It was one of Australia's worst maritime disasters and now, half a century later, the families of those who were lost have gathered to remember them and honour their bravery.

The case against Queensland man Ronald John Toft, who was accused of trying to kidnap a six-year-old girl at an Adelaide caravan park earlier this year, is dropped.

A north Queensland man is sentenced to life behind bars after he was found guilty of murdering 25-year-old Michael McCabe over an alleged drug debt in 2015.

Time has run out for the owners of 14 holiday shacks near Ingham in north Queensland with the State Government ordering their removal by the end of the month.

A man is airlifted to Townsville Hospital with wounds to his hand and abdomen after being shot by officers while trying to break into Bowen Police Station in north Queensland.

One of the original mining towns in the famous Bowen Basin, Collinsville, marks 100 years of coal dominating the local economy.

While battling its own drought, an outback Queensland town is offering free bore water to communities running out of the precious resource. There's just one catch.

A team of citizen scientists join in the effort to restore the balance in inshore reefs and save threatened corals by clearing them of choking algae and seeding them with coral larvae.

A self-funded engineer was 12 kilometres short of his goal of reaching space at a recent attempt in the middle of Australia's Outback.

A self-funded entrepreneur has failed in his attempt to become the first Singaporean to reach the edge of space after launching his capsule from the Australian outback.

A homeowner says he will consider recommendations to install an alarm in the roof cavity of his house after a blaze caused extensive damage but did not set off ceiling alarms.

Prosecutor Stephen Robson says he does not accept the version of events given to police by Mr Deighton that he went to answer the door while changing baby Michael, returned to find him falling from the change table and then caught him.

A man accused of manslaughter and unlawful sexual intercourse with a baby will argue there is no proof of any crimes alleged against him, an Alice Springs court hears.

A businessman and his pastoralist partners launch court action against Origin Energy over its plan for gas exploration on a Northern Territory cattle station.

Life on a mustering crew in northern Australia means travelling to remote stations to bring in cattle from thousands of kilometres of far-flung bushland.

An urgent parole audit ordered by the NT's Chief Minister in the wake of a shooting spree in Darwin earlier this month finds a number of parolees and offenders are not being adequately monitored.

Questions are being asked about what will be done to keep visitor numbers up once the option of ascending the ancient monolith is axed.

Discoveries of rare animals are sparking mini tourism booms in remote Australia, but they're also causing some headaches for Aboriginal rangers and their conservation efforts.

Thread Together, a charity committed to reducing waste in the era of fast fashion, joins forces with a rabbi to help an Indigenous community stay warm over the cold desert winter.

A lack of aged care facilities has been badly impacting on the remote Northern Territory's elderly, but many of their stories will not reach the ears of royal commissioners.

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park's overflow campground, nearby roadhouses, and the resort at Yulara are at capacity as tourists flood the area to climb the rock before its permanent closure in October, reportedly forcing tourists to camp illegally on the side of the road.

A journey into Australia's arid heart by camel train has retraced a remarkable archaeological discovery.

The rufous hare-wallaby hasn't been seen in the wild of Central Australia since the early 1990s, but that's all changing at Newhaven Station.

There has been laughter and hugs as people in outback Australia discover millions of dollars in superannuation they did not know they had.

A Northern Territory judge previously sanctioned for "harsh" and "gratuitous" remarks from the bench has criticised other Aboriginal defendants. A legal body says the comments are "clearly offensive" but has not yet decided to make any formal complaint.

The future of one of outback Australia's tourist drawcards, the National Transport Hall of Fame, is in doubt after an independent audit found financial irregularities by management.

The head of the Australian Law Society says comments by Alice Springs Judge Greg Borchers were "racist because they are disparaging, discriminatory and offensive, insulting and humiliating to Indigenous Australians based solely on their race".

The National Truckies' Reunion will go ahead this August, despite the National Road Transport Society being placed under the control of a statutory manager.

Sprinting into the path of a bucking 600-kilogram bull is not something most people would consider enjoyable, but it is what Cain Burns does for fun.

Uluru, Kakadu and other cultural landscapes may be tourist meccas, but one respected elder says it's a misconception that tourist dollars are going back into Aboriginal communities.

At one point Peter Sherwin was the largest private landowner in the country, with about 300,000 head of cattle, spanning 17 cattle stations.

The Northern Territory's Police Commissioner and soon-to-be federal police chief admits some of his officers inappropriately accessed the private medical records of a public servant.

Dujuan, a 12-year-old who was nearly jailed as a 10-year-old, addresses the NT Parliament, urging them to try to understand troubled youth and look for alternatives to detention.

The largest remote Aboriginal community in Central Australia is rapidly running out of drinking water but it is just one of many communities in the region that have been struggling with finite groundwater supplies for many years.

The custody notification system, designed to help prevent Aboriginal deaths in custody, has been rolled out in the Northern Territory but there are concerns the people most at risk of harm have been excluded from its operation.

A proposed merger between two of Australia's biggest rural retailers is a step closer to reality after the competition regulator said it would not oppose the plan.

The NT has historically performed very poorly in NAPLAN testing and the improvement in results is impressive considering almost half of students speak English as a second language. But a pay battle for teachers could derail future successes.

NSW resident Sonia Smallacombe says she was racially targeted by a police auxiliary stationed outside a bottle shop who demanded she produce hotel receipts to prove where she was staying.

Australians suffering acute mental health episodes in rural and remote areas are increasingly having to travel far from family and friends for life-saving treatment, leading to calls for more specialist clinicians in the country.