Beechworth, Australia News

FAMILIES are changing their holiday plans to avoid visiting bushfire-prone areas in country Victoria during summer, potentially costing the state's tourism industry millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Baring all ... Brian Dunlop in front of Orpheus and Eurydice at his last exhibition, and another of the paintings from that show BRIAN DUNLOP went to London in 1984 to paint the Queen for Victoria's sesquicentenary and survived predictions that it would be the kiss of death because it demonstrated that he was "a crawler to the establishment".

Hard work has paid off with Bridge Road's latest offering, writes Richard Cornish.

A century and twenty-nine years ago, Australia's most famous bushranger, Ned Kelly , was hanged in Melbourne.

The High Country is set to benefit from Brumby Labor Government funding to support regional tourism and boost local jobs.

I have been here before, gripped by the Aussie bush ranger's legend for 40-odd years and I need a fresh fix, a chance to finger the memora bilia, and to hear again a rendering of The Wild Colonial Boy.

HORSHAM has succesfully hosted the Victorian 2009 Sustainable Communities-Tidy Towns Awards weekend.

MORE than 150 people from across Victoria will attend a gala presentation night in Horsham for the Keep Australia Beautiful Victorian Tidy Towns Awards.

My mum gave me a book called Woman's World one day. A manual from the '60s designed to teach a girl how to transform into a lady, it is a delightful and rather weighty tome offering advice on foundation garments, flower arranging, caring for your fur coat, going steady, matching the fondue with a nice moselle, addressing royalty and the like.

A COUPLE who died on Black Saturday was told by a firefighter to "get out" half an hour before wildfire engulfed their house, the royal commission investigating the disaster was told today.

SITTING under an oak tree outside their Mudgegonga home in the final hours of Black Saturday, Patricia and Lindsay Easterbrook listened to fire updates on the radio as the blaze moved closer.

THE Beechworth bushfire that claimed two lives and destroyed several homes started near a power line on Black Saturday and would likely have been faster, fiercer and spread further if not for previous years' fuel-reduction burns, the royal commission into the fires has been told.

Jeni Port explores a fascinating shift in the retail landscape. IN WINE retailing, opposites don't attract - generally with good reason.

REMLAW fire victims will have an opportunity to present evidence when the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission visits Horsham on September 17 and 18.

Rural backwaters became wealthy towns by the 1860s. News of the discovery of gold in Australia's colony of Victoria in 1851 brought miners flocking from all over the world.

The Chinese once constituted a sizable population in Ballarat, Australia following the gold rush Down Under, but there is little trace of their presence today.

THOSE who do not remember their history are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

THE interim report released yesterday into Victoria's fatal Black Saturday bushfires reflects cooler thinking than was displayed by those who hysterically jumped on the global warming bandwagon last January and February.

Will the fertile crescent disappear this century? It's the best part of 15 years since I left the beautiful countryside and fossilized social mores of small-town country Victoria behind for the bright lights of Melbourne.

Hemisphere-hopping has become a badge of winemaking honour. Indeed, the most celebrated consultants have every reason to be grateful for the earth's axial tilt, since it enables them to double their earnings capacity.