Community News
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Fashion for foodbank
The Kindness Collective at Kyneton is hosting an Op Shop Fashion Parade fundraiser this month to help raise funds for the Kyneton Foodbank. Amid cost-of-living pressures, the Kindness Collective is seeing daily increases of people signing up to use the foodbank and coming in for soup kitchen lunches. “The fashion parade fundraiser will help us…
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Reconciliation recognition
Mount Alexander Shire Council’s Australia Day – Survival Day event has been recognised with a Reconciliation Victoria award. The event was among the winners of the 2024 Maggolee Awards, which celebrate and recognise strong partnerships between Victorian local governments and First Nations Peoples. Castlemaine Australia Day – Survival Day is a community event held annually…
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Harcourt Farming Co-op recruiting
Harcourt Organic Farming Co-op is recruiting new farmers and enterprises. The co-op is a collaboration of diverse organic and regenerative farmers who lease land on a single farm in Harcourt. Katie and Hugh Finlay own the farm and began the co-op to diversify the farming on their land and give young farmers an entry point…
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You can’t compost that…can you?
Have you been told that you can’t, or shouldn’t, compost a particular thing? Perhaps it is onion skins or citrus peel. Meat and dairy are on the exclusion list for lots of folk, or perhaps it’s waste oil or fats? Weed seeds, pest infested fruit and plants like couch or kikuyu grasses are usually sighted…
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Rory named ‘Chef of the Year’
The head chef at Campbells Creek’s historic Five Flags Hotel, Rory Brown, has been named ‘Chef of the Year’ at the Australian Hotels Association (Victoria) 2024 State Awards for Excellence. The state winner will now go on to vie for the national title in Brisbane in November. Rory is in his seventh year at the…
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‘Be curious and be kind’
Students and teachers from schools across Mount Alexander Shire came together at Castlemaine’s Western Reserve on Friday, to offer heartfelt words of apology to our First Nations people, ahead of the national day of healing on Sunday. It was an emotional morning as student leaders from six local schools spoke, with the innocence and sincerity…
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Cellulose, chitin or lignin?
The bodies of all living things, from the largest trees to the smallest microorganisms are mostly made of carbon, organised in microscopic chains called ‘polymers’. These carbon polymers take different forms, and each form breaks down in our compost in a different way and at different times. Let’s take a look at three common carbon…
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Giz Asaurus to roar again
How do you make a stranger smile? A creative Gisborne teenager has found just the right combination of silly, fun and lovable to do the trick. He is the Giz Asaurus – determined to make your day, and he’s been doing exactly that for many residents with his sporadic appearances around Gisborne since January. The…
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How to use your ‘mind blender’
We have talked before about the importance of getting the moisture content of our compost piles right. Our favourite image for the ideal level is a wrung out, wet sponge, wet enough that, if you squeezed it hard you could just get out another drop, but not dripping water. This is about 55 per cent…
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Doing it for Dal
Members of the Castlemaine and Kyneton communities and music lovers everywhere are urged to get along to the inaugural ‘Live at The Camp’ music festival this Saturday evening. The concert event at Castlemaine’s Camp Reserve is being held to honour the life of Castlemaine Football Netball Club Under 18 footballer Dallas Keogh-Frankling 12 months on…
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Farmers learn regenerative agriculture
It was a perfect autumn day as farmers from the region met for the final day of this year’s ‘Healthy Landscapes – Holistic Grazing Management’ course on Sam White’s property in Sidonia. Farmers and land managers from diverse backgrounds came together on Friday May 3 to finish off an inspiring course that is now in…
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The leaves are falling
“Did you see the wind today, blow the autumn leaves away? From on high they fluttered down, some were red and some were brown”. The magic of autumn and the childhood fun of playing in leaf piles has not left me, but I now see another magical thing about the blanket of leaves falling on…