Plus a Barossa tribute and emus on the loose. 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 sends best wishes to all our mums.
A record number of women will sit in the Australian Parliament when it returns after last week’s federal election, potentially outnumbering men across the two houses for the first time.
After the 2022 election there were 101 women of 227 federal parliamentarians, with 58 of them elected to the House of Representatives. This time there will be about 70 women in the House of Reps.
Most of them are in the Labor Party, which has had quotas to drive female representation for 30 years. The Coalition, which has faced criticism from within its own ranks over its much-discussed “problem with women”, is expected to finish the count with fewer than 10 female MPs.
Women are expected to outnumber men again in the Senate.
Meanwhile, pro-renewables groups have used the landslide election result to push for support for regional areas affected by the rollout. Both Re-Alliance and Farmers for Climate Action argue the election represents a mandate for accelerated renewable energy development, an issue that has divided many regional communities.
Labor’s win also confirmed the likely end of live sheep exports by sea in 2028. The Coalition had pledged to repeal the looming ban.
Two Barossa Valley friends have released a book paying tribute to some of the women behind an iconic community cookbook that has raised money for the Tanunda Soldiers Memorial Hall for more than a century.
Sheralee Menz and Marieka Ashmore – known as Those Barossa Girls – are also supporting the memorial hall through their book, Rolling Up Their Sleeves.
In 1917, at the height of World War I, women from around the district – many with husbands or sons away at war – contributed about 400 recipes to the first edition of The Barossa Cookery Book.
Sales supported the Tanunda Soldiers Memorial Hall and continued through dozens of reprints – including a 1930s update that added another 600 recipes.
Menz and Ashmore established Those Barossa Girls as a side hustle to indulge their shared interest in heritage recipes and food preservation as a way of making the most of seasonal produce.
Menz said this week that Rolling Up Their Sleeves, designed to complement The Barossa Cookery Book, includes 85 of the original recipes updated for modern audiences as well as the stories of the 65 women who provided them. You’ll find one of them in One Last Thing today.
The original recipes were often light on detail and designed for early 20th-century kitchens. The new book converts ingredient quantities to metrics and updates cooking methods to reflect an audience no longer cooking on wood-fired stoves.
Broken Hill residents have been getting used to seeing emus – apparently with little road sense – wandering the streets of the far-west NSW city.
NSW Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service carer Stephanie Grieve said her group had received at least 25 emu reports in April. Some rescued birds had been hit by cars. Drought conditions this year have forced the emus to hit the city in search of water.
“We are seeing such huge numbers of them, and a lot of them are juvenile, so they don't have a lot of road sense," she said.
Although emus are rarely aggressive, they can kick if startled. The general advice is to stay calm and keep your distance.
Livestock producers faced with a changing climate are turning to gene technology to breed sheep and cattle better capable of handling drought and extreme heat.
Alison Henderson, who runs merino sheep at Caltowie in SA’s far north, is using the breeding technology to improve her flocks, including targeting traits that enable sheep to withstand droughts.
Mark Ferguson, who is CEO of genetic research business neXtgen Agri, said it was possible to breed sheep that needed less energy – and consequently less supplemental feed – to maintain fat and muscle.
An Australian innovation is helping NSW Southern Highlands dairy farmer Trevor Parrish breed a more heat-resistant herd. Animals with enhanced ability to tolerate hot conditions are identified using genetic testing, which can start with a tuft of hair.
Historian Naomi Parry Duncan is campaigning to have a humble Narooma phone box placed on the National Trust Heritage Register.
Parry Duncan was in the NSW south coast town during the 2020 Black Summer bushfires, when fires cut power and mobile phone infrastructure. The phone box became a lifeline for hundreds of residents who wanted to tell loved ones they were safe.
She said heritage listing of a phone box would be unusual – she’s writing submissions for another that has recorded more than 1300 calls to Lifeline in four years – but said the role of phone boxes in providing connection should be preserved.
As fire ants continue to spread within a Queensland containment area, biosecurity officers working to eradicate the pest are reporting threats and harassment.
New nests were found and destroyed last week in a Sunshine Coast housing development, raising concerns children in surrounding areas could be stung.
Eradication and containment efforts are being hampered by groups of residents opposed to biosecurity staff entering private properties to search for the ants and apply poison.
Workers from the eradication program say they have been threatened by dogs and guns and are being routinely escorted by police.
Gosford-born artist Julie Fragar has won the $100,000 Archibald Prize for her painting of friend and fellow artist Justene Williams.
Fragar is a four-time finalist now based in Brisbane and her work, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), was announced as winner at the Art Gallery of NSW on Friday. Sydney artist Jude Rae's Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal won the $50,000 Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figure sculpture and Blue Mountains artist Gene A'Hern won the $40,000 Sulman Prize. The prize exhibitions continue until 17 August.
The Art Gallery of South Australia has named 22 finalists for the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize for contemporary Australian artists aged under 40. The winner will be announced on 30 May, with finalists’ works exhibited from 31 May.
Thirty finalists have been named for the $100,000 Hadley’s Art Prize. The winner will be announced on 28 August and the finalists for the acquisitive landscape prize will be presented in an exhibition at Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart from 29 August.
The 48 finalists for the National Photographic Portrait Prize have also been selected. They will be exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra on 16 August-12 October.
A driving force behind Australia’s first Indigenous winery believes fate has led him back to the industry.
In 1998, Craig Cromelin was among a group of 16 doing a TAFE horticulture course on the former Aboriginal mission at Murrin Bridge in the NSW central west. They were encouraged by their teacher to move into viticulture.
Initially reluctant to grow grapes, Cromelin soon realised it was a chance to develop a project driven and owned by his Indigenous community, and Murrin Bridge Wines was born. It was based around vines collected on TAFE teacher Pat Calabria’s property and planted on community land at Murrin Bridge.
Murrin Bridge Wines production effectively stopped in 2005 but last November fate drew Cromelin back to wine. This year the first bottlings were released of Bidja Wines, a partnership between Cromelin, some friends and Victoria’s Buller Wines.
REGGIE is a digital media platform for the ever-curious, ever-adventurous, ever-growing audience eager to rub shoulders with regional NSW. Sounds good, right? There’s more. REGGIE’s weekly e-newsletter, DANCE CARD, is a curated guide to the best regional events and the must-not-miss places to eat, drink, stay and play from the mountains to the sea. Sign up today.
Did you forget Mother’s Day? No problem. Click here and in a few minutes you can have a present sorted: a subscription to Galah magazine. If you choose to “start with current issue”, we’ll send out Issue 12 post haste, wrapped and tied with string and a packet of beautiful Starling Flowers chocolate lace seeds slipped inside. It’s a gift that keeps on giving and growing. Unfortunately we can’t send the seeds to Tasmania, WA or the NT.
Editor-in-chief Annabelle Hickson is still celebrating Lisa Sorgini’s win in the Galah Regional Photography Prize last week. You can check out her round-up of the prize party here and the closest we’ll ever come to running social pages: a gallery of photos of the night here.
An all-female exhibition featuring Australian painters Sally Anderson, Sarah Drinan, Laura Jones, India Mark, Dionisia Salas, Julia Trybala and Amber Wallis explore the concept of tenderness. Typically seen as a feminine emotion, the exhibition encourages audiences to explore it beyond a gendered lens. Until 15 June, Ngununggala, Bowral, NSW. Read more
Four days of craft exhibitions, demonstrations and workshops feature over two weekends as the Victorian city of Ballarat showcases its investment in the creative economy. Eighteen practitioners with expertise ranging from textiles, sculpture and furniture to millinery will share traditional techniques. At Ballarat Mining Exchange, Vic, 17-18 and 24-25 May. Read more
This selection aims to encourage viewers to think about the future through apocalyptic visions of disaster and utopian ideals of environmental sustainability and connection to place. Artists investigate ideas of progress, transformation, and adaptation. At Shepparton Art Museum, Vic, until 9 June. Read more
Perhaps it’s no surprise that an installation aiming to explore humanity’s crimes against nature is going to be staged in a courthouse. A work by acclaimed artist Janet Laurence features in the old Berry Courthouse during OpenField, a contemporary art event in non-museum venues in the NSW south coast town of Berry in June.
Though based in Sydney, Laurence has a home near Berry. She has exhibited internationally and her art has even taken her to the Antarctic.
Human impact on the natural environment is a big part of your work. Tell us about that.
It’s really what has informed so much of my work – seeing the fragility of the natural world and humanity’s destruction of it, while at the same time wanting to show the beauty of what we’re losing.
Thinking of your Antarctic experience, how has travel influenced your art?
I’m reminded of the horror I felt seeing the impact of human presence – even the lightest footprint has the potential to harm such a fragile environment. I felt it’s a place where humans shouldn’t be, except for a few scientists whose presence requires infrastructure and power.
Is there a key message you would like people to take away from your work?
I want to bring people into an intimate experience with our environment in the hope they get to know it, love it and care for it
Tell us about your installation in the courthouse for OpenField?
The Court Requiem for Nature is set up as a courtroom, with hanging veils representing nature and video projections of birds and other animals – each only partially glimpsed. From within, the voice of Nicole Smede emerges, singing and sounding the Requiem.
At the other end, where the judge would sit, is the voice of the defendant naming crimes and reasons. Between them is the deep voice of wisdom questioning the damaging actions.
Black ribbons hang throughout, naming companies and individuals known for acts against the environment.
What are the challenges of working in a space not really designed for art?
As with any installation, it will be adjusted on-site for what works best. The challenges vary, but the restrictions of heritage architecture are very limiting and naturally lead to improvisation. However, these are balanced against the privilege of working in such interesting spaces.
OpenField is staged on 13-15 June in Berry, NSW.
It is only fitting that, on Mother’s Day, we include one of the recipes from Sheralee Menz and Marieka Ashmore’s book, Rolling Up Their Sleeves.
The women who contributed recipes to The Barossa Cookery Book were, like most of their era, identified only with the initials of their husbands. Part of Menz and Ashmore’s work was giving names and stories to those women.
Mary Schrader, whose Melting Moments recipe is featured here, was identified as Mrs AF Schrader in the original Barossa book. As for so many of the women, World War I was a personal tragedy – her son Lu died a few days after being wounded in France in 1918.
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