The north Queensland town of Ingham has no shortage of pasta makers. A large number of the town's residents are of Italian heritage - but the owners of the local pasta manufacturing business are not. Despite this they still have the approval of the local nonnas.

He's been a popular artist on the local Gippsland scene for a number of years and has received a number of awards from regional art shows, but admirers might be surprised to know Jason Foster never officially trained as an artist. Jason taught himself how to depict Gippsland's rolling hills after falling in love with them and making South Gippsland his home five years ago.

Australia and New Zealand share a long history of sporting rivalry. Last weekend both nations' competitive sides were brought to light in a basketball game between Indigenous Australian and Maori players.

A hospital corridor is not where you would normally find an art exhibition, but Busted is not a normal exhibition.

National Cabinet is due to meet again this week to decide on the easing of nationwide COVID-19 restrictions on movement and businesses.

National Cabinet has already set a two-month timetable for the return to the workplace of the estimated one million Australians currently working from home.

A former deputy mayor could face trials in two states for shooting his mother and brother on either side of the NSW-Victoria border, after police in NSW issued a warrant for his arrest.

The Victorian Government is set to announce that it will take over the running of the state's only privately run public hospital.

Detectives charge a man with murdering a woman who was found shot dead at a house in north-west Victoria at the weekend.

Barkandji native title holders in far-west New South Wales say they are learning to speak the language of government as they propose a major cross-agency organisation to manage the Darling River, or Baaka.

A 21-year-old who intentionally drove through a mob of emus at 80 kph, has had his prison sentence cut in half but told to volunteer with an animal charity.

Alison Whitehead finishing one of her many extreme sport challenges

Peter Reaburn finishing the Australian Ironman in 2005

The life of a 92-year-old woman bashed in her own home in Mount Isa in north-west Queensland has been completely ruined, family say, as her attacker is sentenced to seven years in jail for the violent assault.

A 21-year-old is flown to hospital after an axe hit his helmet while he was taking part in a mock medieval battle at Hawkesbury Showground in New South Wales.

A man disqualified from driving and tested positive to methamphetamines has been jailed for at least two years for dangerous driving causing the death of a former regional Victorian mayor near Ballarat in 2017.

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.

The Lions miss out on the AFL minor premiership to the Cats following their loss to the third-placed Tigers, the Bulldogs earn a return to finals action, while the Power defeat the Dockers to end their season on a winning note.

The family of former AFL star and coach Danny Frawley say they are "totally shocked and devastated" by the loss of "a remarkable man who touched the lives of many", a day after he died in a car crash in western Victoria.

A child abuse survivor says the priest who assaulted him did so in the 'welcoming' home of another clergyman. His claim comes amid new allegations that paedophiles acted in concert within the Catholic Church.

Police arrest a Victorian man over the stabbing murder of Adelaide woman Suzanne Poll at a shop in April in 1993 after a DNA breakthrough.

The daughter of 1993 Adelaide murder victim Suzanne Poll has thanked police for their efforts in investigating her mother's death. A Victorian man has been extradited to South Australia charged with Ms Poll's murder.

A Victorian man accused of murdering Adelaide mother-of-two Suzanne Poll at her workplace in 1993 will plead not guilty to the charge, a court has heard.

Award winning children's writer Kim Wilkins assumes a pseudonym as she turns her hand to 'chick literature' with Wildflower Hill.

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.

As punishment for having stolen from his employer, our antihero, drug-addicted twenty-four year old 'Case' has had his nervous system crippled with mycotoxin, preventing him from entering the cyberspace system known as the Matrix.

A woman on trial accused of murdering her partner allegedly poisoned him with a "cocktail of dangerous medication" so she could benefit financially from his death, an Adelaide court is told.

A man who had a container of railway detonators in his bag on a train on the New South Wales south coast pleads guilty to possessing an explosive device in public.

A man has been sentenced to six months in prison after being found with an explosive device at Wollongong train station last Thursday during peak hour.

A New South Wales man claims he has been "deceived" by the state's public trustee after his elderly mother's will was allegedly changed without his knowledge.

A 59-year-old worker is killed in an accident at Port Kembla steelworks, south of Sydney, with BlueScope shutting down the site while his death is investigated.

A man is allegedly found with six prohibited substances in his system after being pulled over on a highway in the Northern Territory yesterday morning.

The State Government is preparing its plans to rebuild the Tasmanian economy and some of the hardest-hit sectors are keen to return soon, but they say safety comes first.

Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham flags a possible inquiry into Queensland mine safety after five workers sustained critical injuries during an explosion at Anglo American's Grosvenor coal mine at Moranbah yesterday.

The International Transport Workers Federation says contacts on the ship told them there are six people in isolation on board due to COVID-19.

Erika Freingruber was stuck on the floor of her Beaudesert home, south of Brisbane, for up to five days with a broken hip before police rescue her after a tip-off from the state's newly-formed coronavirus Care Army.

Rose Bay man Bruce Goldberg is awarded $35,000 in damages over a defamatory Facebook post that implied he was a danger to women and a stalker, fuelling "chatter" in the affluent community.

WARNING: This article contains the name and image of a person who has died. A trailblazing Indigenous jockey whose skills and humanity made him a legend has died aged 76.

Coronavirus has been a catalyst for lots of Australians to speak up about their experiences of racism, but what happens when the attention fades away and people are left to deal with lasting psychological trauma?

Heading into the Top End's dry season, Jawoyn rangers are working to prevent dangerous bushfires from tearing through their country and communities.