Near a small town in northern New South Wales horse blood is being harvested to aid researchers and diagnostics.

Matt Clifton grew up with a passion for music, but his small-town upbringing meant live music events were few and far between, so he brought one home.

Police find four children under the age of 14 who took a Nissan Patrol from Gracemere in central Queensland and embarked on a joyride to Grafton in northern New South Wales.

Three years after shutting down and shedding more than 30 local jobs, Binnaway's abattoir is reopening, offering a much-needed boost.

The NSW Rural Fire Service says there are 65 bush and grass fires burning across the state, but no emergency warnings are in place. Six fires have been downgraded to watch and act or advice status after spending much of the day as emergencies due to dry and windy conditions.

Weather conditions start to ease in northern New South Wales where firefighters continue to battle two fires that have burnt through nearly 60,000 hectares of bushland.

Business owners in Tenterfield say tourists will be the key to the rural town's recovery, as bushfires and drought take their toll on the local economy.

The Prime Minister and NSW Premier announce a $1 billion joint investment to upgrade the Wyangala Dam and build a new one at Dungowan to help drought-devastated NSW regional communities.

Free sheds are being built for those with nothing, in a creative approach to disaster recovery that is changing lives and putting a smile back on faces of despair.

As Australians start to set up their home offices and practice social distancing, we've assembled 10 simple steps every Australian can take to keep safe amid the COVID-19 panic.

Australia won't run out of things to eat and drink, and shoppers have no reason to panic about any shortages as a result of coronavirus, food growers and manufacturers say.

If you're spending more time at home lately, Gardening Australia's Tino Carnevale suggests you get planting. Here, he gives the drop on what grows best at this time of year, inside and out.

Small businesses are struggling across Australia as the coronavirus outbreak unfolds. But there are ways you can help keep them going — and stick to social isolation guidelines.

Beauty services are closed, but hairdressers will still operate. Personal training can go ahead, but with no more than 10 people, outdoors, and observing physical distancing rules. You may be confused about the latest announcement on social gatherings. Let us explain.

Australians are being urged to roll up their sleeves and give blood and plasma despite stricter measures on social interactions in the coronavirus pandemic.

Tasmania's Premier has warned the public they face fines of up to $16,800 if they gather in groups larger than 10 people in public or private, from 6:00pm tonight.

All non-essential travellers who arrive in Tasmania after midnight on Sunday will be placed into a Government-operated facility, Premier Peter Gutwein announces.

The deliberate concealment of objects throughout history has been linked to superstition, but for a patient at this notorious psychiatric asylum it was an act of resistance.

A young Tasmanian father is dead and five people are in custody after police are called to an altercation in Ritchie Avenue in Burnie early on Sunday morning.

No new cases are identified on the day Tasmania records its second coronavirus death, an elderly man in southern Tasmania who was a passenger on the Ruby Princess cruise ship.

State borders are closed, but has the time come to cordon off the shires from visitors too? Some rural and country leaders think so.

For the first time in about a fortnight Tasmania has had no new positive coronavirus tests, but the Premier says that's no reason to relax while warning parents to supervise children not at school.

The likes of Zoom, Skype and Hangouts have brought an added layer of awkward delays and pixelated faces to our meetings, staff briefings and catch-ups. But there are ways to make the experience less painful and more productive.

One of the two coronavirus cases confirmed in Tasmania is a staff member from the North West Regional Hospital, a day after two other staff cases were revealed.

Two more staff at the North West Regional Hospital test positive to coronavirus, taking the total to six, prompting a ban on visitors to the facility as well as the Mersey Community Hospital.

Artist Megan Walch was just two weeks into a months-long arts residency in the heart of Paris when coronavirus took hold of France. Armed with her camera, she documented her experiences. Now back home in Tasmania, she's just one of the artists adapting her work for an unusual age.

Year 12 students are assured they will receive an ATAR university entrance rank and will not have to repeat the school year.

A coronavirus outbreak at Burnie's hospital has prompted a plea for Tasmania's north-west residents to do the right thing over the Easter break, as a drive-through testing station opens in Hobart.

On the day Tasmanian's north-west coast residents are warned their behaviour will be monitored in the midst of a local coronavirus outbreak, the state's confirmed cases rise by nine to 107.

A Tasmanian farmer's suggestion that people make champagne with their surplus rhubarb draws a legal warning from the French.

Residents are finding ways to cope as a full lockdown looms over the region, with one woman banging pots and pans in support of essential workers, while another considers whether to shut up shop.

With helicopters in the air, police patrols of holiday destinations and numberplate scanning, leaders around the country warn there will be no tolerance for breaches of the strict self-isolation measures.

In the years after World War II Tasmanians took to the country to buy up vacant land and built makeshift dwellings on their own patches of paradise. Shacks now dot the Tasmanian coastline, but they're not as shabby as their names suggest.

Tasmania's coronavirus tally reaches 133, with the director of Public Health confirming 11 new cases have been diagnosed in the state's north-west today.

A Tasmanian woman in her 70s has died of coronavirus, taking the state's death toll to five, as 11 more cases are diagnosed in the north-west.

Tasmania’s Premier Peter Gutwein has announced the North West Regional Hospital and North West Private Hospital in Burnie will close because of the coronavirus outbreak. All staff and their households will go into quarantine. That’ll involve more than one thousand people.

Social-distancing measures mean we haven't been able to celebrate Easter like we normally would, and many of us are feeling lonelier than ever. The good news is, there are things you can do to stay connected.

A 91-year-old woman becomes the sixth Tasmanian to die from coronavirus, as the state's overall tally jumps to 165 cases — with all of the new cases known to be from the disease hotspot of the north-west.

More cases of coronavirus are confirmed as being from Tasmania's north-west, on the day Premier Peter Gutwein urges residents with flu-like symptoms to get tested for the deadly disease.

Seven people face charges related to alleged breaches of coronavirus self-isolation directions after police raid a gathering in Tasmania's north-east.

A juvenile white-bellied sea eagle is back in the skies near Tasmania's Bruny Island after surviving being coated in fish oil and a enjoying a bubble bath spruce up.

A man who was a patient at a hospital at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak dies after contracting COVID-19, becoming the second death in two days as RAAF and ADF personnel begin work in the disease-hit region.

Hiking huts are Australia's answer to Scotland's famed bothies and New Zealand's backcountry shacks and stand as a testament of a national identity that has long been intertwined with survival in isolation.

Another five coronavirus cases in Tasmania's troubled northwest take the tally to 200, as the Health Minister urges people to remain vigilant.

The number of coronavirus cases associated with an outbreak in Tasmania's north-west is "trailing off", the state's director of public health says, with additional retail restrictions in place in the region due to be lifted on Sunday night.

A day after authorities said the coronavirus outbreak in Tasmania may be "trailing off", the tally jumps to 205 with four new cases detected in the past 24 hours — all in the state's north-west.