Community News

  • Woodend CFA to host open day

    Woodend CFA to host open day

    Woodend CFA is holding an open day at the fire station in Urquhart Street on Sunday from 10am to 2pm. This is a great opportunity for the community to see the impressive facilities at the CFA and SES, to meet some of the local emergency response volunteers and find out more about what they do.…

  • Market’s 20-year ‘backing local’ celebrations

    Market’s 20-year ‘backing local’ celebrations

    Kyneton Farmers Market has announced a special raffle for its upcoming 20th-anniversary celebrations on Saturday, with proceeds to be donated to Kyneton Primary School’s Music Program. Anyone attending the market at St Paul’s Park can purchase a single ticket for $2 or three for $5, for the exciting chance to win hampers of goods from…

  • Award honour for Anwyn

    Award honour for Anwyn

    Local therapist Anwyn Stekerhofs of ‘Awakenings with Anwyn’ was acknowledged at the recent 2024 Australian Achiever Awards for the Health, Fitness and Wellbeing Services category. Anwyn achieved an overall customer satisfaction score of 96.73 per cent, which won her the ‘Highly Recommended’ accolade. Many people will remember Anwyn as the friendly face behind Castlemaine’s former…

  • Senior achiever awarded

    Senior achiever awarded

    Alan Moor has spent the past decade helping to fill the lives of older residents with interest and enjoyment. The 79-year-old Kyneton local has held leadership roles with Kyneton U3A and the Kyneton Community House and has now been acknowledged for his efforts with a Council on the Ageing Victoria Senior Achiever Award. Alan set…

  • There’s a fly in my compost

    There’s a fly in my compost

    Occasionally we get a distressed call at YIMBY informing us someone has fruit fly in their compost…Common names can be a bit misleading, and it turns out quite a few flying insects get the name ‘fruit fly’. Although Queensland ‘fruit fly’ (Bactrocera tryoni) is a serious agricultural pest, the fly that people are seeing in…

  • Postcards wanders Woodend

    Postcards wanders Woodend

    Travel and lifestyle TV show Postcards visited Woodend last week to highlight some of the wonderful food and leisure options available in town. The program included the lovely walk along Five Mile Creek through the middle of town, which has been the focus of Woodend Landcare’s revegetation works over the past 30 years. Presenter Brodie…

  • Busker honoured

    Busker honoured

    Well-known Gisborne busking identity, Melvyn Cann, has been honoured in a ceremony at an Elbow Room Concert of the Melbourne Composers League. In its citation, the league celebrates his lifetime devotion to music performance and composition and to his honouring music as a higher calling. Melvyn won local hearts during Covid lockdowns when, miraculously, he…

  • Let’s talk teens

    Let’s talk teens

    Are you worried about your teen and their relationship with drugs, alcohol or vaping? Do you need your questions answered by an expert? Go along to ‘Parenting in the Modern World’ at Castlemaine Library, a free talk and Q&A that focuses on drugs, alcohol and vaping among young people. The session will be led by…

  • Twilight festival cancelled

    Twilight festival cancelled

    Kyneton Community House’s popular twilight festival has been cancelled this year due to a shortfall in funds and volunteers. Typically held in December in the lead up to Christmas, the festival has become a fixture in the Kyneton social calendar since it began in 2018. Kyneton Community House has always taken the lead on creating…

  • Food and gift drive launches

    Food and gift drive launches

    Journey Early Learning at Kyneton has launched a food and gift drive to support local people doing it tough this Christmas. The team is collecting donations of books, food and toys for the Kindness Collective in Kyneton, which will be made into hampers for families and individuals in need. Journey Early Learning’s Kirsty Long said…

  • Not foul manure, fowl manure

    Not foul manure, fowl manure

    ‘Gallus gallus’, the red junglefowl, once roamed wild in the forests of South Asia, but has, through long years of selective breeding, become quite a different creature. Despite this, ‘chooks’ – as we like to call them in Australia – still love to scratch and forage for their food, roll in the dust out in…

  • Partnership to boost harvest project

    Partnership to boost harvest project

    For the past 15 years the Growing Abundance project has been bringing people in Mount Alexander Shire together. It has created a viable local food system by harvesting fruit from backyard trees and sharing the produce between volunteers and the community. After much consideration about the future of the program, the Growing Abundance committee is…