Plus childcare challenges and shaping the future. 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 thinks farmers deserve their record prices.
A neurosurgeon in Brisbane has guided a colleague 600km away in Rockhampton through complex surgery that has potentially saved a life and delivered a win for health in regional Australia.
Rockhampton Hospital deputy director of surgery Michael Lamparelli had spent years campaigning to get the Teladoc system, which has now been installed in Rockhampton, Gladstone and Emerald. It allows specialists to participate remotely in surgery, advising colleagues as they observe operations through multiple camera angles.
Lamparelli was at a party in Brisbane last month when, via his mobile phone, he connected a neurosurgeon into the surgery on a patient with a brain bleed. The Rockhampton surgeon on call had never done the procedure before but was guided through the emergency surgery by specialist Craig Winter, who supervised from Brisbane.
It was the first time the system has been used in an Australian public hospital.
Technology offers solutions in some regional settings, but recruiting staff remains a key problem. The only GP clinic in the WA Midwest town of Northampton has announced it is closing, citing unsustainably low Medicare rebates and the difficulty of recruiting a doctor.
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A council at the heart of one of NSW’s renewable energy zones has accused the state government of overlooking the potential for the energy transition to drive regional growth.
Armidale mayor Sam Coupland, whose council is in the New England Renewable Energy Zone, told a parliamentary inquiry the government was treating the zone as an infrastructure corridor to support metropolitan energy demands and the net-zero transition.
He said planning had failed to recognise local issues. This approach risked alienating the very communities expected to host the infrastructure.
Coupland said his council supported renewable energy but believed it should drive economic development, not just help meet net-zero targets. He urged the government to do more to address local concerns and deliver funding to help the council manage the impacts.
“The bottom line is, if we host it, we should benefit from it. Renewable energy is harvested here – this is our region’s resource. We deserve a ‘most favoured nation’ deal,” he said.
The New England Renewable Energy Zone is one of five across NSW that form the centrepiece of the state’s energy transition.
EnergyCo, the state authority responsible for the zones, is already working on five studies that cover critical local issues that Coupland identified, such as waste, water and workforce housing and training.
An EnergyCo spokesman said it was working with councils and other stakeholders to ensure the renewable energy zone could be delivered and operated while maximising benefits for local communities.
Rural communities already struggling to deliver childcare fear that efforts to improve child safety could inadvertently leave them even more disadvantaged.
The federal government has proposed new laws that allow it to withdraw funding from childcare centres that fail to meet safety standards after horrific allegations of abuse by a Melbourne childcare worker and problems in other states.
There’s obvious support for moves to protect children but also concerns that taking a hard line on national quality standards will put more pressure on regional childcare centres that struggle to recruit and retain the staff.
In the New England town of Guyra, for example, the council-operated preschool and daycare centre is already oversubscribed. Guyra is considered to be “working towards” national standards, not because it fails on safety but because it can’t recruit an early childhood teacher.
The council’s Aimee Hutton says the education department has indicated other regional centres have the same problem.
Lord Howe Island, 600km off the NSW coast, faces a related problem. Its only preschool opened this year but already faces closure because a shortage of housing on the island makes it hard to attract staff.
In drought-affected outback NSW, the presence of thousands of hungry kangaroos and feral goats have made feeding livestock an even bigger challenge, with many sheep and cattle grazier destocking or considering it.
Even though coastal NSW has been hammered by rain in recent months, large parts of the outback have received less than 100mm this year.
Grazier Rainie Weston, whose Marrapina Station is 160km north of Broken Hill, is one of those who has made the decision to destock. She said goats and kangaroos had broken through fences to graze on her property.
Pastoralist Terry Smith said he’d witnessed thousands of kangaroos as well as emus along his fences. Many of them were dying while searching for food.
Two boys who persuaded their grazier father to let them hang on to a batch of lambs on the family feedlot a little longer than usual were rewarded with a national record at sales in central western NSW last week.
Ross McMahon said about 20,000 lambs passed through his feedlot each year, usually going to sale when they weighed about 25kg. Sons Archie, 11, and Freddie, 8, convinced McMahon to hang on to 100 lambs to target a national record.
The McMahons achieved the record price of $454 a head for a pen of 43 lambs at Forbes.
Don’t expect too many cheap lamb roasts in the next few months. The McMahons’ record was overtaken this week and lamb prices are booming at sales around the country, largely driven by overseas demand.
The Murray River town of Mildura might be having the last laugh over the controversial “tropical north Victoria” tourism promotion it launched a year ago.
The tongue-in-cheek campaign featuring actor Shane Jacobson has been criticised for failing to meet its target of increasing tourism in the area by 5% a year.
Yet Mildura mayor Helen Healy said there were signs the campaign, or at least the noise around it, was starting to pay off with visitor numbers up 10% during Easter and 257% in July school holidays.
Here’s the flock’s chance to help shape a potential Galah 2.0.
Editor-in-chief Annabelle Hickson, who is passing on the baton after two more magazine issues, has launched a reader survey so you can tell us what you value most about Galah.
The survey should take only about 10 minutes. Tell us what’s working, what’s not and what you wish existed.
Readers who complete the survey will be in the running for some great Galah prizes, including the complete set of Galah issues 1-12. Winners will be drawn on 15 August.
Art and purpose meet in an event that starts with a curated gallery walk across three venues and culminates in a ticketed long-table lunch. Proceeds will support Gunnedah Family Support, which provides services to those experiencing domestic and family violence. At Gunnedah, NSW, 16 August. Read more
NSW Southern Highlands gallery Ngununggula will feature the work of NZ artist Lisa Reihana in its inaugural international project. Spanning all four gallery spaces, the exhibition includes a new site-specific installation. At Ngununggula, Bowral, NSW, 6 September-9 November. Read more
This exhibition focuses on the post-war period when a gentle Modernism was embraced by many Australian artists, featuring works from Castlemaine Art Museum's art and social history collections. At Castlemaine Art Museum, Vic, until 28 September. Read more
Artists examine greenhouses, gardens and backyards as places to escape time and place, as well as sites of community building, creativity and experimentation during climate change. At The Condensery, Toogoolawah, Qld, until 14 September. Read more
Interview: Emma Hearnes
A Tasmanian who has worked in some of the state's best-known wineries, Jacqui Dolan did a school project on Moorilla Estate, now host to Mona, as an 11-year-old and worked there as an adult. She’s now head winemaker at Milton Vineyard, on the island’s east coast. The property produced fine wool from the 1820s. Its first vines were planted in the 1990s.
What first sparked your interest in winemaking? Wine was always on the dinner table in my household growing up and I was allowed to have a little taste as a teen. I enjoy the ceremony and the tradition behind wine. Wine speaks, and I am a big believer that if you put a bit of love in, people will be able to see that in the glass.
What makes Tasmanian wine stand out? Temperate days during the ripening season and cool nights allow the grapes to develop complex flavours while maintaining the perfect acid balance. Crops are generally quite light compared to larger vineyard regions, and vineyards and wineries here are small-scale, allowing vignerons to have a close connection to the grapes.
What are you working on at Milton right now that’s exciting you? I’ve just done the first bench trial on an aromatic white blend of riesling, pinot gris, gewurztraminer and chardonnay, which is something I’ve wanted to experiment with for some time. I love playing with the different varieties and seeing how they work with one another.
How do you balance tradition and innovation in your winemaking? The tradition forms the foundations of winemaking. Once you have that down, the opportunity for creativity is almost endless. There’s always a different method, experiment or blend to trial, and each vintage throws you a new challenge completely out of your control. It's up to you to shape it a little to make it your own.
What’s something often misunderstood about winemaking? Often people think that winemaking is glamorous — that I swan around all day tasting wine and miraculously present it in a bottle for them to taste. The reality is that it is hard work. Vintage is very physical, with long hours, and there is only so much you can control. The fruit is ready when it's ready, and mother nature decides the quality and quantity of grapes — it is farming, after all. This job requires a little bit of crazy.
NSW artist Tamara Dean has won the $40,000 Naked & Nude Art prize for her photographic work, Genesis, featuring her mother and sister.
The biennial prize, a partnership between the Friends of the Manning Regional Art Gallery in Taree and the gallery itself, continues the great tradition of the nude in art but also spans the wider definition of something that is “laid bare, unmasked or vulnerable”.
An exhibition of finalists’ works runs to 13 September. Read more
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
