Well here I am again penning another article for you, the reader, to enjoy… This time I’ve chosen conifers to focus on…so sit back and open your mind to the world of these ancient plants. Without trying to blind you with science, gymnosperms (which includes conifers) pre-dated the evolution of flowering plants known as angiosperms, […]

Castlemaine’s The Midnight Blue Revue will celebrate three years of performing at Maurocco Bar with a special afternoon of live music on Sunday, September 13, from 2pm to 5pm. For the past three years, Maurocco has provided a regular home for the band and its distinctive mix of blues, soul and R&B, attracting audiences who […]

Things seemed to go so slowly for a long time but now they are speeding up. The slab is in and now the frame is up and the roof is starting to take shape. It’s still an April bump-in date but at least we can see something happening – which is fantastic. Mind you, we […]

Hepburn Springs Golf Club traces its origins to the vision of local community leaders and golf enthusiasts who sought to establish a high-quality golf course in the scenic hills surrounding the town. The driving force behind the project was George Parker Jr, a prominent Daylesford figure and chair of the Daylesford Progress Association and, later, […]

Lyster Opera will tour a fully staged production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni to eight venues across Melbourne and regional Victoria this spring. Directed by Jamie Moffat with Pamela Christie as musical director, the production is sung in Italian with English surtitles and runs for approximately two hours and thirty minutes in two acts, with one […]

Spielberg Month gets into top gear the rest of this month, with 11 of his greatest films to be shown at Daylesford’s Phoenix Cinema. Spielberg’s range is shown in Sugarland Express from 1974. Goldie Hawn stars as a former crook who must talk her husband into a prison break to help pluck their two-year-old son […]

Where have all the tree hollows gone? One of the problems faced by our native birds at this time of year is the lack of good, safe nesting sites. We may look at our forests and think that there are a lot of trees growing, but they are mostly relatively young trees that have not […]

Journalist: Kevin Childs Words in Winter founder A certain neatness may be seen with the annual Words in Winter festival almost coinciding with its co-founder publishing a book. David Hall’s Eastward is a work frozen in time. With two friends he travelled from London across Europe, Asia and the Pacific by car, train and boat. […]

There are some dishes thatseem to have been designedspecifically for the tail end ofwinter, when the days are getting longer but the evenings still callfor something warm, generousand deeply comforting.This one takes its cue fromthe French bistro classic Steak au Poivre – that gloriouscombination of cracked blackpepper, beautifully brownedmeat and a rich cream saucewhich gives […]

Kevin Childs and Maia Irell have been added to the Words in Winter Roll of Honour for their work from 2016-2022. Kevin Childs said he was “honoured and grateful” to join the Roll of Honour. “Briefly, I fell into Words in Winter through being interested in helping out with publicity, since one of my earlier […]

The Local’s journalist Kate Foulds tells the tale of a familiar kookaburra insignia and how a simple story passed down by her family unlocked a “momentous” event in Daylesford’s history. A beautiful bronze kookaburra was a familiar fixture above the kitchen stove in our family home. I can’t remember the first time I asked Dad […]

Castlemaine Art Museum is hosting an exhibition honouring the Guildford Biyal (Red gum) and works created from its timber. Known locally as the Guildford Big Tree and recognised as the National Trust’s 2023 Victorian Tree of the Year, the Biyal is deeply significant to Dja Dja Wurrung People. It predates colonisation, and its grafted branch […]