Castlemaine

  • Presenting The Feathered Five

    Presenting The Feathered Five

    Nature Art Soundscapes are musicians Hilary Blackshaw (volin, guitar and vocals), Joel Bloom (lap steel guitar), Clara Schutz (cello) and artist Jane Rusden. The quartet celebrates local woodland wildlife through weaving beautiful projected live art making with an evocative improvised music soundscape. Nature Art Soundscapes will present The Feathered Five from 7pm to 9pm on…

  • Stonnington Symphony presents Motion and Reflection

    Stonnington Symphony presents Motion and Reflection

    Guest conductor Michael Lichnovsky returns to Stonnington Symphony for the sixth time with a thoughtfully curated selection of works that explore the themes of Motion and Reflection, offering audiences a journey through a diverse musical landscape. The orchestra is headed to Castlemaine in November with a program that invites us to consider music as both…

  • Explore the ‘Vegie Patch’ at Shades of Gray

    Explore the ‘Vegie Patch’ at Shades of Gray

    Castlemaine’s iconic Shades of Gray Gallery and Garden is getting set to launch its highly anticipated annual exhibition this Saturday and this year’s event is set to be the biggest and best yet. Shade of Gray founder and artist Peter Gray said this year’s exhibition was the culmination of 32 years honing his craft and…

  • HEDGE gardeners to open gates

    HEDGE gardeners to open gates

    The passionate ‘HEDGE’ gardeners collective in Mount Alexander will be generously opening their garden gates to the community once again this November. Held on alternate years to Castlemaine’s biennial Festival of Gardens, HEDGE (which stands for – Happy, Energetic, Dirt-Loving, Garden Enthusiasts) enjoy celebrating their love of all things gardening with fellow green thumbs. This…

  • Recreating a lost giant

    Recreating a lost giant

    On a frosty morning in Castlemaine, in a large tin shed at Lot 19, a small team of humans gather together. Clad in dusty op-shop clothes, hands and tools working feverishly on hard plastic, bone and steel. All jacked up on lattes, their monkey brains are busy with problems to solve. They are here to…

  • Young women to broadcast

    Young women to broadcast

    A pilot program is offering young women in Mount Alexander Shire the opportunity to develop a podcast to be broadcast on MainFM radio show, Femme Fortissima, which airs on Fridays from 11am – 1pm. The hands-on podcasting workshop series is tailored for young women, providing skills in audio storytelling, editing, interviewing and podcasting. The program…

  • Paving the way forward

    Paving the way forward

    Older Women in Cohousing is a stone’s throw from reaching its target of $1.4 million to support the Middle Women’s Housing Fund, paving the way for the construction of a sustainable, low-impact cohousing village on their five-acre property in Castlemaine. Wanting to reflect the diversity and financial status of all women, WINC is ensuring that…

  • Mass murderer relocated to Castlemaine

    Mass murderer relocated to Castlemaine

    Notorious Hoddle Street killer Julian Knight, 57, has been moved from maximum-security incarceration into the medium-security Loddon Prison in Castlemaine. On August 9, 1987, the then 19-year-old Knight fired a semi-automatic rifle on Hoddle Street, Clifton Hill, killing seven people and injuring 19. The former Australian Army officer-cadet pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1988…

  • Castlemaine through the lens

    Castlemaine through the lens

    Various Castlemaine vistas are featured in a new photo book by talented Melbourne photographer Warren Kirk. Beyond Suburbia has been published via Scribe Publications and hit bookstores earlier this month. Author and screenwriter Don Watson says that in the margins between the city and the bush, Kirk uncovers the quiet poetry of Victoria’s hinterlands. “These…

  • Mapping waterways and connections

    Mapping waterways and connections

    Artist Kathy Landvogt is fascinated by rivers – specifically the immense Loddon River and the system that connects her town, Castlemaine on Barkers Creek, with tributaries upstream and downstream. When she saw an old CFA map, and with her interest in women’s traditional handcrafts, she began to think about how to celebrate the river’s significance…

  • An invitation to recalibrate

    An invitation to recalibrate

    Anyone in the vicinity of the Phee Broadway Theatre last Friday would have been witness to a constant stream of middle-aged women steadily making their way into the library foyer in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a clandestine suffragette meeting (perhaps the women of Castlemaine are ready for their own uprising?). The meeting was, in…

  • Measuring our compost ingredients

    Measuring our compost ingredients

    When we first learn to cook, a recipe is our lifeboat, and we follow it to the letter. As we begin to trust our intuition, we need the recipe less and less, substituting an ingredient here, estimating a measure there, cooking more by feel than by the absolutes of cups or grams. Even when we…