Latest news with #Tassie
Time Out
15-07-2025
- Time Out
This abandoned train tunnel is now Australia's coolest mushroom farm – and you can explore it
Mushrooms are everywhere right now – and I'm talking in more places than just your bowl of risotto. These humble fungi are popping up in everything from plant-based proteins and coffee powders to skincare serums, wellness elixirs, biodegradable packaging and even faux leather made from mushroom roots. I, for one, am an OG mushroom fan and love all the umami goodness they add to dishes. So when I heard about an old railway tunnel turned fungi farm hiding in Tasmania, I had to visit. Just like mushroom sprouts, this tunnel is destined to grow into something awesome. Hidden below the slopes of Mount Rumney, just a 20-minute drive from Hobart 's CBD, Tunnel Hill Mushrooms is one of only two operating mushroom farms in abandoned railway tunnels across the country. After more than a decade of exclusively supplying local chefs and restaurants, founder Dean Smith is finally rolling up the tunnel door and welcoming the public to explore the mycelial magic of his underground mushroom lair. The story behind Tunnel Hill Mushrooms is as extraordinary as the fungi it produces. When Smith and his family purchased the Mount Rumney property in 2000 – which included a 90-metre stretch of the 165-metre, heritage-listed Bellerive–Sorell railway tunnel – they intended to transform it into a small hobby farm. That was, until they received a surprise visit from Dr Warwick Gill, the original farm manager at Huon Valley Mushrooms. With Gill as his mentor, Smith discovered that the tunnel's cool, damp climate and naturally high humidity were ideal for growing mushrooms. After a workplace injury forced him to give up his career as a qualified electrician, he fully turned his energy to fungi, setting up a small home lab and experimenting with cold-loving oyster strains. Fast forward almost 20 years, and Tunnel Hill is now one of Tasmania's most sought-after suppliers, providing gourmet mushrooms on demand to top restaurants like Aløft, Peppina, Driftwood and Tasman Restaurant. In a self-built lab next to the tunnel, Smith clones mycelium, cultivates them on agar plates, spawns them in sterilised grain to create fully-inoculated blocks and places them in the tunnel, where the mushroom bodies begin to grow. Over the years, his one-man oyster mushroom operation has expanded to include lion's mane, reishi, shiitake and shimeji turkey tail varieties, just to name a few. Tunnel Hill has previously collaborated with popular Tassie events, like Dark Mofo and Beaker Street Festival – but now, Smith is opening his tunnel to tastemakers interested in learning about the production process from petri dish to plate. The coolest part is the chance for visitors to harvest their own mushrooms and have them cooked for tasting on a one-of-a-kind 'train barbecue'. Smith plans to double his fungi-growing operation in the coming years and design a space in the tunnel for private dinners and one-off events. In the meantime, you can check out his Off Season tunnel tours here. 🌊 The best places to visit in Tasmania ❄️ I visited Australia's coldest state in the middle of winter – here's why you should too
ABC News
01-07-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Lab Notes: What we can learn from the world's cleanest air
News Grab: It's the early morning vista that Sydneysiders have become accustomed to. Thick smoke from the bushfires enveloping the city. The air quality index peaked at North Parramatta and Macquarie Park, ten points higher than Beijing. We Belinda Smith: often hear about places with bad air quality, both here and overseas. News Grab: Toxic particulates in Delhi's air measured over 700 micrograms on a scale where an annual average above 5 is deemed unsafe. Belinda Smith: But what about where the air is, well, not just clean, but cleaner than anywhere else on earth? Well, it turns out that air can be found blowing onto the north-west tip of Tassie at a place called Kennaook/Cape Grim. There, you'll find an air pollution station, which, along with a bunch of similar facilities around the world, has quietly been keeping track of how we humans have been changing the make up of our atmosphere. And it's been doing this for nearly 50 years. So what can we learn from the world's cleanest air? Hi, I'm Belinda Smith, and you're listening to Lab Notes, the show that dissects the science behind new discoveries and current events. To explain what's going on at Kennaook/Cape Grim, is Ruhi Humphries, an atmospheric scientist at the CSIRO. So why is it important to collect this data? Ruhi Humphries: You could very easily ask, it's super clean, why do we care? But if you're going on a diet, you need to know your before weight, so you can figure out your after weight and how much you've lost. And for climate change, if we want to understand our impact, and thus how to mitigate that effectively, we need to know what the atmosphere looks like without that pollution. Belinda Smith: This station's been measuring the air for nearly 50 years now. What's so important about all that historical data? Ruhi Humphries: Ideally, we'd build a time machine and we'd go back to the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, and measure the atmosphere there. And we can kind of do that with ice cores, with some components, but with many components we can't do that. And so we have to find a location on the planet which is as clean as possible, without human influence as possible, so that we can really define that pristine baseline really well, so then we can understand what the impact of humans is, and thus how to mitigate for it. Belinda Smith: That pristine baseline is measured in a place that cops winds straight off the Southern Ocean. And being there, unsurprisingly, it's... Ruhi Humphries: remote and windy. I was looking at the data this morning, actually, and the wind speeds for the last 24 hours have been a minimum of 60km an hour. Oh, wow. Just Belinda Smith: a breeze, really. Yeah, Ruhi Humphries: yeah. Belinda Smith: What does the air feel like when it goes into your lungs when you're standing there? Ruhi Humphries: It gets pushed in, because it's so windy. But, yeah, it's just clean marine air. It's salty and doesn't smell like much, really, other than salt. Belinda Smith: How do you know this air is the cleanest in the world? How do you measure that? Ruhi Humphries: Same way you measure the dirty air, but you just have to have really sensitive instruments. Belinda Smith: And Kennaook/Cape Grim gets a thing called the baseline sector from the southwest winds. Ruhi Humphries: That's air that's come off the Southern Ocean and really hasn't touched land or had human influence for weeks, and a lot of the time has come off the Antarctic continent as well. So it's super clean, super pristine. Belinda Smith: What sorts of things do you measure? Ruhi Humphries: Your standard MET package, wind direction, temperature, that kind of stuff. But the main focus is really atmospheric composition, so what gases are there and what particles are there. So we've got greenhouse gas measurements, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, that kind of stuff. We take flask measurements for CFCs and other long-lived fluorocarbons. Belinda Smith: So they're things that can destroy ozone. Ruhi Humphries: Exactly, yep. We do reactive gases like ozone, so ozone in the troposphere, so the part of the atmosphere where we live, rather than the stratosphere, which is where ozone's really good in the stratosphere, protects all life from UV. In the troposphere, it's a pollutant, and so you really need to measure it. Belinda Smith: So 50 years ago, when Kennaook/Cape Grim, was identified as a primo posse to keep tabs on the atmosphere, an ex-NASA monitoring station, which was basically a very large caravan, was set up at the site to begin collecting data. Now there's a proper building and everything, so the facility has changed a bit. But more importantly, how has the air changed over that time? Ruhi Humphries: There at Cape Grim, we've seen a 20% increase in a lot of the greenhouse gases around the world. The Southern Ocean is a really great place to measure that, because the Southern Hemisphere has about 10% land mass, I believe, and so you don't get that biosphere cycle that you get in the Northern Hemisphere. Belinda Smith: Is that when plants use more carbon in the growing months and less in the wintry months? Correct, Ruhi Humphries: yep. So you see this, basically, the biosphere breathe in and then breathe out and breathe in and breathe out with that seasonal cycle. So that's a lot less in the Southern Hemisphere, compared to the Northern Hemisphere, but you still see this really stark upward trend in all the greenhouse gases. Belinda Smith: The Kennaook/ Cape Grim facility also picks up the signatures of big events that chuck a whole bunch of stuff into the atmosphere, like the 2020 bushfires. Ruhi Humphries: They could be detected by monitoring stations all around the world. A lot of those fires actually went east from the east coast, and so in Cape Grim, we only would have seen them if they'd go right around the globe and then come back and then hit us at Cape Grim. When the wind was coming from the north, though, absolutely, we saw them, and we saw that smoke, and that's an active area of research that we use Kenilk, Cape Grim data for. Once those plumes, though, are above that surface layer, which happens quite quickly because they're so hot, we see them in different types of measurements. So instead of instruments where we've literally stuck a tube out the window and we're sucking air in at 10 metres above the ground, we actually have remote sensing instruments like they have on satellites where you've got an instrument on the ground looking up at the sun, and so anything in that path between that instrument and the sun, you can see. Belinda Smith: I'm curious as to whether COVID made any difference to the measurements that you got at Cape Grim. Did that affect anything? Ruhi Humphries: It's a big question that a lot of people around the world have tried to answer in terms of what impact COVID had on climate change. I think the short answer is it may have slowed it down for a moment, but not by much. Just for a moment. Just for a moment. Belinda Smith: Yep. What about air quality? Ruhi Humphries: Air quality was definitely improved. Air quality is a bit different, though, because it's a short-term phenomenon. So a lot of the stuff that impacts air quality will kind of â€' the lifetimes of those species in the atmosphere is quite short, and so once you remove the source, it doesn't take long for the air quality to drastically improve. So when you shut down a whole city, you get rid of all the cars and reduce your industry, your air quality will drastically improve. Belinda Smith: Until everything starts up again. Until everything starts up again, exactly. Ruhi Humphries: So the long-term solutions to air quality improvement are cleaner technology and getting rid of industries that â€' or cleaning up industries that are highly polluting. Belinda Smith: Kennaook/Cape Grim also measures tiny particles that are suspended in the wind and the atmosphere? These are known as aerosols. Ruhi Humphries: That could be sea salt or like sulfate aerosols or soot from cars or all sorts of things like that. And again, there's natural aerosols and then there's anthropogenic aerosols as well. But one of the really cool things that's happening at the moment at Cape Grim is we've got heaps of instruments to measure clouds and how the aerosols interact with clouds and really impact the properties of the clouds. Belinda Smith: Properties such as how much sunlight and heat they reflect back into space. Ruhi Humphries: You're in an aeroplane and you look down and there's clouds there and it's super reflective and you've got to put your sunnies on. If the clouds aren't there, you don't really need your sunnies. That reflection is really impacting how much light is getting to the surface, how much heat is getting to the surface, therefore what your climate is doing with that heat and how much of that heat can get trapped back into the atmosphere by the greenhouse gases. So Belinda Smith: just getting back to aerosols, what do they have to do with clouds? Ruhi Humphries: All clouds basically need an aerosol particle to form. So to form a cloud droplet, if you didn't have a little particle on which the water vapour can actually condense, then you'd need about 300% relative humidity to form a cloud. Right, okay, so it's like Belinda Smith: dust or something? Yeah, so you've Ruhi Humphries: got dust or sea salt aerosol or sulphate from cars or anything like that. So we call them cloud condensation nuclei. And so the number of those cloud condensation nuclei determines how many water droplets are in your cloud. And that determines your cloud lifetime and how reflective your cloud is. So in a polluted area, you might have lots and lots of aerosol particles. And so therefore your cloud droplets are much smaller for the given amount of water. You're dividing your amount of water into many particles and many droplets rather than just a few. Whereas in the clean atmosphere where there's not many aerosol particles, your cloud droplets therefore become bigger. Belinda Smith: And so what does that do to the reflectivity of the cloud? Ruhi Humphries: So the more droplets that you've got, the smaller they are, the more they reflect. Belinda Smith: Oh, okay, all right. So the cloud cover here would be more reflective than the cloud cover over the Southern Ocean then? Yes, Ruhi Humphries: except that the Southern Ocean is one of the cloudiest places in the world. Oh, okay. So you've almost always got cloud there as well. Belinda Smith: Okay, so basically clouds are super complex. Ruhi Humphries: One of the key things is that the Northern Hemisphere is much more polluted than the Southern Hemisphere. But the Northern Hemisphere is where 90% of the world's population live and that's where a lot more of the research happens. And so we understand that environment a lot more because there's been more studies there. Whereas in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and our region, there's just less of that research happening, so we have less understanding of what's going on here. Belinda Smith: Yeah, and what's going on here, you know, this whole half of the planet is pretty important when it comes to figuring out what to expect climate-wise. Ruhi Humphries: It's probably one of the biggest uncertainties in climate models at the moment. And one of the things that really illustrates that to me is that there are so many international projects happening to try and answer this question. In the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, there's at least 25 in the last five years. There's a real focus from international agencies on trying to answer this question, like how are the clouds impacted by the aerosols and the biology that produces those aerosols. Belinda Smith: Clouds are having their moment. Ruhi Humphries: They are. They are. They're super important and super complex. Belinda Smith: Adding to all this complexity are tiny organisms in the Southern Ocean called phytoplankton. They form the base of the marine food chain, but they also churn out stuff which can control the clouds above too. Ruhi Humphries: So phytoplankton emit a range of different sulphur compounds and one of the really important ones that we've known about for a long time is dimethyl sulphide. And so these phytoplankton emit this in the ocean and then that then vents out into the atmosphere and then that undergoes chemistry to get to sulphur dioxide, which then goes to sulphuric acid, which then clumps together into aerosol particles and grows into sizes generally, which they can be cloud condensation nuclei. Belinda Smith: And boom, there's your cloud. Ruhi Humphries: So there's this theory that phytoplankton can control the clouds, right? And then there's this whole feedback mechanism, right? Because the clouds then shade the sun and the phytoplankton feed off the sunlight and so then they produce less. Oh, so it's self-regulating. Yes, exactly. So that's a theory that's been around for 40, 50 years and some level of truth to it, but it's way more complicated than they initially suggested. Belinda Smith: Feels like anything to do with the climate is way more complicated than was initially thought. Ruhi Humphries: I think so, yes. Belinda Smith: That was Ruhi Humphries, an atmospheric scientist at the CSIRO. And thanks for listening to Lab Notes on ABC Radio National, where every week we dissect the science behind new discoveries and current events. I'm Belinda Smith. This episode was produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Menang Noongar people. Fiona Pepper's the producer and it was mixed by Roi Huberman. We'll catch you next week.
Daily Mail
29-06-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE How four simple words on a Virgin Australia flight from Sydney to Brisbane sparked a six-month nightmare
A disability care manager accused of making a bomb threat on a flight out of Sydney has had a major legal win after insisting a harmless phrase he used was misunderstood. Bernhard Roduner was on board a Virgin Australia plane ready to take off to Brisbane when a fellow passenger reported hearing him say 'bomb' in a phone conversation. Mr Roduner, who was returning from a trip visiting friends in Tasmania, said it was possible he was telling a colleague 'Tassie is the bomb' as a compliment to the Apple Isle. He also suspected the woman seated in front of him on VA965 might have been concerned about hearing the word 'bomb' because he looked vaguely Middle Eastern. Mr Roduner comes from a prominent Queensland family of restaurateurs and, while studying nursing, spent two years working at Brisbane Airport, including in security roles. The 45-year-old had the bomb threat charge dismissed this month but was less fortunate in explaining why he had been travelling on a ticket in another person's name. Mr Roduner said a friend in Tasmania had booked two flights for his journey home - one from Hobart to Sydney and another to Brisbane - through the Virgin Australia app. When Mr Roduner got to Sydney on January 14 and missed his connecting flight, he bought a Virgin ticket to Brisbane using his debit card and driver's licence as identification. Unknown to him, the ticket was issued in his friend's name. Mr Roduner boarded his Virgin flight and was speaking on the phone to a colleague before final preparations for take-off began. The plane had started taxiing down the runway when there was an announcement it would be returning to the terminal, without any further explanation. Two federal police then boarded the aircraft and approached Mr Roduner, asking if he was 'Mr Morgan', the friend who had booked his original flight from Tasmania. Mr Roduner said he provided proof he had paid for the ticket but was informed another passenger had made an accusation against him. 'One of the police goes, "Would you please get your luggage. Apparently you've made a threat, please come outside with me",' Mr Roduner said. 'I was confused as to what was going on. It was terrible.' Mr Roduner became even more confused when he was told the female passenger seated in front of him had heard him use the word 'bomb' in his earlier telephone chat. 'I didn't even see the lady,' he said. 'I don't have anything against her if she felt concerned but I really think this has gotten out of hand. 'It could have been I said "Tassie is the bomb", because I do say that - that's the only thing I can think of. 'I was in a total mess. I was shaking. I even said, "This is because of the way I look". I have a beard, I do look Middle Eastern, but my dad is Swiss-German and my mum is Singaporean.' The female passenger also told police she heard Mr Roduner say on the phone, 'No, I'm not going to crash the plane' and her daughter had been concerned by that statement. She described Mr Roduner as 'being in his late 30s to early 40s with brown shorter-length hair, and of Middle Eastern appearance'. Mr Roduner was escorted off the flight as other passengers filmed him. After a search, it was determined there was no bomb on the aircraft. Mr Roduner was charged with threatening aviation security and taking a flight with a ticket obtained using false identity information. A third charge of using false identification at an airport was later added. The two identity charges each carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison and the offence of threatening aviation security carries a potential $16,500 fine. Mr Roduner, from Sunnybank Hills on Brisbane's outskirts, appeared via audio-visual link from Queensland when his matter was first mentioned at Downing Centre Local Court in March. He was not represented by a lawyer but entered not guilty pleas to the first two charges after explaining what had happened to the registrar handling the case. Mr Roduner also wrote to Virgin, stating his experience on January 14 had left him suffering severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. 'During the flight, I believe I was unfairly judged based on a misunderstanding and, possibly, my ethnicity,' he wrote. 'I was not allowed to return home or resume work for 24 hours due to this situation, which I feel was handled in a one-sided manner.' Mr Roduner said he had not received a reply to his correspondence but Virgin Australia had sent an email threatening to restrict his future airline use. 'This experience was deeply humiliating and left me feeling unfairly treated, as though I were being profiled or perceived as a threat,' he wrote. 'I was treated as if I were a criminal or a terrorist, which is not only untrue but also profoundly upsetting.' When Mr Roduner appeared before Deputy Chief Magistrate Michael Antrum at Downing Centre Local Court on June 10, the charge of threatening aviation security was withdrawn. 'He didn't even need to hear from me,' Mr Roduner told Daily Mail Australia of that brief hearing. 'There wasn't any evidence that I was a threat to aviation security. This has caused me that much stress. It's ridiculous.' Mr Roduner said he could not defend the two charges related to travelling under a false name - even though he blamed Virgin Australia for the mix-up - because the law was 'black and white'. He pleaded guilty to taking a flight with a ticket obtained using false identity information as well as using false identification at an airport. He will be sentenced next month. Mr Roduner's parents Alfred and Deanna ran the popular Grappino Trattoria Ristorante at Paddington in Brisbane's inner-city for almost 20 years. His brother Theo is one of two founders of Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers, a chain specialising in Italian potato dumplings which has six outlets in Queensland and one in Sydney.
Courier-Mail
28-06-2025
- Courier-Mail
I hiked the Bay of Fires with Tasmanian Walking Co, and found peace
Don't miss out on the headlines from Lifestyle. Followed categories will be added to My News. Many guided walks will show you amazing scenery but less common is one that makes you feel different. We've not long started when the first sense of peace is seeded. Bare feet sink into sand so white it seems to glow, wild bays are bookended by striated fins of granite dusted in orange lichen, and the rush of waves is soothing. Then I spot some Tassie devil footprints. My body gives a little sigh. Northeast Tasmania's Bay of Fires spans 50km of coastline, the southern end of which was this year awarded Best Australian Beach by beach expert Brad Farmer for Tourism Australia (12,000 beaches were surveyed in the process). It's famous for the brilliance of its silica sand, clear blue water and granite coast, whose colours can be blinding when the sun is out. That isn't today – graphite clouds hang low and the wind has whipped the ocean into messy waves – but it's beautiful regardless, and having it all to ourselves feels a rare treat. Hikers at the Abbotsbury Beach stretch of the Bay of Fires. Picture: Laura Waters Obvious tracks and signage are minimal around these parts. However, we're being guided by 'B' (Bryony) and Zac from Tasmanian Walking Company. Rather than a point-to-point hiking mission, our three-day itinerary will be a relaxed affair of easy rambles with a dash of kayaking, based at their award-winning eco-lodge, tucked in casuarina woodland and overlooking the ocean. It's an invitation to abandon any goals and just 'be'. Our first afternoon has us wandering long beaches barefoot, crunching over dinky bays metres thick with washed-up seashells, and rock-hopping granite headlands colliding with an emerald interior. The pace is slow and it's hardly exhausting yet we're rewarded with a peppermint foot bath and a glass of bubbles on arrival at the lodge anyway, prepared by angelic and softly spoken spa attendant, Jess. I feel calm just looking at her. The Bay of Fires Lodge overlooking the renowned beach. Picture: Tourism Australia You often hear of architects wanting to build something that connects with the landscape and makes people feel something, and this lodge achieves both in spades. Two long timber and glass pavilions feature so many soaring louvred windows I almost feel outside when I'm in. You can see the stars from bed, the ocean from the shower. Wallabies drink from rock hollows in the garden. It's off grid, using composting toilets, rainwater and solar power, and the mild inconvenience of only being able to charge my phone in the library is a deterrent from mindless scrolling. It's a disconnection from everything that doesn't matter and a connection with everything that does: nature, conversation and the sharing of good food, of which there is plenty. Kayaking on Ansons River. Picture: Laura Waters Our second day is heralded by the sun's lemony glow rising from the ocean, in full glory by the time we slip into kayaks for a morning paddle on Ansons River. Dark tannin waters mirror the blue skies, trees and occasional dolerite wall. A white-bellied sea eagle accompanies us for some time, pausing to swoop on a black swan in a David Attenborough-level display of nature. The return to the lodge is on foot, across pink samphire saltmarsh and expansive rolling dunes – a white mini-Sahara – that Zac says look different every time he visits. 'First time I came through there was a big sand bowl here. Now it's held together by grasses,' he says. 'It's the kind of place that reminds you how connected everything is and what an impact other factors have, including us.' No one can resist running and rolling down the dunes in squeals of laughter – a tactile, simple pleasure. Another little surrender. Walking from Ansons Bay towards the dunes. Picture: Laura Waters We might have eschewed some aspects of modern life, but we're not short of creature comforts. Returns to the lodge are met with freshly baked cake leading into pre-dinner canapés (the garlic-butter scallops are a hit) and local wines served by a crackling fire. Dinner is kunzea braised lamb, but first there's time for a bath. I wasn't entirely sure about stripping off outdoors in a windy 14C, but the tub, resting on a small deck tucked in the trees and overlooking the ocean, is sheltered, and the water deep and hot. In the distance, Eddystone Point Lighthouse flashes its beacon at me. Or am I flashing it? Anyway, it's a blissful indulgence. The outdoor bathtub, surrounded by spectacular views. Picture: Laura Waters On the third morning, the ocean has calmed like my mind. I attempt some yoga in the library – windows open for the ocean soundtrack – but end up lazing face down on the mat like a lizard in the sun. The lodge team has seen it all before. 'I breathe the air and drink the water down here and I feel my body suck it in,' Zac says. Team leader Katie says, 'Some people break down during the end-of-tour reflection we invite guests to share in.' For three days, I've enjoyed a bubble of peace. I simply want to stay. The writer travelled as a guest of Tasmanian Walking Company and Tourism Tasmania. Stunning scenery near the Bay of Fires Lodge. How to join a Bay of Fires guided hike The three-day Bay of Fires Long Weekend with Tasmanian Walking Company starts at $1995 and includes lodge accommodation, guides, all meals (including beer and wine), and transfers to and from Launceston. An alternative five-day Signature Walk covers more ground and includes a night in eco tents. Trips run October through May, plus a sprinkling of winter departures. Originally published as I hiked the Bay of Fires with Tasmanian Walking Co, and found peace
The Age
27-06-2025
- Sport
- The Age
Daicos bombshell: Pies star open to shock Tasmania move
'It hasn't crossed my mind that much. Tassie are a little while away, Hine has gone there which is great for him and obviously, his connection at Collingwood,' Daicos said. 'I'm sure he's scouting some players that he wants, but I'm fully fixated on staying at Collingwood for now and this year, more importantly.' If he were to head to Tasmania to join the expansion team, the son of Pies great Peter would follow the template set by another midfield superstar, Gary Ablett jnr, who has become a friend and mentor of Daicos'. Also the son of an AFL great, who played at the same club as his famous father, Ablett sent the football world into a frenzy in 2010 when he left Geelong to be the franchise player and the big-name signing at the newly formed Gold Coast Suns. Daicos said he was in regular contact with Ablett. Loading 'I've picked his brain about several things, not so much Tasmania – but he has talked to me about his move to Gold Coast and evolving as a player,' Daicos said. 'He's such a great person and someone that I have leaned on in the past for his football knowledge, he's experienced so much.' For now, Daicos says he is focused on the 2025 season, as his Magpies are well-placed for another premiership push. A game-and-a-half clear of the second-placed Lions with a game in hand, with a home game against cellar dwellers West Coast on Saturday night, the Magpies are set to be 10 points clear of the reigning premiers come Sunday morning. Collingwood have defied pre-season expectations to become the hunted, but teams are also going after Daicos individually. He was reluctant to talk in detail about being tagged, and his own performances – instead praising his teammates for their physical and emotional support. 'We're really happy with that start to the season and just contributing on a weekly basis, that's my aim,' Daicos said. Loading 'Some weeks I contribute more than others, but we're going really well as a team, and we're not complacent – we want to keep moving forward and understand that teams are going to come after us, and we are going to have to keep getting better and I think we are up for that challenge.' He referenced last weekend's battle with St Kilda's Marcus Windhager, and said how the team responds to a tough tag can be what helps a group unite. 'Windhager has done some great jobs this year and I had him on the weekend. I knew it was going to be a tougher day and the boys were great with helping me out and laying some blocks, and ultimately we won, which is the main thing,' Daicos said. 'It really unites our group. There was that moment in 2023 when Sydney came after me a bit and half the team was wrestling on the ground with Ryan Clarke. We find it really unites us as a team, and we grow stronger from it. 'The more experiences you have, the better you get a dealing with it. We have a lot of players who get attention from the opposition. So it's not just me we support – we support all our players.'
