Front page news: August 29-September 4, 2007-2015
A snapshot of news from across the years
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
August 29, 2007: The iconic Wimmera River is fighting for survival.
That’s the assessment of a leading environmental scientist who has studied the river for more than 20 years.
Research by water pollution ecologist David Tiller is echoed in a new report by Wimmera Catchment Management Authority to the State Government.
‘‘From the eyes of our water bugs and fish, the Wimmera River has become an inhospitable environment. It is unhealthy and it’s dying,’’ he said.
Mr Tiller, a former head of water projects at Environment Protection Authority Victoria, said what was once a river was now a series of unconnected pools.
‘‘The water level in the pools is dropping, which means smaller refuge pools, which normally keep an assortment of aquatic bugs and fish alive until a flow arrives, simply don’t exist in the river now,’’ he said.
‘‘Water quality is dropping and some animals simply can’t tolerate these changes and are dying.’’
September 3, 2007: Police will target private parties as well as traditional hot-spots in their fight to curb property damage and other crimes fuelled by alcohol.
Horsham Inspector Colin Renton said the uncontrolled consumption of alcohol at parties had led to criminal behaviour and was a problem.
‘‘We’ve been successful in dropping crime in licensed areas of the CBD and we’re now going to have to look at parties where it can be much harder to deal with,’’ he said.
Insp Renton said enforcement might involve officers patrolling in plain clothes and unmarked cars and more police operations similar to Operation Street Sweeper.
But he emphasised that preventing incidents through education would form the cornerstone in the battle.
Insp Renton, also Horsham licensing inspector, was responding to latest figures which showed the Horsham Police Service Area of Horsham Rural City, West Wimmera and Hindmarsh shires having 111 more criminal offences in 2006-2007 than the previous 12 months.
‘‘To put it in perspective, that’s across every offence category from murder to minor theft, and involved property damage,’’ he said.
September 3, 2008: GWMWater is allowing 300 megalitres of water to flow into Pine Lake, near Horsham.
The lake is consigned to the scrap heap under GWMWater’s plan for the water system when the Wimmera-Mallee Pipeline is complete.
GWMWater has denied claims the water was put into Pine Lake by mistake, saying it was flows from the Wimmera River purposefully directed to the lake instead of Taylors Lake.
GWMWater said the water could not be allowed to flow into Taylors Lake because of important pipeline works in progress at that site.
September 2, 2009: A Wimmera teenager has told how he and four friends cowered in a bedroom as a gang of youths ransacked a Murtoa home on Saturday.
Conan Williams, 17, said he was relaxing with friends in the Breen Street house when five youths burst through the front door.
Mr Williams alleged he and the other occupants were herded into a room by a knife-wielding male and told to stay there.
He said the offenders then took everything of value from the property.
‘‘We were just trying to relax and play a bit of Guitar Hero when it all happened,’’ he said.
‘‘It is a small town and you come to a place like this to get away from this kind of thing.
‘‘I was scared. We were all really scared.
‘‘They even tried to steal my dog.
‘‘I don’t want to go back in that house... we’re all staying with friends at the moment.’’
Detective Senior Constable Guy Menhennitt of Ararat Criminal Investigation Unit said four males and a female approached the Breen Street home at 1pm on Saturday and aggressively forced entry into the property after a brief conversation with two occupants.
He said the offenders stole electrical equipment including televisions, computers, mobile phones and Xbox games.
‘‘The offenders threatened to kill or injure the occupants. One occupant was punched in the face as the offenders were leaving and threatened to come back and cause more grief. The offenders did not try to cover their identity at all,’’ he said.
September 1, 2010: Edenhope resident Annette Jones has called for change to rural ambulance services.
The wife of one of two professional full-time paramedics in Edenhope, Mrs Jones says rural Victorian ambulance services are short-staffed and overworked, putting people’s lives at risk and affecting work-life balance.
“My husband is a paramedic and he can’t say anything because of media restrictions, but what I know is what I see,” she said.
“I see the conditions by which he operates and it’s a big area – it goes almost to Casterton and covers Goroke, towards Nhill and not quite to Arapiles – so about 250 square kilometres.
“Only two paramedics work full-time and only one works at any one time. They work seven days straight, 24 hours a day. They are on duty from 7am to 5pm and are then on call.
“From my point of view, my husband is not available to take my kids to gym or anywhere else because he has to be within spitting distance of the station.
“They do get a few extra dollars to be on call, but if they are called from Edenhope to Dergholm, which is in the middle of nowhere, they would not transport a patient to hospital here. They would have to go to Horsham, which takes about four and a half hours.
“While they do that, there is no-one on duty in Edenhope. If they call the other paramedic and they can’t do it or aren’t available to do it, they might try the auxiliary service, which is a group of volunteers, and if no-one can do it then we have to wait until the ambulance returns from Horsham.
“The isolation is worse than Stawell or Ararat, because they can draw from the area around them, but here, there isn’t that option.”
September 3, 2010: Green Lake supporters have pleaded with GWMWater for a flow into the lake before the weekend.
Green Lake Community Action Group members want the flow to help alleviate the Wimmera River which could flood following predicted heavy rain starting today.
Spokesman Glenn Mibus said the group had continued to speak with the authority about a possible flow but had reached breaking point with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting between 25 and 50 millimetres of rain in the region between today and Sunday.
Mr Mibus said the authority had told the group a decision on a flow would be made next week.
“That would be too late,” he said.
“We are running out of time. We could already be flooded by then and an opportunity to take this small amount out of the river could be lost.”
August 31, 2011: On the same day family and friends farewelled Jacinda Twigg, they were dealing with the devastating news her mother Julie had also died.
Julie Twigg, of Nhill, died in Royal Melbourne Hospital on Monday morning, two weeks after she was seriously injured in an Angel Flight plane crash at Wallup which claimed the lives of her daughter Jacinda, 15, and pilot Don Kernot.
Mrs Twigg had been upgraded to a stable condition and had woken from a coma a week earlier and was talking.
Jacinda’s funeral was at St Paul’s Lutheran Church in Nhill on Monday afternoon with more than 400 mourners in attendance. Most of them had heard of Mrs Twigg’s death that morning.
A group of Jacinda’s friends wore her favourite colour aqua to the funeral as a tribute to the schoolgirl who suffered from juvenile diabetes.
Nhill Lutheran School principal Grant Fiedler told the Mail-Times Mrs Twigg was a dedicated member of the school community.
“The whole school community is in mourning. She was a deeply respected and valued member of the school community as a parent and volunteer,” Mr Fiedler said.
September 3, 2012: Ararat Community College teachers staged the school’s first protest on Friday, during a visit from Education Minister Martin Dixon.
Nine teachers and one education support officer waited out the front of the school for Mr Dixon, who avoided the group, and went inside via an alternate entrance.
The staff protested about the standard of the school buildings and wanted to raise Mr Dixon’s attention to the situation.
Teacher Steven Mullin said the buildings had needed repairing or replacing for several years.
He said the work would cost millions of dollars.
“The school has been slated for major renovations for a number of years,’’ he said. “It comes to a head before elections but then we never hear about it again.’’
Mr Mullin said several of the buildings were from the 1960s.
He said an aged sewerage system, asbestos in the walls, sub-standard heating and cooling and rotted wood were all common in the school.
“We have problems with blockages, we have problems with keeping rooms at a reasonable temperature,’’ he said.
“If these were offices we wouldn’t work in them.
“The L-wing has asbestos signs. That’s not the kind of conditions we want to teach in, or students want to learn in.’’
September 4, 2013: Horsham War Memorial Pool could be demolished under a draft sport and recreation plan for the city.
Residents have repeatedly called for the Wimmera’s only Olympic-size pool with eight lanes to be upgraded and saved from demolition.
In 2001 former Horsham councillor Campbell Trewin said a priority list of works helped remove any shred of doubt about retaining the pool in light of the proposed multi-million dollar leisure centre.
In 2009, former Horsham councillor Gary Bird said the memorial pool would be ‘around forever’.
But Horsham Rural City Council’s draft Sport and Recreation Strategy 2013-18, released on Monday, has put the pool back on the chopping block.
Cr Mark Radford is a long-time advocate for the city’s outdoor pool.
He said while the draft plan recommended the pool be demolished, it played an important role for the Wimmera community.
“Generally governments are not particularly keen to support outdoor pools, but ours is special because it is a regional 50-metre outdoor pool and it was built as a war memorial,” Cr Radford said.
“The spirit of that pool is to provide facilities for the community in honour of people who lost their lives; that is something we can’t get past.
“There are some things in the report that are a bit controversial and that is one of them.”
September 3, 2014: Northern Grampians councillors have floated the idea of an asylum seeker detention centre and refugee resettlement program to arrest declining population in the shire.
Former mayor and Stawell ward councillor Wayne Rice said the shire had experienced significant population decline since 2010.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t have a detention centre in the Northern Grampians Shire; it’s better than having a prison,” he said.
“I think it would create employment and it would get those people to come into the shire, with a view that they might settle here.
“That might be one way that we could build our population.”
Cr Rice said a recent visit to Woomera, in South Australia, where there was a controversial detention centre until 2003, had shown a centre a few kilometres out of town was the right proximity.
He said a detention centre could potentially boost the shire’s economy across a range of sectors.
“There’s employment in the detention centre, employment in health fields, social workers and catering,” he said.
September 2, 2015: The Wimmera could face another high risk bushfire season as dry conditions continue to plague the region.
The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre has released its Southern Australia Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for 2015-16, which shows the
Wimmera will have above normal bushfire potential this summer.
The report said the above normal forecast was mostly due to a strengthening El Niño over the Pacific Ocean, which was now tracking as one of the strongest on record.
“There have also been significantly below average rainfall in the past decade and the dry conditions mean any surface moisture from rain will quickly decline once temperatures start to warm up,” the report said.
The report said 2014 was Australia’s third warmest year on record, and when combined with long-term rainfall deficiencies, an early start to the bushfire season was likely.