacks, which will no doubt aid the water trading industry returns, while doing very little to address the fundamental failings of the Basin Plan, local Independent Member for Murray, Helen Dalton, has released a 13-step plan to aid in getting the current trainwreck back on the rails.

“Customer-owned banks offer a powerful counterpoint to the investor-owned banking model, but it's important that regulators understand this difference when they create rules for the banking industry. We believe this dominance has led to a view of ‘investor owned’ by default in policy and decision-making, and we are hoping this review will result in a more balanced and nuanced approach to regulation”: Customer Owned Banking Association CEO Michael Lawrence.

Herd contraction in the world’s four largest beef-producing nations – the US, Brazil, China and Europe – is expected to lead to the first reduction in global beef supply since the Covid-19 pandemic, altering trade flows in the year ahead, Rabobank says in a recently-released research report. In its latest (Q4) Global Beef Quarterly, titled Navigating declining global production, uncertainty in 2025 … Brazil and the US are likely to lead declines in beef production next year.

Patricia Gill. Zak Launay has won the inaugural Denmark Arts sculpture competition’s big works section with Anemophilous Recyclum, a windbox designed to harvest the energy of winds ... The windbox is made of metal, wood and glass recycled from ‘bits collected here and there’ and, according to Zak, does what a windbox is supposed to do.

Patricia Gill. Shamara de Tissera began to play the harp as a young woman when pregnant with her son and no longer able to do eurythmia ... With her move to Denmark and first performance directing the Hildegard Harp Meditation at the Brave New Works Festival in January, she brought a wave of interest in the instrument.

Gus, the emperor penguin found on Ocean Beach last month, was released into the Southern Ocean on November 20 ... The care, attention and efforts of wildlife rehabilitator Carol Biddulph and her husband Graham gave the Antarctic bird, found thousands of kilometres outside of its home range and in a different climate, a fighting chance of survival.

In this interview with ARR.News, Churchill Fellow Kelly Lees shares insights from her experience with the intitial attempt to eradicate Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite of honeybees, and a little of her passion and vision for their successful management in Australia by our beekeepers who, as described by Kelly, are hard working, resilient and resourceful.

Honor Auchinleck. Artist Simon White’s mural ‘The Men and their Mounts’ in Corryong tells the story of the bush horses or brumbies and the stockmen who mustered and brought them down from the High Country and the bush-covered hills surrounding the Upper Murray before the First World War. The breeders of the Remounts and Walers often turned the young horses out into the bush to toughen them up and then brought them back in as four-year-olds for sale to buyers for the British Army in India.

Two larger than life figures have been seen at the front of the Gunbower Soldiers Memorial Hall and are attracting a lot of attention. The figures are painted silhouettes depicting a World War I soldier and a World War II nurse and hang either side of the entrance to the Gunbower Soldiers Memorial Hall – not to be missed as you approach the building or drive by.

This is why we can’t have nice things! It wasn’t the notorious Dr Seuss character, but two young gentlemen who tipped the town’s Christmas tree in the Murray River last Saturday night. The shiny beacon of Christmas joy had already delighted hundreds of people who stopped for a photo with the tremendous tree.

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