Latest news with #Bairnsdale
News.com.au
20-07-2025
- Sport
- News.com.au
Best bets and value play for Bairnsdale races Monday
Victorian form analyst Brad Waters looks at Monday's meeting at Bairnsdale. • PUNT LIKE A PRO: Become a Racenet iQ member and get expert tips – with fully transparent return on investment statistics – from Racenet's team of professional punters at our Pro Tips section. SUBSCRIBE NOW! â â â â â BEST BET DOLLAR SHOT (Race 5 No. 8) Dollar Shot did her best work late when not far away in town first-up. She'll be hard to hold out back at this level. â â â â â NEXT BEST TEE EIGHT (Race 1 No. 4) The Allan and Jason Williams-trained Tee Eight closed well over 1400m on debut and will be better for it. Rates a top chance to break through second-up. PROSHOW (Race 9 No. 4 – $4.40) The four-year-old has performed well on the synthetic at both runs this time in. He's back to turf but will be fitter again for this. â â â â â VALUE BET EVERETT (Race 6 No. 8 – $13) Everett hasn't raced since December 2023 but her recent trials have been encouraging and she resumes in a winnable assignment at Bairnsdale. â â â â â **** LAY OF THE DAY **** TOP SECRET (Race 1 No. 6 – $3.90) Top Secret led and weakened to be beaten more than seven lengths first-up. He'll be fitter but he'll have to work early from a tricky gate and could be under pressure late. â â â â â THE JOCKEY CRAIG NEWITT Jockey Craig Newitt heads to Bairnsdale for nine rides on Monday. PRIDE OF PARIAH (Race 1 No. 3 – $19), BRAZEN QUEEN (Race 2 No. 12 – $4.60), MICKIDAMUZZ (Race 3 No. 7 – $5), WELL I'LL BE (Race 4 No. 6 – $5.50), CAPTAIN HILFIGER (Race 5 No. 1 – $14). BRULLEN (Race 6 No. 7 – $5), WEST INDIES (Race 8 No. 1 – $5.50), NORMA'S FLEET (Race 9 No. 13 – $26), ZILZIE LAD (Race 10 No. 4 – $31). Originally published as Best bets and value play for Bairnsdale races Monday
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Major weather event sees Aussie town overrun by 'rarely observed' phenomenon
Venturing out after being cut off by floodwaters for a week, a Victorian woman was stunned to discover the landscape around her had dramatically changed. Tegan Roberts was completely unaware of what had occurred until she stopped her car at the edge of a country road. Stretching kilometres into the distance was a thick layer of spider web blanketing the sodden paddocks of Bairnsdale, in Victoria's East Gippsland region. 'It was just everywhere. The way it was moving in the wind with the sun reflecting on it was awesome,' she told Yahoo News. When she left home on Monday, Tegan had been hoping to photograph birds, but instead she turned her camera to the patchwork of webs. Intrigued by what was building them, she zoomed in and was shocked at the number of spiders scuttling about. 'I'm not usually creeped out by spiders, but after standing there for 10 minutes, I was getting the heebie-jeebies,' she said. 'I had all the windows down in my car, so I thought, oh God, I better put them up. And I brushed myself down just in case because I didn't know what kind of spiders they were.' Related: Ominous sign for Australia's cities after deadly discovery in New Zealand Queensland Museum's curator of arachnology Dr Michael Rix, explained that while the phenomenon is 'well-known' in Australia, it is 'rarely observed'. Known as the Gossamer effect, it occurs when huge numbers of ground-dwelling juvenile wolf spiders climb up vegetation and other structures and congregate. The structures they create are not capture webs but rather 'platform silk' designed as a retreat. 'We are unsure as to exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but in areas with large numbers of wolf spiders, it usually appears to be in response to localised flooding or inundation. In essence, the spiders are escaping being drowned, and the sheer number of individuals accounts for the visual spectacle,' he told Yahoo News. 'There is nothing to be concerned about with these mass gatherings — tiny wolf spiders like this are harmless — and they will eventually disperse and return to the ground to feed. But it is quite the sight in the meantime.' What excites him about the behaviour is that it provides insight into just how many individual spiders populate the Australian landscape. Without them, paddocks would be overrun with insects that would destroy crops. Museums Victoria's senior curator in entomology, Dr Ken Walker, told Yahoo News the phenomenon last occurred in eastern Victoria back in June, 2021. While the effect appears to entirely take over a town, it is actually short-lived. "The webs are made from the finest of spider silk, so they do not last as long, as natural wind destroys them quickly," he explained. Rare colour footage of extinct Australian animal Animal hiding in outback photo helps solve decades-long mystery Endangered species released outside high-security outback fence Although Tegan was momentarily shocked by the incredible number of spiders, that feeling rapidly changed to astonishment. 'I was a little bit creeped out at first, but I stood there for ages. You couldn't help being awe-inspired. It was beautiful,' she said. 'It was probably floating six feet in the air. It was caught in fences, on the side of the road. It was quite amazing.' Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Aussie town transformed by 'rarely observed' phenomenon after extreme weather event
Venturing out after being cut off by floodwaters for a week, a Victorian woman was stunned to discover the landscape around her had dramatically changed. Tegan Roberts was completely unaware of what had occurred until she stopped her car at the edge of a country road. Stretching kilometres into the distance was a thick layer of spider web blanketing the sodden paddocks of Bairnsdale, in Victoria's East Gippsland region. 'It was just everywhere. The way it was moving in the wind with the sun reflecting on it was awesome,' she told Yahoo News. When she left home on Monday, Tegan had been hoping to photograph birds, but instead she turned her camera to the patchwork of webs. Intrigued by what was building them, she zoomed in and was shocked at the number of spiders scuttling about. 'I'm not usually creeped out by spiders, but after standing there for 10 minutes, I was getting the heebie-jeebies,' she said. 'I had all the windows down in my car, so I thought, oh God, I better put them up. And I brushed myself down just in case because I didn't know what kind of spiders they were.' Related: Ominous sign for Australia's cities after deadly discovery in New Zealand Queensland Museum's curator of arachnology Dr Michael Rix, explained that while the phenomenon is 'well-known' in Australia, it is 'rarely observed'. Known as the Gossamer effect, it occurs when huge numbers of ground-dwelling juvenile wolf spiders climb up vegetation and other structures and congregate. The structures they create are not capture webs but rather 'platform silk' designed as a retreat. 'We are unsure as to exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but in areas with large numbers of wolf spiders, it usually appears to be in response to localised flooding or inundation. In essence, the spiders are escaping being drowned, and the sheer number of individuals accounts for the visual spectacle,' he told Yahoo News. 'There is nothing to be concerned about with these mass gatherings — tiny wolf spiders like this are harmless — and they will eventually disperse and return to the ground to feed. But it is quite the sight in the meantime.' What excites him about the behaviour is that it provides insight into just how many individual spiders populate the Australian landscape. Without them, paddocks would be overrun with insects that would destroy crops. Museums Victoria's senior curator in entomology, Dr Ken Walker, told Yahoo News the phenomenon last occurred in eastern Victoria back in June, 2021. While the effect appears to entirely take over a town, it is actually short-lived. "The webs are made from the finest of spider silk, so they do not last as long, as natural wind destroys them quickly," he explained. Rare colour footage of extinct Australian animal Animal hiding in outback photo helps solve decades-long mystery Endangered species released outside high-security outback fence Although Tegan was momentarily shocked by the incredible number of spiders, that feeling rapidly changed to astonishment. 'I was a little bit creeped out at first, but I stood there for ages. You couldn't help being awe-inspired. It was beautiful,' he said. 'It was probably floating six feet in the air. It was caught in fences, on the side of the road. It was quite amazing.' Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
ABC News
04-07-2025
- Sport
- ABC News
Back to Back Wool Challenge puts spotlight on slow and sustainable textiles
It's late afternoon on a wintry Saturday in Bairnsdale, eastern Victoria, and a small crowd has gathered around a roped-off area of a textile craft store. The onlookers have come to Liz Green Arts to watch seven expert hand spinners and knitters race against the clock with intense concentration. The East Gippsland Wool and Craft Group is quietly taking part in the International Back to Back Wool Challenge, a worldwide event in which teams compete for the fastest time to blade-shear a sheep, spin the wool and knit a jumper within a day. The team took first place in Australia in 2007, and second internationally, with a time of six hours, 10 minutes and eight seconds. Another Australian team, from Merriwa in New South Wales, broke the five-hour barrier in 2004 and held the Guinness World Record for the event up until 2017 when the Netherlands beat the record by about six minutes, with a time of four hours 45 minutes and 53 seconds. The competitors may be racing the clock, but their efforts are all about celebrating slow manufacturing, using locally grown and sustainably produced wool to make garments by hand from scratch. The East Gippsland Wool and Craft Group kept a few sheep on standby in a pen for the challenge and a change of plan had them switch from white to brown sheep fleece. "We had to set up fences for the sheep, we had a few options of sheep, but unfortunately two of them decided to roll in poop this morning so they were instantly disqualified, which is why we ended up with such a lovely brown fleece," says Toni Collis, the group's treasurer. The poop indiscretion of the English Leicester cross costs the team an hour and half in blade-shearing time, and the clean fleece is retrieved and relayed to the group's hand spinners. The competition rules state that the sheep cannot be housed or clothed to protect the fleece and that the sheep and sheared fleece cannot be washed, leaving the fleece in its most natural, aromatic state — dirt and all. Spinning wheels feature interchangeable bobbins to ensure a speedy workflow, as the wool is spun by two hand spinners then plied by a third. The wool is then handed over to four knitters, who knit straight from the bobbins. "There are four parts to the jumper: one front, one back, two sleeves," Ms Collis says. "Some of our faster knitters started on the pieces for our slower knitters earlier to get them going." Pieces of the jumper are swapped between faster and slower knitters to create consistent progress with the pieces, and knitters swap with spinners to avoid cramping with different muscles and movements. This year the team is racing to try to finish within 10 hours. The Back to Back Wool Challenge plays into a broader movement of knitters and craft makers seeking locally grown, naturally produced fibres that haven't been processed overseas with chemicals, dyes or synthetic additives. As with the food, wine and paddock-to-plate movement, wool connoisseurs want to know the story behind the products they are purchasing, their carbon footprint in freight, and processing, and are prepared to pay more for a premium, sustainably produced product. Wool producer Julianne Sargant is the daughter of a 90-year-old merino sheep farmer based in Omeo and was a spectator at this year's challenge. Ms Sargant says that events like Back to Back help people appreciate the effort that goes into creating fibres. "When you actually do this yourself, you realise the effort that it takes to actually create fibre," she says. The Back to Back event is a little different from Ms Sargant's usual process. Turning her father's 18 micron merino wool into yarn, she hand dyes it across a number of cauldrons, inspiring the Woollen Witchery brand name. "I hand dye with plants from the farm and the garden, like gum leaves, and I grow my own indigo and marigolds, and I use Omeo gum, blue gum and narrow-leaved peppermint to colour wool," she says. Ms Sargant says her father has spent his life breeding sheep and mitigating seasonal variations in their fibres by providing the right mix of nutrition. The best wool is selected, 200 kilograms of it is sent to one of two remaining commercial scouring facilities in Australia, EP Robinson in Geelong, where it is commercially washed to remove any lanolin grease that may clog machinery. It is then sent on to Cashmere Connections at Bacchus Marsh, where it is turned into a fluffy tube of aligned fibres known as "tops". The wool then either heads to the Great Ocean Road Woollen Mill in Ballarat, or the Adagio Woollen Mill in the Blue Mountains for further processing before returning to Omeo as skeins of wool. It can be a two-year process to create the wool and a skein costs upwards of $30. "It's the quality of the product and it's the traceability. You know where it's come from," Ms Sargant says. While the East Gippsland Wool and Craft Group hoped to return Australia to the top of the international rankings, this year it didn't pan out. The fastest team was the US's San Diego County Spinners, who took out top spot in the worldwide challenge with a time of seven hours and 12 minutes. The East Gippsland Wool and Craft Group came seventh with a time of 13 hours, eight minutes and 21 secs, while raising $300 for a local children's cancer charity in the process. Ms Sargent says locally produced wool — like that highlighted at Back to Back — is popular at wool shows attended by "yarn addicts". Some of the more popular events are the Canberra Wool Expo, the Coburg Market and the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show. Ms Sargant says people who make their own garments using locally produced wool are less likely to throw them away, resulting in a more sustainable lifestyle. "If it doesn't leave this shore you're saving all those carbon miles to start with," she says.
ABC News
15-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Victorian GP Margaret Niemann awarded for her work as a mental health trailblazer
Margaret Niemann laughs off a question about her "legacy" in regional healthcare, but her impact is undeniable. The retired general practitioner, whose career spanned four decades, was recently awarded an OAM in the King's Birthday honours for her services to medicine as a GP. Dr Niemann's list of achievements is extensive, and includes long stints in remote Aboriginal communities, as well as providing groundbreaking access to mental health support in regional areas, long before such things became commonplace. Growing up in a suburban household in the Melbourne region, with no relatives ever working in the health or care sectors, Dr Niemann's choice to go into medicine was unexpected. "It just interested me," she said. "I was curious about how people worked and what made them tick, and I thought medicine sounded like a way I could explore that. Dr Neimann married a fellow med-school student, Michael Dawkins, a "country boy" who wanted to go into rural general practice. The idea intrigued young Margaret, and they made their home in the East Gippsland town of Bairnsdale in 1984, settling down with their one-month-old baby. Dr Niemann worked there as a GP-obstetrician while having her own children, and quickly noticed a gap in services for new mothers. PANDA — Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia — had started up in Melbourne a few years earlier, but Dr Niemann said "there wasn't anything in the country at the time". She and some others in the community joined forces to start offering antenatal classes in the area. The take-up was high, with strong interest from young mums and it helped solidify Dr Niemann's own interest in the area of mental health. After 12 years in Bairnsdale and three children, Dr Niemann and her husband needed a change. It came in the form of a federal government push to have GPs living in remote Northern Territory communities, which led Dr Niemann and her husband to Maningrida, an Arnhem Land town of about 2,500 people, 500 kilometres east of Darwin. She admitted it was nerve-racking, but with her husband, who she says is an "excellent GP", they "made a good team", providing much-needed healthcare and developing strong bonds with the Aboriginal community. Dr Neimann said she and her husband would often go out hunting, fishing and foraging with the locals, giving them a fascinating insight into the culture. "We just clicked — it worked well," Dr Niemann said. Dr Niemann said while she loved working in Aboriginal health, she was most proud of her achievements in mental health. When she began in the field, mental health care, as we now know it, was in its infancy, and psychological services in regional areas were pretty much non-existent. Dr Niemann said her earliest work was with people with eating disorders, and it grew from there. "There were no psychologists … so things like anxiety and depression, and even obsessive-compulsive disorder and PTSD were very hard to get any sort of support [for]," she said. While in Bairnsdale, she began diving into the psychological effects of trauma, which dovetailed with her work in Aboriginal communities, where she quickly recognised the impact of intergenerational trauma. "When I started, the idea [of] the psychological effects of trauma and PTSD was just not on the radar," Dr Neimann said. "People didn't think about it [or] acknowledge it. "[But now] it is recognised that it does cause … ongoing problems. We've progressed enormously from that time." Dr Niemann is quick to point out that throughout her career, especially when working remotely, she has been part of a good team. She retired during the COVID pandemic, and is loathe to use the word "legacy" when discussing the achievements and career that earned her a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the recent King's Birthday honours. Dr Neimann and her husband still live in Bairnsdale, where she enjoys gardening, baking, crafting and catching up with friends and family. After a long career, "life's good", she said.
