We love our bread, we love our butter. Welcome to Galah Weekly, our newsy newsletter keeping you up to date with regional headlines that matter. By Michelle Crawford, who has a new dingo obsession.
The Booktopia saga continues, with 165 jobs axed and dozens of potential suitors circling the beleaguered online bookseller. Media reports indicate the administrators have received about 60 expressions of interest to either buy the brand in total or its assets.
What does the Booktopia collapse mean for Australian bookworms? As well as reports of schadenfreude from other booksellers, Artshub considers the impact on Australian writers and the industry. While The Guardian gives a rundown on accessing books online in a world without Booktopia.
In the spirit of use it or lose it, we’re all for supporting regional independent bookshops, which manage to weather retail storms and continue to delight customers. A bookish Galah fact for you: our youngest book reviewer is 12-year-old Frankie Davis, whose family owns the beloved Bookshop at Queenscliff in Victoria.
We love our butter, but it seems we’re buying too much of the imported stuff. Australia imported a record 47,500 tonnes of butter last year, mostly from New Zealand. While global butter prices are skyrocketing, Australian dairy farmers aren't seeing the benefits. Rabobank warns shoppers to brace for higher butter prices as farmers tackle low milk prices. Here’s a review of some local options to spread on your morning toast. Full story.
For 3500 years dingoes have ruled the Australian landscape as top predators. While admired by many, outside of national parks they are routinely trapped, shot and poisoned to help protect sheep and cattle.
A recently published study of ancient bones, ranging in age from 400 to 2746 years, shows modern dingoes have maintained their original genetic make-up and share little ancestry with domestic dogs. This debunks the myth that they've been routinely interbreeding with domestic dogs since European settlement.
Dingo expert Professor Mike Letnic said the findings were “great news” because they “put to bed the idea that dingoes are hybrids with no conservation value”. Full story.
Because we love Australian bird puns, we’re more than thrilled with the Australian rowing team's newly announced moniker, the Rowsellas. And according to Skye Mason’s latest podcast Paddock to Paris, of 37 team members, at least six are from regional or rural Australia. Mason’s podcast tells the stories of regional and rural Australians who’ve made it to the 2024 Paris Olympics, often against the odds and triumphing over adversity. We especially like the episode featuring Rowsella team member Laura Gourley, who during the pandemic borrowed a rowing boat from a neighbour and trained on another neighbour’s 2km irrigation channel. Full story.
If you’re in the market for health insurance that’s a little closer to home, or built on values similar to your own, you can’t go past Westfund – health insurance from a healthier place. Based in Lithgow, NSW, and available Australia-wide, Westfund is more than a health fund. It's a not-for-profit organisation building a new kind of healthcare for collective good.
Join Westfund on eligible Combined Hospital and Extras cover by 31 December 2024 and get one month FREE cover. Use promo code GALAH24. New memberships only. T&Cs apply. Learn more here.
To help inform our upcoming “How to be a writer” course, Annabelle put the call out on Instagram to better understand the obstacles facing writers seeking media careers. Writers didn't hold back - with most saying that low or uncertain pay, lack of confidence, lack of feedback and difficulty pitching held them back from breaking into the media industry.
If you're a writer and you'd like to contribute to our research, you can fill in the short three-question survey here.
Or, if you'd like to sponsor a young regional writer to participate in Galah's writing course, contact Lyndsie to find out more at lyndsie@galahpress.com
Team Galah was delighted to welcome managing editor Helen back in the flock this week after her holiday. First job is to crack on with commissioning Issue 11, which takes the theme of Pleasure. Seeing we’re also dreaming up themes for next year’s magazines, we thought we’d ask you, dear reader, for your suggestions.
To jog your memory, here’s the list of themes to date in no particular order: Neighbours, Invention, Love, Home, Growth, Water, Lines, Limitations, the Domestic, and Make Australia Make Again.
Reply to this email with your ideas. We’d love to hear from you, and the winner will receive the heartwarming thrill of seeing their idea in print.
If you’ve ever melted in the back of a station wagon, tripped on a guy rope at a caravan park, or marvelled at your breakfast arriving on a tray through that little door in the wall at an old-style motel, then this show is for you. Take a spin through Aussie holidays of the past with the acclaimed live show by comedian and self-proclaimed design nerd Tim Ross and musician Kit Warhurst at some pretty cool locations along Australia’s east coast. Until November. Read more.
Absorbing the colours of the boulder-strewn terrain of Cathedral Rock National Park on Gumbaynggirr and Anaiwan country, on the NSW New England Tablelands, Melanie Waugh's compositions are done “with a heavy dose of expressionism”. At Michael Reid Southern Highlands, Berrima, NSW, until 11 August. Read more.
This 10-day community-driven arts festival presents work outside the mainstream, with a focus on things you might not normally experience in Darwin (or anywhere else). The Top End’s biggest festival for emerging artists is spread across more than 20 venues, on 14-21 July. Read more.
Vincent Namatjira’s new exhibition displays his signature irreverence with subversive portraits of dingoes in royal regalia. It’s a celebration of Aboriginal leadership, influenced by Namatjira’s ongoing study of his great-grandfather Albert Namatjira’s work, as well as his own plein air painting on Country. At Ames Yavuz, in Sydney’s Surry Hills, 31 August-5 October. Read more.
Interview by Emma Hearnes
Co-founder and editorial director of online and print magazine FOUND Regional, Steph Wanless enjoys good grammar, good gin and good times. When this self-confessed perfectionist with a penchant for lounge-room discos isn’t interviewing someone for a story, writing a story or editing a story, she's planning her next 10 stories. With FOUND Regional, Wanless is on a mission to celebrate the people, businesses and creativity that tell the true story of regional NSW.
Tell me about the place you live and how you found yourself there.
I live in Armidale, NSW – Australia’s highest city, known for its cultural heartbeat and breathtaking autumns. I grew up here and my heart led me home a few years back with my young family in tow. After almost two decades in Sydney and Newcastle, we wanted a more chilled-out lifestyle, preferably with trees (and grandparents) on our doorstep.
What prompted you to start FOUND Regional?
Once the boxes were unpacked, my husband and I quickly realised there was no one place people could hit up to find what was going on across our new regional home. I was also pretty tired of hearing people complain about there being nothing to do here - because, believe me, there is a tonne happening. Combine that with our combined 40+ years’ experience in print and digital publishing and we decided to launch FOUND Regional – where we do the digging on all the cool things to do, places to eat, stay and shop, while also telling the stories of the incredible people who call the region home.
Tell me about a regional person who inspired you this week.
My mate Jim A Barker, an exceptional photographer who recently hosted his first exhibition at the New England Regional Art Museum. Entitled Artisans of the New England, his long-term project documented 75 creatives in the region – an exceptional achievement for a city slicker turned country creative.
Are you still discovering new things in the region that surprise you?
Daily. There’s always someone waiting in the wings, ready to jump out and seize their moment in the spotlight with a new offering, whether that’s a cool new bar, a taco festival, a talented artist or a savvy business mind. People often ask me if I have trouble finding people, places and activities to write about. My answer is “never”.
One of a new generation of potential Matildas made news this week. Former Goondiwindi local Danielle Warburton has moved to the other side of the world and signed up to premier women’s team KVC Westerlo in Belgium. The achievement of Warburton and her family in the Qld-NSW border town (hello, 450km round trips for a game) is astounding. Read more.
We’d love to hear about the news, events and people that should be making the headlines in the Galah Weekly newsy. Share what’s new(s) in your neck of the woods with us at newsie@galahpress.com
