Australia was built on gold rushes a century ago, but there is a warning it could slip from second to fourth on a list of the world's biggest gold producing nations by 2024.

Micheal McRae is accused of bashing his baby son Nathaniel, leaving him with severe brain injuries, but the charge is upgraded after the boy spent a year fighting for life in hospital.

It usually melts long before lunchtime but forecasters expect snow over the Stirling Ranges to linger into the midafternoon this Saturday as a cold front blasts the mountain peaks of southern WA.

Cold weather in Western Australia's south sees dozens flock up a mountain to carry out the winter tradition of building tiny, stunted but adorable snowmen.

There is no sign of retirement for 91-year-old Rex Egerton-Warburton who still enjoys an active farming career despite being in the saleyards since he was five.

Aquaculture has replaced tourism to become the biggest breadwinner in two of WA's picturesque tourism towns once reliant on seasonal work.

A hospital orderly from Albany, Western Australia, turns old wood into stunning works of art using nothing more than a chainsaw.

South Australia's recent "old mate" tourism campaign may have ended in tears both literally and figuratively but Tasmania is hoping to cash in on that controversy by releasing its own rival ad.

In the town of Miena there are just 100 people and human interaction can be scarce, but Kaylee Hattinger has done her bit to bring life to one of the coldest places in the country.

Terry Hodgetts, 80, reckons a lifetime of woodchopping has kept him motivated, and he wants to see more "young ones" get into the sport.

With the imminent arrival of a new salmon processing ship in Tasmania, and another even larger ship next month, some in the local sailing community fear there is "an accident waiting to happen" on the already very busy waterways.

A woman resigned from her job after her employer "expressed disgust and made comments" about her facial hair and another was suspended for shaving her hair to support her cancer patient mother, an anti-discrimination report says.

A late spring blast of icy air from Antarctica has deposited up to 10 centimetres of snow on parts of Tasmania, but people are being urged to "get their skis on" quickly if they want to play in it.

Inmates at four South Australian prisons will be confronted with the faces of cold case murder victims in what authorities hope will be a "conscious jogger" for people to come forward with information.

Plans to relaunch a South Australian ferry service hit a snag with the vessel the Aurora V caught up in political turmoil in South America.

Swiss sailor Peter Baggenstos is repairing his boat in Port Lincoln nine days after it was badly damaged in a Southern Ocean storm he feared could have ended his life.

An ancient lizard fossil found in north-west Queensland shows the ancestor of the modern skink had a crushing jaw, equipped with hard-rounded teeth, rather than the sharper teeth of today.

From afar, it might look like Michelle Blewitt is teaching bystanders how to pan for gold, as she vigorously shakes a sieve full of sand on a beach, but on closer inspection, she is teaching locals how to hunt for microplastics.

South Australian voters watching party leaders cut a trail through marginal seats across the country could be justified in feeling like they have been left in the dust with the state barely rating a blip for Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

An 'island-rock' formation in South Australian is believed to have formed billions of years ago and while it is eroding, experts say it is not likely to disappear anytime soon.

Visitors are travelling to outback South Australia for tours of the former atomic testing site, but traditional owners want to see the narrative refocused to tell their story.

Maritime collector Jamie Verhoeven dons a 70kg dive suit from the 1960s in shark-infested waters near Port Lincoln.

It took less than 48 hours for the author of a 50-year-old message in a bottle to be found on the other side of the world, after being discovered on a remote South Australian beach this week.

At 73, Dr Graham Fleming could be enjoying a quiet retirement. Instead, he's gearing up to be a struggling regional town's first resident doctor in nearly 18 months.

An ambitious plan to power every property on SA's Eyre Peninsula with solar has been labelled an Australian first but is it too good to be true?

A surprise collection of 1,300 lots of Holden and other memorabilia, including 120 cars, secreted away by a South Australian panelbeater has gone under the hammer.

With production doubling in the past five years thanks to new extraction technology and investment, Victorian mines are digging deeper where most of its gold actually is.

At first he thought it was just a rusty bullet case, but further inspection showed it to be worth much, much more.

Snow was recorded in Ballarat, Kyneton and the Dandenongs as cold air washes over the state.

The lawyer for the family of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day tells a public inquest into her death it was police "neglect" that led to her suffering catastrophic brain injuries alone in a cell.

Their average age is 75, but that's not stopping this group of retirees powerlifting their way to good health.

A Melbourne court is told Phillip Galea was preparing a document which he hoped would lead to "thousands upon thousands" of terrorist acts because of a perceived threat from Muslims and the political left.

A refresher course is helping older drivers increase their confidence and safety on the road, often many decades after they first sat a licence test. But when the time comes, how do you tell a loved one it might be time to give up driving for good?

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.

After receiving her master's degree at the age of 90, Lorna Prendergast hopes her story encourages people to recognise that age is no barrier to learning.

A Victorian vet believes he has found a solution to one of the wool industry's biggest hurdles: surgical mulesing.

A 33-year-old Victorian woman who was repeatedly denied breast screenings because of her age is urging other women to "follow their instincts" after being diagnosed with cancer.

A Victorian court is told Samantha Fraser, who was allegedly murdered by her husband at Phillip Island last year, was disowned by her extended family when she left their religious cult.

For more than 140 years, the tale of Martin Weiberg has intrigued historians and Gippslanders. Did the Norwegian really bury stolen treasure near Inverloch?