Plus burning secrets and a call to photographers. 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's wishing for some certainty on regional flight routes.
If you need to take your child from remote WA to Perth to see a specialist, you need a reliable air service. If you’re a Qld outback tourism operator, you need a reliable airline to deliver your customers and workers.
They’re just two reasons to welcome a $80 million federal government lifeline to help keep Rex Airlines flying regional routes until at least the middle of next year.
Rex has been in voluntary administration since 30 July when it stopped flying capital-city routes after a failed attempt to compete with Qantas and Virgin. The administration is expected to be extended to next June and the government said it would continue to guarantee ticket sales. Administrators hope that gives them enough time to make the Rex business sustainable.
Why should you care? The relative lack of competition for Qantas and Virgin has affected metro travellers, too. The ACCC has found flight prices between capital cities have surged since Rex pulled out.
The lifeline becomes a life-saver in the regions. While there’s plenty of criticism of Rex, its service to Esperance in WA, for example, is the only alternative to a seven-hour drive to Perth. Communities across the country rely on its flights to support industries such as tourism, mining, construction and health.
Cynics might point out a federal election due by mid-2025 is a big factor in the government money being pledged now.
The bailout was announced on the same day Qantas fronted a Senate inquiry to defend claims it hoards slots at Sydney Airport.
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The Northern Rivers and its produce can take a bow after You Beauty in Bangalow was recognised as the best regional restaurant in NSW at the SMH Good Food Guide Awards this week.
You Beauty was described as “a celebration of its surrounds with a strong connection to the local community” and the menu spoke to chef Matt Stone’s ambition of sustainability through creativity.
Another 190km west at Tenterfield, Alistair Blackwell and Karlee McGee were awarded Best Drinks List at their Stonefruit wine bar and cafe.
Saint Peter in Paddington, Sydney, was awarded best restaurant.
Six NSW regional and ACT restaurants were awarded two hats, representing outstanding food: Bistro Livi (Murwillumbah), Muse Restaurant (Pokolbin), Pilot (ACT), Pipit (Pottsville) and Rae’s Dining Room (Byron Bay). Another 29 regional venues were recognised with a single hat.
A 12-year-old boy who plastered the Qld town of Cunnamulla with hand-written notes recruiting players for a junior cricket team has had his dreams come true.
The flyers were part of efforts by cricket-mad Henry Land to get a junior cricket side in the town for the first time in 30 years. He’d found his sporting options limited to rugby league when he moved to the town from SA with his mum and sister.
His efforts paid off and the Cunnamulla Emus were born, playing their first game earlier this month.
The $2.5 million wine recovery program announced by the federal and SA governments this month might just be a drop in the ocean for an industry dealing with a red-wine glut.
Last week journalist and Galah contributor Luke Slattery examined the immense challenges and stark choices facing the wine industry for Good Weekend.
Pioneering SA winemaker Brian Croser was one who lamented the decline of an industry now paying the price for an over-reliance on exports of budget wine. Falling overseas demand is contributing to a massive over-supply of red wine and financial disaster for many of those who produce it, especially in the warm inland regions such as the Riverland, Riverina and Murray-Darling.
As an example, when Martin Bailey and Judy Till started working a small Riverland vineyard in 2017, they were getting about $480 a tonne for their wine grapes. The price fell to $345 a few years ago, and plummeted to a desperate low of $125 last year. By their reckoning they’ve earned $35,000 from grapes in the past two years and spent twice that amount growing the crop.
Scientists have used ancient pollens to show how Indigenous burning practices halved the shrub cover across south-eastern Australia after the arrival of humans.
Pollens trapped in sediment showed the reduction in vegetation, which was attributed to Indigenous cultural burning that effectively reduced the risk of high-density bushfires.
The studies by researchers from the Australian National University and the University of Nottingham found shrub cover reduced from 30% to 15% after the arrival of Indigenous Australians but the suppression of cultural burning by European colonists saw shrub cover leap to 35%.
The research emerged as the UN’s major climate change conference, COP29, continues in Azerbaijan and the State of the Climate Report 2024 showed Australia’s land temperature had increased by 1.51 degrees since 1910.
An abandoned car graffitied with Nazi symbols near the NSW town of Lismore is the latest in a series of alarming racist incidents in the regions.
Last month Corowa residents received anonymous pamphlets bearing the slogan “Australia For The White Man”. That was just a few weeks after residents in the Vic-NSW border town witnessed a rally of about 50 people – dressed in black and mostly with their faces covered – shouting white supremacist slogans and carrying banners.
Meanwhile, a Qld group climbed the summit of Wollumbin, near Murwillumbah, bearing a banner reading "Mount Warning for the white man".
Do regional air services matter to you? Even if you’re not a regional traveller, you’re probably paying more for flights. We’d love to know whether you think providing $80 million in taxpayer funds to keep Rex flying is money well spent. Hit reply and tell us what you think.
After the success of our 2023 photography prize, we’re gearing up for the 2025 Galah Regional Photography Prize and it's already looking brilliant.
There'll be $25,000 for the winner, a $2000 people's choice award, a mentoring opportunity with photographers and editors from Good Weekend, an eight-week exhibition of 40 finalists in the beautiful town of Armidale, NSW, and a big, wild party to celebrate it all.
And thanks to you, generous Galahs, we're creating an artist subsidy fund to help offset the costs of printing and framing for the 40 finalists. What a force for good the Galah community is.
If you know a photographer who lives in regional Australia, please let them know about the prize. All the details and how to enter can be found here. And if you or a business you're involved with are interested in sponsoring this impact-driven event, please reply to this email. We'll get back to you with lots of ideas.
Another way to get involved is to come to the 2025 Galah Regional Photography Prize party. It's so important for artists to be able to connect with audiences. Whether you're a collector or just want to have a look, we'd love you to come along.
Tickets will go on sale later in the year. For now, pencil in New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale NSW on 3 May 2025 for a party to celebrate the finalists and announce the winners and appreciate the importance of art and artists in regional communities. There'll be delicious food, wine and great music.
Victorian painters Amanda Goodge and Deirdre Jack express their love of the natural landscape in exhibitions at the East Gippsland Art Gallery. Goodge’s Glimpses of Environment offers views from a distance or through the frame of a back door. Jack expresses her feelings for the land in Beguiled. Until 30 November, Bairnsdale, Vic. Read more
Toowoomba artist Jen Foxton also demonstrates her love of the Australian bush in The Changing Landscape. Accelerating environmental change inspires much of her work. Until 21 December, at Roma on Bungil Gallery, Roma, Qld. Read more
Geelong Design Week celebrates the UNESCO City of Design through workshops, exhibitions and talks. It runs from 21-30 November. Meanwhile, Geelong Gallery’s offering is The Sweet Spot—Between Art & Design, a collection of recent acquisitions. Until 9 February 2025. Read more
A sixth-general Victorian farmer, Cathy McGowan is best known as the independent politician who broke a Liberal Party stranglehold on the federal seat of Indi in 2013. Her successful grassroots campaign became a template for “teal” independents including Zali Steggal and Allegra Spender as they took seats from the major parties.
But McGowan’s time in federal parliament was just a six-year section of a career that has seen her work as a political staffer, teacher and rural and community leader.
McGowan was made an officer of the Order of Australia in 2004 for raising awareness about issues affecting women in regional, rural and remote areas. She is now chair of Agrifutures Australia and, as a co-founder, remains an active supporter of the Community Independents Project.
McGowan lives in the Indigo Valley in north-east Victoria, where she grew up, and says she’s on a campaign to encourage others to “turn up, speak up and step up” to leadership.
What inspires you most about regional communities and the work you do now?
I’m inspired by the enthusiasm I see in communities all around Australia. The Community Independents Project had 1000 regional people step forward from 125 electorates. There’s real traction. It’s community-owned and they become engaged in politics.
What do you see as the critical factors that make strong communities and where do you see the success stories?
In 2000 the National Rural Women’s Advisory Council surveyed women around Australia and looked at success factors in communities. It found, overwhelmingly, that there had to be a strong sense of belonging within a community. Where communities were welcoming, without cliquiness, people were engaged and prepared to be generous with their time. Yackandandah in my area was one of those successful communities. Where people felt they didn’t belong or communities were insular, with a “them and us” situation, it just doesn’t work out.
What are the key challenges facing regional and rural communities?
There’s still a lack of federal government policy that genuinely takes account of the differences between urban and rural areas. Take the housing crisis as an example. There’s still no targeted program to engage communities to work on policy. Childcare is another example of that. The government will fund childcare centres but a lot of regional areas don’t have the population to support them. We need place-based solutions and that applies across sectors like education, training, housing and the transition to net-zero.
So much of your work is about leadership. How would you describe the state of community leadership now and how hard is it to find those leaders?
It’s patchy, but there’s no shortage of people willing to step up and that idea of community-led action is huge with women, and shows especially with those standing for local government. But it doesn’t just work in politics. For example, you don’t need an MP to get a childcare centre. You get a group who identify that need and they can work towards it.
How can all that work be improved?
All the work on climate action is a massive opportunity, but grassroots work needs to be supported. Change needs to be community-led, but it needs to be coordinated. There’s a huge role for local government in that and it needs to be better funded.
A Tasmanian museum dedicated to defecation has been hunting quality art created from animal poo, with some pretty amazing results.
Karin Koch opened Pooseum, a science museum dedicated to animal poo, in the historic town of Richmond, Tasmania, in 2018. She decided the Poo-tastic Tasmanian Paint Off was a logical next step after buying a painting that used cow dung last year. She believes her competition, in which painters must use animal faeces (not human) for their paintings, is a world first.
There were more than 60 entries and the eight finalists will be displayed at the museum on 4-8 December. Entrants could add water or binder to the mix, but not paint. Watch how Ulverstone entrant Marion Robertson compiled one of her works here.
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
