Miniature yacht racing brings men together at Lake Weeroona for Bendigo Men's Health Week.

High school students from across Australia took part in a program called Fresh Faced Friday to promote positive body image amongst teenagers.

Photographer Jenny Ball's years of waiting have paid off, as her photos finally hang on the walls of the Wondai Regional Art Gallery.

Graffiti artists in Tamworth are now able to legally paint on two walls at the skate park after talks with Tamworth Regional Council deliver 6 month trial.

Day three of three of this year's Great Victorian Bike Ride took us down more country lanes as we wound our way to Dunolly.

The small rural community of Torrita fights to keep safe speed limits through their town, and to acknowledge their existence.

Annastacia Palaszczuk is forced to apologise to Parliament over her threats to strip Katter's Australian Party MPs of resources when they refused to denounce former colleague Fraser Anning's speech calling for a Muslim immigration ban.

Lawyers warn child sexual abuse victims to be mindful of legal reforms before signing away their right to sue, as redress scheme marks its first anniversary.

A Christian Brother who sexually assaulted boys at some of Victoria's most prestigious Catholic schools is sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Every night Allanah Morel packs her daughter's school bag ahead of time because she knows that by the next morning she could be in too much pain to get out of bed.

A former private investigator is using her skills to try to crack a cold case murder in her own family.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

Making the right choice in life is never straightforward but is one of the main reasons we find ourselves and each other so fascinating. Three Dollars is the story of Eddie Harnovey, a honest, compassionate man with a brilliant wife, Tanya, and a beautiful, if possibly epileptic, daughter Abbey. Eddie's life revolves around work and the three women in his life; the third is Amanda, a childhood sweetheart who re-appears in his life with mathematical precision every nine-and-a-half years. Eddie has a lovely house in the suburbs, he has a strong moral conscience, he's intelligent and witty, and the world around him is falling apart. On the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name, has he made the wrong choices?Perhaps a large part of the answer lies in the speed with which we live our lives. It is easy to feel sympathy for Eddie as he bemoans the pace of change: "Everything happens too quickly to be understood while it is happening. Analysis is impossible until the event is over."A more likely cause of Eddie's predicament may lie in the fact that his wife is about to lose her teaching position at the university and Eddie, an engineer working for the Department of Environment, has been asked by his wife's former lover to falsify a report to allow a smelting plant to be built by Amanda's father.The depth of these relationships is explored with insight and great wit, unpicking those worries that come to us at night while, like Eddie, we lie and notice (and usually ignore) the cracks and flaking of paint on the bedroom ceiling. For Eddie, it is a time to rank debts and what has become the persistence and tyranny of the day-to-day struggle to financially survive.Three Dollars was written in 1998, but set in the times of Australia's introduction to what the surely misnamed 'economic rationalism'. The obsession with material goods and the soulless never-ending pursuit of profit are both a target for Eddie's scorn as well as a source of hilarious black comedy. Written with great humour and prose which at times may seem just a little too deliberate, Three Dollars is as pertinent today as it was in the 1990s.There are times, however, when the characters' tendency to editorialise or sermonise is a touch overwhelming, even if the sentiments seem sound or relevant to Australian politics today. Take this monologue from Eddie's wife, Tanya:"People's fear of change and their despair at the lack of certainty in any area of their lives, particularly where the social and the personal meet, that is with respect to their jobs and income, if it lasts long enough, will lead them to abandon reason, to be suspicious of it and to look for scapegoats and simplistic solutions. The wisdom or correctness of a government's decision will scarcely be discussed but instead attention will be focused on the strength with which the decision was made, the apparent certainty, the conviction with which it was implemented."Admittedly, Tanya is a university politics lecturer, but the moral hectoring in the novel can easily distract from the plot and soon become tiring.Ignoring the occasional sermon, however, Three Dollars an entertaining read, beautifully written and extremely funny. It sat on my bookshelf for over a decade and was rescued only because the mixed reviews for Perlman's latest novel, The Street Sweeper, made me curious. No ambiguity about Three Dollars though: compelling, dramatic and a disconcertingly humorous reflection of the way so many of us live our lives. In 2005, Three Dollars was made into an Australian movie, starring David Wenham. A superb interpretation of the novel, both film and book are highly recommended.

Stephen Fry

Sydney's drinking water catchment is under threat from longwall mining with upland swamps and streams drying out as a colliery pushes to expand.

As students stress and cram for final-year exams in the hope of getting into university, a small group of students prepares to finish high school without having to sit one test.

The rise of drag culture driven by RuPaul's Drag Race is giving a new generation of 'queens' a valuable sense of identity and an exponential rise in paid work.

Celebrities, cooks and internationally renowned performers offer online masterclasses, as those in coronavirus isolation look to upskill.

Following months of turmoil, including calls by nine former presidents and prime ministers for voters to boycott, the May 10 postal ballot will not go ahead.

The Federal Government will name and shame organisations which do not sign up to the National Redress Scheme for victims of child abuse, but a parliamentary committee wants it to go much further.

Katherine man Lorenzo Deegan is sentenced to 10 years by the Northern Territory Supreme Court after fatally assaulting his ex-partner while on parole.

Nicole Alexander grew up in a generational grazing family where the custom of handing a rural business on to the eldest son was an unwritten rule — one that tested the bonds of her relationship with her father.

Katherine Comparti says "everything you could imagine" went through her mind when she became lost in thick jungle during a holiday to the remote island of Christmas Island off the West Australian coast.

A decision more than two decades ago to stop births at the hospital on Christmas Island has had significant financial and social effects on locals in the years since.

A WA community is up in arms after a decision shut down a retirement village. The building has been deemed unsafe, but locals say their rights are being trampled on in favour of mining companies.

Christmas Island tourists and locals can no longer call for a cab with its sole taxi operator, Chris Carr, saying he was forced to shut shop at the end of June because of a "logistical nightmare".

Police arrest three people who allegedly led them on a pursuit in two stolen cars through several Adelaide suburbs, after road spikes failed to stop the high-speed chase.

Brumbies star Christian Lealiifano will retire from Super Rugby at the end of the season, taking up a lucrative offer to play in Japan.

The Victorian branch of the CFMEU threatens to immediately cease all financial support for the ALP if Labor leader Anthony Albanese's push to expel union leader John Setka goes ahead.

Police charge two brothers, aged 18 and 20, over an unprovoked attack on an off-duty senior Victorian police officer near a Melbourne train station.

A South Australian farming community has been given a much needed psychological sweetener after a heavy downpour fell in a matter of hours the first good rain in three years.

The father of missing Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez says unlocking his son's last WhatAsapp messages could be key to find him alive. But a leading expert says the tech giant is incapable of unjumbling the "garbled" encrypted messages.

Consumers are pushing demand for alternative mushrooms to new highs as plant-based diets become increasingly popular and people seek nutritious meat substitutes.

Police investigating the stabbing of a 40-year-old man, who was found lying on the road at Hackham West overnight, uncover a drug lab believed to be used for growing magic mushrooms.

An Adelaide man has been charged with a string of offences after he fell through the roof of a carport while allegedly trying to run away from police overnight. In a separate incident, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a house in Prospect.

Adelaide woman Deborah Pilgrim says the kindness of strangers who helped find her after three days lost in the bush is "overwhelming".

During the three days Deborah Pilgrim was lost in scrubland she desperately searched empty properties, climbed a windmill and endured sickness from drinking dirty water before her incredible rescue.

Almost a decade ago, Charles Brice was thrown from a motorbike in a trail-riding accident, and spent more than a year in rehab. This week, he completed a 300-kilometre road trip from the crash site.

NSW Police stated the man was refusing to comply with "seating protocols".

NSW Police stated the man was refusing to comply with "seating protocols".

The Shadow Treasurer is now in a contest with fellow frontbencher Anthony Albanese.

The decision leaves Anthony Albanese as the only declared candidate to replace Bill Shorten.