Plus inconvenient fruit and a final chance. 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 loves a good beach.
A NSW town almost 400km inland will turn one of its streets into a beach this weekend as it kicks off a three-day community success story.
A street in the Riverina town of Cootamundra, 390km from the ocean, will be covered in about 950 tonnes of river sand to host a popular beach volleyball event known as Coota Beach. The name is an obvious nod to Bali’s Kuta Beach.
Largely the brainchild of local businessman Simon Sutherland, Coota Beach has been running since 2000, when 16 teams played on one temporary court.
Thanks to massive community support involving volunteers, businesses and the local council, this year’s Coota Beach is expected to attract up to 6000 visitors and features 192 teams and close to 2000 competitors.
Coota Beach project manager Merrick Louttit’s day job is general services manager at Cootamundra’s community-owned Adina Care aged care centre, which has taken on running the event as well as benefiting from some of the money raised for community work. Groups such as the local golf club will later have access to relatively cheap second-hand sand.
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North Qld will spend months counting the cost of floods that have left at least two people dead, forced thousands to evacuate, and left the city of Townsville a virtual island.
At least 10,000 people were left without power and 1700 homes were at risk of flooding as a late-season tropical low dumped almost 2m of rain in some areas last weekend. Heavy rain was forecast into the weekend.
Sugar cane and banana crops have been hit hard as flooding cut roads and damaged infrastructure.
Towns such as Ingham and Hastings relied on army helicopters to bring in supplies as Hinchinbrook shire faced its worst flooding in 58 years.
Yet, while communities battled to deal with shop closures and food and fuel shortages, there were some lighter moments. One enterprising local was filmed with a metre-long barramundi slung over his shoulder as he braved the rain at Townsville’s Ross River dam.
Fruit and vegetable growers have had to deal with their produce being rejected because it wasn’t perfect enough. Now some of it isn’t convenient enough.
Pineapple growers fear a culture of convenience is at least partly behind flatlining sales of the fruit. Growers and researchers believe that the time it takes to cut the fruit and clean up afterwards could be contributing to stagnant sales.
Southern Qld’s Tropical Pines, the country’s largest fresh pineapple supplier, says sales grew in the 1990s but have largely flatlined since.
Other produce in similar danger includes pomegranate and kiwifruit.
NSW Health testing has found three towns – Warialda and Narrabri in the north-west and Tarcutta, near Wagga Wagga – have concerning levels of so-called forever chemicals in their water supplies.
The results came after a testing blitz was prompted by water experts who raised concerns about equity and testing transparency over PFAS contamination in Blue Mountains water supplies late last year.
The three regional towns later showed levels of PFAS chemicals in their drinking water that were higher than new national safety standards due to be implemented this year.
Warialda residents had been advised to stop drinking the town’s water and the state government supplied free bottled water.
NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson said the government was providing technical help to affected water utilities to ensure their water remains safe, including investigating alternative water supplies or water treatment options.
Sydney Water is expected to spend up to $100 million for long-term removal of PFAS from the Blue Mountains supply.
The Victorian goldfields region, which stretches from Bendigo to Ballarat, is one step closer to UNESCO World Heritage status.
Last week the region, which has some of the world’s most extensive gold-rush era landscapes, was added to the Australian World Heritage Tentative List, a necessary step towards full listing, which could take at least three years.
World Heritage listing is seen as a boost for tourism and protection. Other Australian sites on the list include natural features such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu, and cultural features such as Sydney Opera House and convict sites.
A video showing an almost hairless Tasmanian devil out in the daylight on a farm in the island’s north-west highlights the devastating impact that facial tumour disease has had on the usually nocturnal marsupial.
Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment says fur loss and emaciation are symptoms of the disease, which is believed to have wiped out 80% of the devil population since it was discovered in 1996.
The devil is listed as endangered by both the state and federal governments. The University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research is continuing work on a potential vaccine. The university also coordinates the Save The Tasmanian Devil Appeal that raises money for research and conservation efforts.
In Dirty Janes stores, explore a world where retro, mid-century and industrial styles blend seamlessly in a real-life cabinet of curiosities.
This is your last chance to enter the 2025 Galah Regional Photography Prize.
Entries close at midnight tomorrow, so if you want to be in the running for the $25,000 prize – or you know someone who should be in it – there’s no time to waste.
Finalists will be announced at the end of the month. An exhibition of finalists opens at the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale on 11 April, ahead of the prize announcement party on 3 May.
For the chance to be part of it all, the details are all here.
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery presents the Wynne Prize 2024, a touring exhibition from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There were 41 finalists for the 2024 prize, which was won by Djakaŋu Yunupiŋu. At Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 15 February-6 April. Read more
Fibre Arts Australia’s third international art textile biennale has begun an 18-month tour to nine galleries across the country. Featuring 42 pieces from 39 artists, the exhibition explores unexpected relationships between textile and other artistic disciplines. At East Gippsland Art Gallery, Bairnsdale, until 22 March. Read more
The Molong Meander, a culinary journey hosted by hatter and shopkeeper Robbie Carroll on 5 April along Molong’s main street, is one of two new events on the Orange FOOD Week program. The other new highlight is Falling for Blayney on 30 March, an indulgent high tea set in Athol Gardens. Orange region, NSW, 28 March-6 April. Read more
Art deserves a place beyond mere space on a gallery wall, says Renee de Saxe, and artists contribute so much more to a community than the works they create.
De Saxe grew up in the NSW Riverina city of Griffith and had a stint in wine marketing before moving to SA with her winemaker husband.
Seven years ago she invited a fellow school mum, Kirsty Kingsley, to join her at an art class.
That sparked a journey that would lead the pair and their husbands to create Wonderground Gallery and Mirus Vineyard set on 36 hectares near Seppeltsfield in the Barossa, blending de Saxe’s great loves: art and wine.
What’s the idea behind Wonderground? I’d helped put together a report on the opportunities for art in the Barossa region after the success of the 100 Barossa Artists project in 2020. By mid-2021 we had done enough talking. Kirsty and I thought that if art in our region was to be taken seriously, we had to just start something ourselves.
A property came on the market for the first time in more than 100 years, after four generations in the same family. We converted the old homestead into a five-room contemporary gallery and cellar door. We opened two years ago – the wines are doing well and the gallery has gone from strength to strength.
How did you get to that point? It really wasn’t until I had my first daughter that I picked up a paintbrush for the first time since school. I found going to a weekly art class was the creative outlet I needed and the connection with the other women in the class was a saviour.
After moving to the Barossa, it was hard to tap into art and artists. There were obviously lots of artists but no real hub to connect. Footy teams have clubhouses, but there were no clubhouses for artists.
How does the vineyard figure in your artistic work? Our goal has been to really celebrate and express our unique place, and as part of this we made paints and inks with our families from the vineyard. In turn we made art for our wine labels from natural paints, inks and soil – a true expression of where the grapes are grown.
What’s on the agenda for 2025? Hopefully more art making. I still find it the best way to work through emotions, feel whole, and connected. As for Wonderground, we will have a big focus on our wines this year as we expand our cellar door and bring more great art to our region.
IVF has been used for the first time to produce a kangaroo embryo, a step that researchers say could save other marsupials from extinction.
University of Queensland researchers said it’s the first time a kangaroo embryo has been produced by inserting a single sperm into an egg. They hope the process might be used to help preserve species such as koalas.
In other wildlife news, a dozen scarlet-chested parrots, which are rarely seen in NSW, have made themselves at home on the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary near the NSW-SA border.
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
