News

After months of planning by the Nhill Karen Community, our town really came to life on Saturday with the celebration of the Karen New Year. There were over 1,000 in attendance travelling from around Victoria and some even from interstate.

Allora locals had the opportunity to vote for their favourite mural to be painted on the wall of the IGA building. There was a good response of 567 votes with 375 going to the red-winged parrot design.

Commercial lawyer Melissa Hamilton has announced her intention to enter the race for Mayor of the Southern Downs ... With a billboard unveiled on the New England Highway last week, Ms Hamilton is the first candidate to publicly state her intention to run. She will run as an unaligned independent candidate.

John Williams. "Hang on, we are going to crash, look out", was the dramatic warning given to the driver of the second engine of the Adelaide-bound Express a few seconds before one of the biggest railway smashes in the history of Victoria. On the foggy night of September 7th 1951, Kaniva and Nhill fire brigades rushed to a reported train wreck involving two Expresses at Serviceton, just near the South Australian border.

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Alyssa Walker. Australia Day, now more than ever, means many different things to many different people. But Australia wouldn’t even be Australia without the diversity and medley of souls at its heart, and each one is just as worth honouring as the other.

Patrick Goldsmith. Members of the Coobowie community are rejoicing after Yorke Peninsula Council unanimously voted not to proceed with a proposed coastal defence structure in the town. A petition from the Friends of Coobowie Foreshore group, featuring 727 signatures, was presented to elected members before they made their decision to stop investigating the matter at council’s January meeting.

Things are looking up for yet another threatened small-bodied native fish in the region, with the state and federal government agencies’ rescue plan bearing fruit. The Murray-Darling lineage of the southern pygmy perch was once common in the wetlands and slow flowing creeks of the Basin.   

Three recent additions to Yorke Peninsula’s large-scale art scene have been nominated for the 2023 Australian Street Art Awards. Projects at water tanks in Minlacowie and Wool Bay, both completed in the first half of last year, are nominated for Best Mega Mural and Best Rural Art respectively.

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Recent heavy rain has impacted the treatment of fire ants in and around Murwillumbah ... treatment program will resume in Murwillumbah when the ground dries out ... treatment can only be applied with the written consent of the property owner.

A Yanchep man, who appeared in Joondalup Magistrates Court on January 17, will remain remanded in custody until his next court appearance on February 28 ... 16 unlicensed firearms, including a sawn-off shotgun ... unlicensed native wildlife, including a carpet python snake and 34 geckos ..

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With uniform, stationary and back-to-school stocks replenished and hairdressers ready, Centacare FNQ’s School Savvy pop-up series has broken all previous year’s records with four days to go ... School Savvy helped secure a scholarship to Abbotsleigh College in Sydney for Rita Tyrrell.

Volunteer surf lifesavers have worked through one of the busiest days of the summer to date on NSW beaches, where the drowning of a swimmer at an unpatrolled location on Sunday morning, 21 January, brought the drowning toll since 1 December to 12.

Fire ants have been discovered in Wardell, south of Ballina, New South Wales, after Labor was too slow to act on its red imported fire ant response program. Leader of The Nationals and Shadow Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said the latest infestation, 85 kilometres south of the Queensland border, is another sign that Labor has lost control of eradicating the pest.

Farmers are calling for a major effort to stamp out fire ants in NSW after the insidious pests were discovered near Ballina. According to the NSW Government, the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) detected a Red Imported Fire Ant nest at Wardell, south of Ballina on Friday.