Plus a 30-year film secret and Canberra obsessions. 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 Ipswich is on a winner.
It’s hard to see how music superstar Ed Sheeran can resist a cheeky campaign to entice him to do a pop-up performance in the Queensland city of Ipswich.
Ipswich mayor Teresa Harding launched the campaign earlier this year to persuade Sheeran to visit during his Australian tour early next year.
Sheeran’s home town is Ipswich in the UK. He regularly fills stadiums around the world but also has a habit of doing impromptu gigs and has turned up at other cities named Ipswich, including in Massachusetts.
Harding’s efforts to lure the singer have included hand-delivering an invitation to his local pub in the UK in the hope it would be passed on to Sheeran.
There are hints the campaign is getting traction – Sheeran’s record label has funded a large mural of the singer painted by Brisbane artist Duncan Mattocks.
Not all campaigns are so easily endorsed; the council faces a tricky decision over a more controversial event planned for the area.
In the next few weeks it expects to decide on a permit application for an outdoor sex festival planned for private property near the city in November.
Last week the council responded to community concerns by saying it could not legally reject the application just because it might not “meet undefined community standards”.
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Australia’s insurers want the federal and state governments to create a $30 billion flood defence fund to help vulnerable people – mostly in regional and lower-income east-coast communities – deal with a threat forecast expected to worsen.
They also want levies and taxes on insurance cut and land use control that would effectively prohibit development in high-risk zones.
The Insurance Council of Australia has urged the action after its assessment of disaster costs for 2024-25 showed $2 billion in claims from just three events this year: Tropical Cyclone Alfred; flooding in north Qld in January; and in the NSW mid-north and Hunter in May.
Extreme weather events have caused insurance claims to triple since the 1990s and they now average $4.5 billion a year.
The council has warned flooding poses a critical risk, with more than 1.3 million properties at risk. About three-quarters of the 240,000 most vulnerable properties have no flood insurance. It sees government funding of flood mitigation as crucial.
Meanwhile, insurance has emerged as another battleground in the fight over cost shifting between state and local governments. A Victorian council has stopped paying insurance for buildings on Crown land that are often run by volunteer committees, such as community halls and sports clubs.
A national volunteering award has recognised a group that has delivered palliative care to its NSW community for the past 36 years.
Kevin Stokes is the equipment officer for Great Lakes Palliative Care Support, an organisation formed in 1989 to support palliative care services in the Forster-Tuncurry region on the NSW mid-north coast.
His wife, retired palliative care nurse Deidre, is president of the group of about 15 active members who operate an op shop, run Bunnings barbecues and hold garage sales to fund their work.
For the past 15 years Stokes has been responsible for an industrial-sized shed of equipment available for patients and their carers. Last month he was named volunteer of the year at the 2025 National Palliative Care awards.
Finally, the NSW Southern Highlands town of Robertson is able to celebrate being the home of Babe, 30 years after the Academy Award-winning film was released.
Australian director George Miller used Robertson as the setting for the story of the talking piglet that learns to herd sheep.
Under the original agreement with the film’s production company, Robertson could not promote itself as the location for Babe. It’s unclear why there was a restriction but Miller’s company lifted it this year, which gave Robertson the freedom to celebrate with a country fair last weekend.
Robertson was also able to show off the conversion of its famous Big Potato, which has turned pink in Babe-style courtesy of Wollongong artist Samuel Hall.
A NSW year 7 student born with only part of her left hand has inspired her friends to help her use a 3D printer to produce a prosthetic hand.
Port Macquarie teen Lois Agnello, who had used a prosthetic since she was eight, had originally approached a teacher about using her school’s 3D printer to try to make the hand. A group of her friends became interested and they worked with software from charity Free 3D Hands.
After printing three prototypes and improving the design along the way, Agnello will head to Japan next month after the project was selected as the Australian representative at the Be The Change youth summit in Tokyo.
The Sunshine Coast Council has had to take extreme measures, including issuing body cameras and hiring security guards, to combat increasing abuse and violence towards its staff.
The council recorded five assaults among 74 aggressive or violent incidents to August this year, including against volunteer workers. One criminology expert attributed the increase in violence against government workers to the rise of pandemic-related anti-government views triggered by lockdowns and other restrictions.
Carpe diem. Seize the day to secure your copy of Galah Issue 13, Australia's pinkest, dottie-est, most glorious magazine. All orders for Issue 13 made by this Tuesday 14 October will get free shipping (after that, shipping will cost $10).
Get your present cupboard stocked for Christmas. Sorry for mentioning the C word so early, but we don’t want you to have to pay shipping, so you need to order now.
Explore open gardens ranging from back and front yard farms to school, market and community patches. This is a community run, not-for-profit event organised by the Blue Mountains Food Co-op, with proceeds going to participating schools and community gardens. Blue Mountains, NSW, 25-26 October. Read more
This exhibition traces 40 years of the career of Mornington Peninsula artist John Baird, from his early days with Melbourne’s Roar Studios to recent paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures. At Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, Vic, until 16 November. Read more
Blue Mountains-based artist Dan Kyle says he just wants to make paintings of places that are important to him. Some of his latest work features in this solo exhibition. At Martin Browne Contemporary, Paddington, NSW, until 25 October. Read more
Over three days, artists and makers will present their work in open studios, galleries, museums and pop-up spaces in Tasmania’s far south. Food and drinks providers and accommodation venues complement the trail. Huon Valley, Tas, 24-26 October. Read more
If editor-in-chief Annabelle Hickson’s recent visit to Canberra got you thinking about the nation’s capital in a new light, the revamped Canberra Writers Festival should seal the deal. Regular Galah contributor and proud Canberran Tabitha Carvan shares her insider tips for the festival.
As the author of Galah’s Obsessions features, and an enthusiast for enthusiasts of all (ahem) persuasions, I’ll be front row at the special event All Things Austen! at the National Library of Australia. I’ll be swanning past the library’s stunning stained-glass windows, dressed in my best frock, ready to go deep on Austen’s life and novels with local and international experts. How uncommonly lovely!
I know Canberrans are supposed to say how the history of the city is about so much more than the politicians who occasionally pass through it. But also: if I’m going to hear the untold story of Zara Holt, the mysterious, overlooked wife of Harold, then I want to hear it – or even hear, hear it – while sitting on the green leather seats of Representative Chambers in Old Parliament House, soaking up that authentic mustiness. It’s the perfect spot to help usher Zara out of the shadows of history.
My final pick takes you outside, and lakeside, to the romantically named and extremely photogenic Patrick White Lawns. Usually “outside” is not somewhere you’d want to be during the Canberra Writers Festival, which has traditionally been a winter event, but this year it’s blessedly scheduled during our glorious, splashy spring. Join some of Australia’s most experienced gardeners for a session here on how gardening can be reimagined and shared across generations. Maybe pop an antihistamine first: Canberra’s pollen count is not for the faint-hearted.
Canberra Writers Festival is staged on 22-26 October at a range of the city’s landmark venues.
In her Obsessions column in Galah Issue 13, Tabitha Carvan meets the Spud Sisters, for whom potatoes are a business, a way of life and their "one true love". (And yes, they really are sisters.) Reserve your copy here.
We obviously couldn’t resist this story about the group of mates who rescued a galah tangled in a power pole at Exmouth in northern WA.
The Galah team tries to avoid such entanglements, but feathered galahs have form when it comes to being rescued from weird spots. We particularly love the story of the galah found 10 metres underground in a Melbourne sewer pipe in 2020.
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
