Charities are turning to technology as they struggle to source enough food to feed a growing number of people going hungry in rural and remote communities.

An app designed to alert South Australians about bushfires is still not ready as total fire bans were issued amid sweltering temperatures. A watch and act message has been issued for a fire burning near Swan Reach in the state's Murraylands region.

A company that teaches do-it-yourself builders to design and construct their own off-the-grid tiny homes is recognised for helping make cities safer, more resilient and sustainable.

Parishioners in rural communities are increasingly perform the role of priests, taking funerals and Sunday celebrations into their own hands.

Bus drivers used to receive respectful thanks at the end of a quiet ride, but these days some say they work in fear of being punched, stabbed, screamed at or spat on.

A retired teacher in his 70s receives a suspended jail sentence for the sexual assault of a boy during a week-long school excursion almost 40 years ago.

Melbourne underworld figure Mick Gatto was retained by at least one investor to help recover money from the messy collapse of a major property developer that left investors owed millions of dollars, according to court documents.

Temperatures in parts of NSW are expected to exceed 40 degrees including the outskirts of Sydney.

Albert Burke served his country and fought on the Western Front, but when he returned home, he was forced onto a mission and later died in the bush, alone.

A 53-year-old man accused of lighting up to four bushfires in north Queensland will undergo a mental health assessment, after a dramatic arrest where he allegedly rammed a police car and officers fired shots at his vehicle.

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

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.

Two young South Australian entrepreneurs launch their own social enterprise selling sanitary products whose profits will go to disadvantaged women fighting period poverty around the world.

In the remote Northern Territory community of Ampilatwatja, paintings show the prescriptions for thousands of years of traditional healing.

The 64-year-old tourist was reported missing after failing to return from a bushwalk near Ormiston Gorge in the West MacDonnell ranges 135 kilometres west of Alice Springs.

Josh Meredith lives with Down syndrome and is helping change community attitudes towards disability in the workplace.

A former primary school teacher who abused 38 of his students at several country Victorian schools is sentenced to 12 years in jail, but some of his victims say the sentence should be longer.

Albury supermarket owner Bob Mathews says the scheme has cost his business.

Emergency warnings for bushfires burning near Darwin have been downgraded as fire crews battle to prevent the further spread of fire.

Scorched earth and burned toys show just how close a family's home came to destruction during rural Darwin's bushfire emergency.

From humble beginnings, Dan Kimberley has developed the Northern Territory's first coral and fish export business.

Haberdasheries, record stores, comic book halls, model train showrooms, and flag shops have hobby stores gone out of fashion? Ron Strachan has run his flag store for more than 20 years, and discussing his retirement is taboo.

A new foundation to help fund lawsuits against perpetrators of child sexual abuse is launched, with profits from successful legal action used to help victims and survivors.

The Northern Territory's largest bus operator is facing a litany of charges over the death of a worker who died after falling into the path of her own tour bus.

A man in his 70s is remanded in custody over a string of alleged child abuse offences uncovered in a joint investigation between NSW Police, Northern Territory Police and the Australian Federal Police.

In the early 1970s a company spent millions of dollars developing a cattle and cropping empire near Katherine in the NT. What went wrong?

A Northern Territory man who "continuously" sexually abused his two young stepdaughters will spend at least 12 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of nine child sex offences.

The country's top emergency officials today warned of the dangers of the impending bushfire season, but despite all the uniforms, the stern tone and sincerity of the warnings, many of us won't take action.

Garry Marsh, 73, pleads guilty to indecently assaulting a student while he coached him in rugby union at Canberra's St Edmund's College in 1979, and will spend two years behind bars.

The second stage of the ACT's light rail project will see a centrepiece of Canberra's city transformed, with the southern end of London Circuit raised in order to accommodate a tram line traversing down to Lake Burley Griffin.

The child protection case officer responsible for murdered Canberra boy Bradyn Dillon is unable to say why she did not carry out more thorough checks on his abusive father when she was looking after the case in 2014.

A case worker responsible for murdered Canberra boy Bradyn Dillon admits she was overwhelmed by her job, and felt child protection services did not support her in dealing with the boy's abusive father.

They completed less than two in three peak services, but electric buses are still a "viable alternative" for Canberra according to the ACT's Transport Minister.

More than 16 years on from the bushfires that killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes, the ACT Rural Fire Service warns the community is becoming "complacent" as memories of the territory's darkest day fade.

Firefighting experts and senior scientists tell Background Briefing they're concerned the Federal Government is refusing to guarantee funding for the only national research body for bushfires beyond 2021.

One of Australia's former top police officers says he is not guilty of the alleged offences, which his lawyer describes as "trivial".

A decade of dry conditions and lower rainfall has left parts of northern Australia facing an early and "above normal" bushfire risk in parts of northern Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Australian icon Les Hiddins is back and instead of publishing another book, the Bush Tucker Man has gone digital, with a searchable website and a social media account.

Farmers build bioreactors on their farms to reduce run-off of fertilisers that have been blamed for declining coral health.

A fast-moving bushfire is contained after burning down a property and threatening several more in a rural area west of Cooktown in Cape York.

A club linked to a long-term business partner of the Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate may escape paying a $137,000 debt owed to the council.

The Queensland Rural Fire Service says weather conditions indicate there will be an extreme to locally catastrophic fire danger in the Darling Downs, Granite Belt, Maranoa and Warrego today, as thick smoke hangs over the Gold Coast hinterland.

A research team is deployed in response to persistent smoke from a bushfire that has been burning for nearly two months in underground peat on the NSW Mid North Coast.