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The rural network, Australia

  • Buffel is a highly valued pasture species in Queensland, Australia

    Buffel kerfuffle: should the invasive grass be listed as a weed of national significance in Australia?

    Invasive buffel grass is destroying native rangelands and increasing bushfire risk, but farmers say eradicating it would ‘cripple the beef industry’
  • Four people sitting at an outdoor table with open laptops in front of them with pasture and a cow in the background

    What does it take to start a community newspaper? Passionate, frustrated individuals and a gin distillery

  • Caretaker Wayne Cooney and his dog Willow keep an eye on things at Berrima Gaol. Plans to develop the site have generated controversy among the local community. Berrima Gaol, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Wednesday 2nd April 2025. Matthew Abbott for The Guardian.

    Progress or preservation: the bitter fight over plans to redevelop historic Berrima Gaol

  • rabbit showjumping competition at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney

    Run, rabbit, run – and then hop! Sydney’s Royal Easter Show welcomes showjumping as you’ve never seen it

  • Pig handlers, including seven year old Asher Blenkiron, compete at the Sydney Royal Easter Show
    2:09

    Pig handlers battle it out at the Sydney Royal Easter Show - video

  • Pig Handling Competition at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, Monday April 14, 2025. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Asher Blenkiron, seven years old, loves showing her family’s pigs from their Keyneton stud in South Australia. She is competing in the Under 13s Pig Handling competition. This is her second year competing.

    Lab coats, red boards and oiled bodies: inside the world of junior pig showing

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The rural network, Victoria

  • Artist Ruby Pilven with daughter Sydney outside Ballarat Art Gallery

    ‘A real loss’: regional Victoria prepares for its major galleries to go dark

    Ballarat’s art gallery has closed for a year and Bendigo’s is set to shut for two years, both for necessary upgrades. But what will happen to the cities’ cultural life in the meantime?
  • Lilly Wright from Ballarat in Victoria

    The Ballarat food entrepreneur: ‘It just doesn’t make sense for us to be miserable’

  • Mick Robertson inspects a spotted gum on his farm in Victoria, Australia

    When dairy farmers leave, what happens to the farm?

  • Commonwealth championship sheepdog trials - in pictures

  • Sissy Austin was attacked while running. Now she wants to help women and gender-diverse people take back the track

  • ‘I’ll see you in a year’: the Australian women over 60 hitting the road solo

  • Life in the ashes: Lisa lost her Grampians home to a bushfire. Ten months later, it almost burned again

  • Allanah lost her son when she was 22 weeks pregnant. Now she’s helping others through the grief of stillbirth

  • Self-esteem and dignity: how giving girls well-fitting bras encourages them to play sport

Features

  • Delacombe primary school student

    ‘Amazing progress’: how regional schools are breaking the language barrier and helping students thrive

  • Karst Kruen with red gum trees he planted in 2021

    ‘It’s gang-gang country’: the landholders restoring farmland to forest in the Victorian alps

    • Backburning at night on Gilberton Station, 450km west of Townsville, Queensland, Australia

      Surviving the summer on Queensland’s remote cattle properties: ‘We never give up on fires’

    • Eve, a single mum living in Bendigo with her son Ollie

      Single parents bear the brunt of the rental crisis in regional Victoria

Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation

  • Riley Swanson, 19, watching over the herd at first light.

    ‘I lost my phone in the first week’: a new generation of drovers in outback Queensland

    Bill Little has been droving for 40 years across thousands of kilometres of stock routes. Now he’s showing new hands the ropes
  • Close up of bars of chocolate

    Bitter sweets: chocolate to cost more for Australians as cocoa prices hit 50-year peak

  • Calla Wahlquist

    Criticism of sacred site decision shows we have learned nothing from Juukan Gorge

    Calla Wahlquist
  • Bees gather on the outside of a wooden hive

    ‘It’s inevitable’: Australian beekeepers brace for national spread of varroa mite

  • Calla Wahlquist

    In my war against pigeons, all I have is a broom. But the ‘rats of the sky’ remain unflappable

    Calla Wahlquist
  • ‘It’s not until we hit the Hunter Valley with its duplicated tracks that the Xplorer achieves a constant speed, and we pulled into Sydney’s Central station just before 5pm.’

    Regional trains in NSW are old, slow and half-empty – but I still enjoy the ride

    Michael Burge
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Multimedia

  • Sheep grazing at the Warwick solar farm outside Warwick, Queensland

    Inside the renewable energy resistance in regional Australia – Full Story podcast

  • Pilgrims wearing fluorescent vests and carrying Palestinian flags

    A Gaza ceasefire pilgrimage walks 45km through central Victoria – in pictures

    Walkers journey from Daylesford to Ballarat – the distance roughly the same length as the Palestinian territory
  • Woody the merino sheep – found wandering the streets of a small NSW town – has undergone a dramatic transformation, shedding just over 10kg of wool after three years on the run
    0:58

    Woody the runaway sheep brought in for first shearing in three years – video

    Woody the merino sheep – found wandering the streets of a small NSW town – has undergone a dramatic transformation, shedding just over 10kg of wool after three years on the run
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Newsletter

  • A windmill in the red hue of a sunset in Australia

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s email about regional affairs

    Catch up on everything rural from our regional reporters and newsrooms, with rural and regional editor Calla Wahlquist

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