Plus a thylacine comeback and generations of joy. 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, whose neat spring vegie patch is weed-ridden by summer.
When is it illegal to water your carrots yet okay to water the cows?
Victorian author-chef and Galah friend Annie Smithers and wife Susan Thompson are learning that the answer puts their entire paddock-to-plate philosophy on the wrong side of the law. The saga has prompted them to campaign for changes to water and zoning laws to help small-scale horticulturists and regional communities.
Smithers and Thompson have lived at Babbington Park at Lyonville for more than seven years. Virtually all the fruit and vegetables on the menu at Smithers’ Du Fermier restaurant at nearby Trentham have come from the property’s 877 square-metre kitchen garden.
Thompson said the couple returned from a mid-winter break to find Goulburn-Murray Water, acting on an anonymous tip-off, had advised them it was illegal to use their water for “commercial crops”, meaning the produce plated up in the restaurant. Breaches incur a fine of almost $200,000.
The couple have all the water they need for the garden through a two-megalitre domestic allocation, pulled from a spring-fed lake on the property. Thompson said they fall foul of the law only if the garden produce is used for the restaurant. Archaic aspects of the Water Act mean the same restrictions over “commercial use” aren’t applied to livestock.
Thompson says there’s also nothing stopping her using water to keep a green lawn, for example, although they clearly see that as a waste in a region with some of the country’s most productive land.
Victoria’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) told Galah this week that the state had strict rules to ensure property owners could not extract water for commercial purposes in an uncontrolled way, ensuring it was shared fairly and the environment was protected.
“There are a range of options that allow new and evolving businesses to access water – including the water market. Goulburn-Murray Water is working with the landholder on options to irrigate their vegetable crops,” a DEECA spokesperson said.
The gripe is not with the water authority, which Thompson says is simply doing its job by policing the law, although she questions whether viable options have been discussed.
Their problem is with the law itself, which they see as outdated and unfair for small landholders.
As spring advances, the couple’s options include buying in truckloads of water (about $240 a pop), even though they have ample on the property.
Galah Issue 11 has left the printer and is on schedule to reach subscribers’ mailboxes in early November. All subscribers to Galah magazine on 10 November 2024 will be in the running to win $1500 to put towards a rug of their choice from The Rug Shop. Located in Bangalow, NSW, The Rug Shop is Australia’s top family-owned online Persian rug dealer, focused on sourcing the most sustainable and durable handwoven rugs. Subscribe to be in the draw.
A growing relationship between the youngest and oldest residents in SA’s Bordertown was stalled by Covid – now art is helping to revive it.
Bordertown Primary School art teacher Emma Harkness said the close relationship between her school and the Charla Lodge aged care home had to be scaled back during the pandemic because of concerns about children interacting with the elderly.
Now children and aged-care residents are back making art together, culminating in last week’s Intergenerational Art Trail around the SA-WA border town.
The project features art installations around town and includes collaborations with the Carol Murray Children's Centre and Bordertown High School. A portrait exhibition at the town’s Walkway Gallery runs to 30 November.
Walkway Gallery director Naomi Fallon said aged care residents had been taken on a tour and it was likely a version would be staged on-site at the aged care facility.
A “putrid” head found in a Museums Victoria cupboard might hold the key to efforts by Australian and US researchers to resurrect the thylacine, otherwise known as the Tasmanian tiger.
The last captive thylacine died in a Hobart zoo in 1936 and the species was declared extinct in 1986, though some remain convinced they survive hidden in the Tasmanian bush.
Extinction debate aside, University of Melbourne researchers have used the thylacine head to help reconstruct the marsupial’s genome, advancing efforts by a Texas-based company to eventually reintroduce it to the wild. The same company plans to bring back the dodo and woolly mammoth, though there are mixed views on the idea of restoring a natural apex predator in the wild.
We’ve seen Jurassic Park, so what could possibly go wrong?
Images by Dubbo-born photographer Adam Ferguson had been capturing attention well before he won the inaugural Galah Regional Photography Prize last year.
The internationally acclaimed photographer had spent 17 years overseas, ofter to cover conflicts. But eventually he returned home to tell a story closer to his heart — one that saw him clock up 150,000km around Australia.
“I wanted to tell a story about my own country, my own people – something that I know intimately,” he said.
The result is his new book, Big Sky, a monograph launched this month that illustrates the complex realities of 21st century life in an ancient land.
Mount Isa’s mayor is adamant the city’s popular rodeo will go ahead next year, despite it entering voluntary administration this week.
Peta MacRae said the move had come as a surprise but pledged there would be a rodeo next year. "Who is running it and in what capacity that is, I'm not sure yet," she said.
Administrators said they wanted to restructure and revive the event, which had been under a cloud since organisers approached the state government for a bail-out after this year’s event.
The tourism industry in outback Queensland was already bracing for a tough time after the group running Birdsville’s music festival, the Big Red Bash, announced last month that the event would take a break in 2025.
While Bordertown is bridging the generations through art, Dubbo Galah-on-the-ground Phoebe Maroulis has spotted a western NSW childcare option that works on a related theme. After our discussion about childcare deserts last week, Maroulis highlighted Wellington’s Maranatha Gunyah, a day-care service that includes an intergenerational program with residents of Maranatha House Aged Care. Children can team up with residents in an “intergenerational room” for activities such as story time, music, art and craft.
Galah editor-in-chief Annabelle Hickson couldn’t speak highly enough this week about her night in conversation with Alone Australia winner and author Gina Chick.
The barefooted Chick charmed a packed A&I Hall at Bangalow on the NSW north coast on her We Are The Stars book tour. “Such a performer,” Annabelle said. “She is a life force. She still covered some deep stuff – grief, ageing – but she about connection and fun too.”
That connection was clear when Chick led the audience in song.
“Gina taught us all the three-part harmony and had the whole room singing in unison.”
We love good books. And we love a list.
In Galah Issue 11, the Pleasure Issue, we share a very personal list of 100 of the finest novels of the 21st century.
And while we’re on the topic of pleasure, check out our selection of “pleasure palaces” in Issue 11, celebrating the rich tradition of Australian regional outbuildings designed with wit, ingenuity and fun. There’s an architect-designed outdoor shower. A masterful hiking shelter. A beautiful bird hide. And possibly the nation’s most elegant potting shed.
From the oud, an instrument that first appeared in the Middle East 5000 years ago, to its 21st century electric descendant, this is an exhibition devoted to all things guitar. Medieval to Metal: The Art & Evolution of the Guitar features 40 instruments from the US National Guitar Museum. Art Gallery of Ballarat, until 2 February. Read more
Colombian-born artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso believes Australia’s tiny Maratus spiders are the most colourful, flamboyant, sexy and charming spiders on the planet, even though they’re less than 5mm in size. Spiders of Paradise presents new works from Cardoso’s photographic series in which the spiders are presented as portraits in images comprising more than 1000 individual photos. Cairns Art Gallery, until 24 November. Read more
Australia’s largest working arts and craft fair features more than 200 exhibitors across seven venues and three galleries in the northern Tasmanian town of Deloraine. The Tasmanian Craft Fair includes masterclasses and demonstration programs. Exhibitors are in the running for the $10,000 Premiers Arts Award. On 1-3 November. Read more
Encouragement from an acclaimed glassmaker and the need to launch a new career after moving to the NSW far south coast helped Carolyn Killen become a key player in regional arts.
Sydney-raised Killen and her husband moved to their property at Wapengo in the Bega Valley in 2001. Killen had left her providore business in Sydney and was considering what she’d do next. She launched Ivy Hill Gallery, and for the next 17 years it was a fixture on the regional arts trail, with a regular calendar of exhibitions featuring her stable of about 75 artists.
Although the gallery and property have been sold, Killen continues to run her own arts consultancy and lives on a farm near Cobargo, in the south coast hinterland. Last month Killen made a comeback of sorts, teaming with the Arts Centre Cootamundra for Ivy Hill Gallery Goes West, an exhibition featuring some of the artists from her Ivy Hill days.
What led you from Sydney to regional NSW?
I’d married a grazier, Bill, who had endured 20 years of living in Sydney. He wanted to find 100 acres of land where he could run some cattle, so we moved to Wapengo. The question then was what was I going to do.
How did Ivy Hill Gallery begin?
I’d run my own providore business in Sydney but I’d always been a gallery junkie. I loved it and thought it was something I could do, considering the career artists living in the area. Our neighbours were glassmaker Klaus Moje and his wife Brigitte Enders. Klaus had set up the School of Glass Art at the ANU in Canberra, and he and Brigitte gave me the encouragement and support to get started.
What led you to Ivy Hill Gallery Goes West?
The Ivy Hill property and gallery was sold in 2021. I kept the website and access to the artists in my stable. As a gallerist without a gallery, being introduced to the Arts Centre Cootamundra by former chair, Simon Bragg, started the idea. I chose 18 artists, who jumped at it when the opportunity came for us to have the Ivy HiIl Goes West exhibition.
What has given you the greatest satisfaction from your work?
It’s the interaction with the artists and the public, the sharing of a resource available to visitors only through outlets like commercial galleries.
What advice would you give to artists looking to start out in a career?
Don’t give up your day job! It’s hard for even really accomplished artists to make a living. There’s a shortage of commercial galleries in the regions for a start. But then, if artists have the passion for what they’re doing, I don’t think they can help themselves and we all benefit.
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
