Plus winter warmth and coolest town. Welcome to Galah Weekly, our award-winning newsletter keeping you up to date with regional headlines that matter, plus other delightful things from life beyond the city. By Dean Southwell, who really doesn’t like the cold.
Cash-strapped regional councils in South Australia are seeking state government help as they try to support farmers through drought.
Kimba Mayor Dean Johnson, who is also president of the Eyre Peninsular Local Government Association, said councils already struggling to be sustainable were doing what they could to support farmers through initiatives such as deferring rates, but had limited capacity.
The Flinders Alliance of Councils, which represents another five regional councils, has asked the Malinauskas government to consider waiving some levies and taxes. Councils have also asked the state government to cover rate revenue lost because farmers can’t afford to pay. The state government is already spending $73 million on drought support.
Drought during the past three years has left many SA farmers facing a mountain of debt as they use loans to cover everyday expenses. It’s also taken a toll on farmers’ mental health.
Among the city-based people offering a hand are Adelaide-based Lions clubs, which have raised $100,000 to buy pellets for sheep feed and put on a community event for those doing it tough. Steve Ryan, of the Glenside Lions Club, said “the sentiment about South Australian farmers is strong in the city and I don't think people … should underestimate that’’.
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A Rockhampton woman who has fostered 280 children in the past 47 years – as well as raising four of her own – is the driving force behind a thrift store offering help to those struggling to meet basic needs.
Roylene Robinson’s Moo and Choo provides food, clothing and furniture to those in need. "We do care packages, food packages, clothing, kitchen packs, baby packs for the hospital – so we do everything that we can. Right now blankets and everything to keep the needy warm and fed," Robinson said.
"We quite often heat up the meals for the people off the street and give them a knife and fork."
It seems Australian cow burps might not contribute as much to climate change as we’ve been led to believe.
The federal government is changing the way it calculates methane emissions from feedlot cattle after research showed the existing method might have overstated their methane emissions by as much as 56%.
Emissions from cattle have until now been estimated using a 50-year-old equation developed after studying dairy cows in the US. University of New England researchers have developed an Australia-specific calculation that takes account of the diet of local livestock.
Meat and Livestock Australia, which funded the study, says more than 40% of cattle slaughtered in Australia are grain-fed. That high-energy, lower-fibre diet produces emissions 80% lower than grass-fed animals on average.
Why it matters Livestock production is under scrutiny for its contribution to climate change and is estimated to produce about 15% of global greenhouse emissions. Methane emissions from ruminant livestock are estimated to contribute almost 10% of Australia's total greenhouse emissions.
And on the subject of climate change, a study indicates increasing global temperatures could cut food production by as much as 24% by 2100, regardless of how much farmers are able to adapt.
An innovative 95-year-old SA farmer is using waste vegetable oil from restaurants to power his life.
Ian McLeod, who made steam engines as a child more than eight decades ago, has used the vegetable oil to fuel the generator that powers his house at Glenroy, 370km south-east of Adelaide. He ignored the lure of new utes to buy an older model with a diesel engine capable of being converted to run on his vegetable-oil fuel.
McLeod, who has spent decades adapting secondhand and broken-down tractors and harvesting equipment to do jobs on his farm, made his own separator to purify about 15 litres of waste oil an hour.
Regional and remote NSW is receiving funding for an extra 53 midwives as part of an $83 million boost for maternity care across the state.
The state budget funding comes a year after a landmark report into birth trauma recommended more midwives and improved access to continuity of care programs such as the state’s Midwifery Group Practice program. More than half of the new money will go to expanding the midwifery program.
In other health news, the Victorian town of Swan Hill has dug deep to ensure its hospital has the money it needs to buy a medical imaging machine.
Swan Hill District Health needed $2.6 million to buy the magnetic resonance imaging scanner. It had $1.4 million set aside, but it took a community effort to raise the rest.
The hospital hopes to have the new MRI machine operational by next year, saving patients the two-hour trip to Bendigo required to access the scans now.
Sydney-based artist Janet Laurence has won the $35,000 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize for her chromogenic print artwork, Moss Water Ice Temperature Rising.
Laurence was the subject of an In The Flock profile in the lead-up to this month’s Open Field arts festival in Berry. Chromogenic prints are made when colours are formed by chemical reactions within individual paper layers.
Lilli Strömland won the prize for emerging artist for Ode to Peaches and Cleaning and SA’s Fiona Pompey won the Indigenous Emerging Artist Prize for Tali Nguru.
Did you see the special newsletter from Galah editor-in-chief Annabelle Hickson this week?
She has announced that there will be just two more fabulous editions of Galah magazine with her at the helm.
Issue 13 will hit letterboxes in November this year and Issue 14 in April 2026. They’ll both be celebrations of everything the magazine has stood for during the past five years and everything regional Australia continues to be.
You should find out why Hickson has decided to pass the baton and why – perhaps – that doesn’t mean Galah has to end. Read more
Featuring new work by Arrernte and Southern Luritja artist Sally M Nangala Mulda and Western Arrarnta artist Marlene Rubuntja, this exhibition encompasses video, bush-dyed, hand-sewn soft sculptures and paintings. At Tamworth Regional Gallery, NSW, until 24 August. Read more
The fifth annual instalment of the East Gippsland Winter Festival opened last weekend. It’s a month-long program of family-friendly events and activities including lantern parades, live ice-carving demonstrations, neon dance parties, guided koala tours and bike rides. East Gippsland, Vic, until 20 July. Read more
Tickets are on sale for this three-day celebration of Australian contemporary sculpture in the Hunter Valley. It features guided tours, artist talks and workshops with sculptors competing for $57,000 in prizes. At Dungog, NSW, 29-31 August. Read more
Growing up on a northern NSW farm, Emma Mactaggart had always loved art and books. It was an interest that stayed with her through a marketing degree, marriage and moving to a farm at Glen Innes, where she volunteered at the town’s Golden Wattle Gallery and Glassworks. For the past two decades, and now living in Toowoomba, her focus has been on inspiring young creativity and literacy through Child Writes, a program that has let more than 340 children write, illustrate and publish their own picture books.
How did the Child Writes story start? Like everyone, I wanted to publish my own book, so I established Boogie Books, which is my own imprint. It let me publish I Can Do Anything, a children’s book I’d illustrated and written. It’s so amateurish and dodgy but I bloody love it. Later I was asked to be literacy champion at Toowoomba’s Middle Ridge State School. I worked with the kids there to publish their book and loved it. It went from there.
What’s the process? During each iteration of the program, I formalised things more and even wrote a textbook to guide the process. It can be going out to schools to work with the kids, sometimes it’s been one-on-one in the school holidays, in another variation again a Year 6 group of 56 collaborated. I lead them through the whole process of writing, proofreading, planning and illustrating. The final result, across 100 hours of work, is a finished children’s picture book that we publish.
What happens to the books? We publish 1000 hardcover copies and give them away to schools and hospitals – that’s one of the non-negotiables. We send them anywhere where they can benefit children and promote reading.
Tell us about The Lighthouse Toowoomba. Just over three years ago we found a vacant building in the CBD to use as a creative hub, The Lighthouse Toowoomba. Having a physical space gives us the capacity to do so much more than just the single Child Writes program. For example we also run art workshops, reading groups, events, and exhibitions in gallery (The Write Gallery!) and it’s all pretty much driven by volunteers. We’ve got a One-Way Library, where we collect preloved books and send them out wherever they’re needed.
How do you fund it all? The Child Writes Program was always a gift with parents contributing to printing costs, and now it’s corporate donors who pay for the printing. As for The Lighthouse Toowoomba, I’m still a full-time volunteer and we hustle for grants to pay for the rest.
Most Tasmanians could tell you the Central Highlands locality of Liawenee (population 2) is about as cold as it gets on the island and is a routine check at the end of every winter television weather report.
Yet, even though it’s the coldest inhabited place in Australia, it’s too small to be considered a town so has been robbed of the title of the country’s chilliest.
An ABC investigation, using Bureau of Meteorology figures for July, has given the Snowy Mountains “capital” of Cooma the cool crown based on an average overnight temperature of -2.6 degrees.
The coldest town based on daytime temperatures is Oberon, in the NSW tablelands, with a July average just above 8 degrees. For the record, Liawenee recorded -4.1 early on Thursday morning but hit a balmy 0.1 degree by 9.30am.
We’d love to hear about the news, events and people that should be making the headlines in the Galah Weekly newsletter. Share what’s new(s) in your neck of the woods with us at newsie@galahpress.com
