Community News
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The Compost Conversation – with Joel Meadows
Carbon cap and store There is a little trick you can do every time you add ingredients to your compost pile that can really improve how well it works. Cap your compost with carbon. Now, this might sound like something from the Kyoto Protocol that governments couldn’t get international agreement on, but it is much…
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Little voices, loud futures
Pete Dawson More than 400 children from schools and people from around the Mount Alexander (Leanganook) Shire turned up for a ‘fabudeadly’ mini-festival at Castlemaine’s Goods Shed last Friday. Each year on August 4, an educational and cultural celebration is held throughout the country to commemorate First Nations history and involve school children in creative…
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Local couple’s cancer pledge
Castlemaine couple Marianne and Ross Allan has pledged a significant investment to the Australian Pancreatic Cancer Foundation ‘Pankind’ to fast-track early detection research into pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is currently the third biggest cancer killer of Australians. The local couple’s generous 10-year pledge will fund Australian research projects that aim to detect pancreatic cancer in…
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The Compost Conversation – with Joel Meadows
Hot, or what? There is a fever that gardeners catch once they have made their first successful hot compost pile, it can be quite contagious, and the benefits of hot composting are formidable, let’s have a look at five of them. 1. Hot compost is a sign that we are getting our compost in balance.…
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The Compost Conversation – with Joel meadows
The good, the bad and the beautiful In my work as a compost educator and volunteer on the YIMBY* team, I have stuck my nose into quite a few compost piles, and I can tell you that not all compost piles smell the same. So why is it that some compost piles stink to high…
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Finding rites of passage
For the past 23 years, a group of men from Castlemaine has been running rites of passage weekends out in the local bushland. The weekends are a place for men to support men in a safe and welcoming environment. They include programs for fathers and their teenage sons, another for individual men, and since its…
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Interns create memorial garden
Earlier this month a team of eight young interns launched their design for a new Memorial Garden, to be built at Edgar’s Mission Sanctuary in Lancefield. The garden will be a place of quiet reflection that pays tribute to animal residents that have died and honours the bond between them and their sanctuary carers. More…
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For the next generation
Connecting Country is co-hosting a National Tree Day community planting with Mount Alexander Shire Council and Post Office Hill Action Group on July 30. The day is a chance for the Mount Alexander/Leanganook community to take direct on-ground conservation action to restore and enhance local biodiversity. This event has been made possible due to the…
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The Compost Conversation – with Joel Meadows
When I go out door-knocking with our YIMBY* composters, looking for households to offer us weekly buckets of food scraps, I am amazed by how many people in our area say they are already composting. As someone who is fascinated with compost, one part of me wants to jump for joy, the other part wants…
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Feeling the heat?
It can be hard to stay warm during these winter months, and let’s face it, it can be hard to make it out to the garden, where everything is cold, and it’s been oh so wet! Thank goodness for microbes, who, given the right conditions, keep reproducing, creating heat, and breaking down our discarded food…
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A true ‘people person’
Malmsbury Pharmacy is officially home to Victoria’s Pharmacy Assistant of the Year – and regular customers are not surprised. Amanda Carlyle has claimed the Pharmacy Guild of Australia title and will represent Victoria in the national finals later this year. Malmsbury pharmacist Beshr Farid said regular customers agreed Amanda was deserving of the title. She…
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Radiothon returns
Castlemaine’s award-winning station MainFM is getting amped up for its annual Radiothon and looking for support. Bring the Noise is the theme of MainFM’s Radiothon for 2023. What is the Noise? It’s the music, it’s the talk, it’s the singing, it’s the song, it’s the chit and the chat, the events and the vibe, it’s…