Student Liam Birrer was supposed to be sitting a HSC exam instead he was fighting a bushfire in his local community.

The honey industry is facing hard times along with other producers, having taken a battering over recent years from the drought and a string of natural disasters.

Injured koalas receive life-saving treatment after surviving devastating bushfires on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

A remote WA distillery has teamed up with a brewery 4,000 kilometres away to create the state's first corn beer, direct from paddock to keg.

Aboriginal followers of a Tongan-born preacher set fire to artefacts considered sacred by many local elders, and dismantle and burn a spiritual law ground.

A sea snake has washed up on a beach near Esperance on WA's southern coast, marking the region's first verified record of the typically tropical creature.

Praised for its "sweat characters and nuttiness", a Perth-based distillery and second-generation farmer from Western Australia's far-north have teamed up to create Australia's first red corn whiskey.

A meteor possibly as small as a tennis ball bursts into the Earth's atmosphere causing a flash of light and a sound "like thunder" over Tasmania and Victoria, causing some to fear the worst.

Fire is "absolutely the number-one risk" to the city of Hobart, authorities say. But has the island state learnt from the 1967 fires that destroyed hundreds of homes and claimed 62 lives?

When there's a smell of smoke in the air, bushfire survivor Michael King still feels jittery. He describes it as similar to "how a Vietnam veteran might feel if he hears the sound of a chopper overhead".

DAILY BRIEFING: An elderly female driver has a fright after her car swerves off a road and over a cliff, and the Tasmanian Government holds off formally asking the Commonwealth to help pay for firefighting in the Wilderness World Heritage Area last summer.

DAILY BRIEFING: Two bushfires are burning near the small communities of Glen Huon and Miena, but authorities say there is no immediate threat to people and property, and seven little penguins injured in a dog attack have been released into the wild.

DAILY BRIEFING: On a day of total fire ban in Tasmania's south, the fire service is being kept busy dealing with several outbreaks, including at Elderslie and Lachlan, where communities are on watch-and act-alerts.

The Tasmanian Fire Service downgrades the threat from a bushfire in the Derwent Valley where a lack of fresh water had earlier made firefighting "a challenge".

A bushfire burning north of Hobart could pose a threat to the city's suburbs and critical infrastructure if uncontrolled, a fire officer warns, as Tasmania prepares for hot weather and strong winds over the next few days.

DAILY BRIEFING: A fire that started north of Bothwell two days ago has been upgraded to emergency level, with firefighters pulling out because it is too dangerous.

DAILY BRIEFING: Firefighters downgrade the alerts for four bushfires which are burning out of control north of Hobart and in a shack area of the Central Highlands.

As bushfire conditions ease around Tasmania this weekend, the firefighter's union wants laws to back volunteers leaving work in an emergency as the bushfire season extends to as long as six months.

Proposed new powers for South Australia's Country Fire Service volunteers to be able to stop members of the public from operating due to fire dangers has put them at odds with farmers.

Some posts and memes on social media want foreign aid cut until Australians get back on their feet after natural disasters. But is this too simplistic?

Power is being restored to Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia as authorities consider shutting off power to the Mount Lofty Ranges in response to extreme fire danger conditions in the area.

A police officer helps save a worker who jumped into the ocean for his own safety when the Whyalla jetty caught fire on Wednesday afternoon.

An app designed to alert South Australians about bushfires is still not ready as total fire bans were issued amid sweltering temperatures. A watch and act message has been issued for a fire burning near Swan Reach in the state's Murraylands region.

Two fire incidents in regional South Australia are under control after temperatures soared across the state. A fuel tanker rolled on the Eyre Highway earlier today, and CFS crews have contained a grass fire at Lewiston.

Australia will import foreign-grown grain for the first time since 2007, after the Department of Agriculture approved a permit to import bulk wheat from Canada.

A Bendigo woman is sentenced to 34 years in prison for killing her partner, who suffered burns to 95 per cent of his body after he was doused in paint thinner and set alight.

Accompanied by police, Premier Daniel Andrews takes part in a sod-turning ceremony at the site of the future Bendigo Islamic Community Centre, declaring goodwill had won out over "some pretty dark views".

The daughters of Kerry Robertson, 61, the first Victorian to use the state's Voluntary Assisted Dying Act, say their mother's death was "beautiful and peaceful".

Electricity giant AGL holds off plans to mothball parts of the gas-fired Torrens Island Power Station in Adelaide in a bid to prevent outages over summer caused by an ongoing outage at Victoria's Loy Yang Power Station.

Traditional custodian at the Aboriginal Trust in Lake Tyers Victoria, Wayne Thorpe, is learning as much about the traditional science and stories of the stars as he can.

Deb Foskey has survived the death of her teenage son, a career in politics, the threat of bushfire which has just claimed her home but now she faces the toughest fight of her life.

Crucial cattle herd genetics have been lost in a fire that destroyed 100 cryogenic cylinders of cattle semen in south-east Victoria overnight.

The operators of Hazelwood Power Station should have been better prepared for a blaze in its open-cut brown coal mine that burned for 45 days five years ago, a court hears.

Valley Theatre Fire

A special kind of election is unfolding across Victoria as the Aboriginal communities taking part in the treaty process cast their votes to elect a First Peoples' Assembly.

Resident Michelle Gatt says the smoke and falling ash from the 45-day fire in the Hazelwood coal mine left her constantly coughing and without a voice.

Building on the success of its Aceo Open Print Lab in Burghausen, Germany, Wacker Chemie A.G. has opened its first United States-based rubber silicone 3D printing lab.

Swedish metal giant Sandvik has unveiled what was described as “the world’s first smash-proof 3D printed guitar.”

Nine photographic panels, so large that they've never been displayed in public until now, depict the construction of Parliament House in Canberra 30 years ago.

Temperatures in parts of NSW are expected to exceed 40 degrees including the outskirts of Sydney.