Toilets open on game days
Some good news for spectators — particularly those with irritable bladders — who like to park their car on the eastern side of the Kyabram recreation reserve to watch cricket and footy games.
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Kyabram Football Netball Club and the Kyabram Cricket Club can reopen the old toilet block in the south-eastern corner on game days.
It saves those spectators in the vicinity, particularly the older generation, the lengthy walk to the only other public toilet block on the reserve in the north-western area.
Wet start to March
After an almost rainless February it has been a a wet start to March, with 45.8mm recorded up to noon Monday.
The bulk of the rain fell on Tuesday of last week (March 2) with the Kyabram weather station recording 31.4mm to add to 0.8mm in the previous 24 hours.
Then in the early hours of Saturday morning another 13.6mm was in the gauge and another 2.8mm on Sunday morning.
The falls have taken Kyabram’s yearly total to 97.2mm.
The rain has been accompanied by unpleasant humidity.
Mural title defence
Rochester is gearing up for its annual mural festival to be held between March 20 and 27.
Organisers have shortlisted eight final entries and in this this year’s festival field are last year’s winner and dual champion Kerry Nicholson plus Jared Farrow, Gren Freeman, Chris Duffy, Marco Pennacchia, Christina Rankin and joint entries Rebecca Murray-Grahame Wilson and Maryann Jenkins-Joyce Dempsey.
The event, which costs around $20,000 to stage and never runs at a profit, has been financed by a grant received in 2019 by the Rochester Business Network, which has covered the past two festivals and also this year’s.
There are 36 murals from previous festivals on display around the town.
A dinner on the Saturday night (March 19) kicks off the festival and the artists go to work the following day.
Apricots on shelves
A Traps reader would love to know if fresh locally grown apricots have ever been accessible at this time of the year.
‘‘I visited the Albion St Fruit Shop on Friday and they had some fresh apricots for sale,“ the reader said.
‘‘I’ve been around for a long time and locally grown apricots have usually been available only in December and January, never in March.’’
Ageless school teacher
Kyabram schoolteacher Greg Ross is certainly looking young for his age these days — if you go on last week’s item in these columns how he taught ABC TV’s Outback Ringer star Clarry Shadforth when he was teaching at remote Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the early 1970s.
The gremlins some how got into the story and it should have been the early 1990s.
We are sure Greg will have a beer to celebrate that he is quite a lot younger than we made him out to be.
Riverina bore fines
Two Riverina landowners have been hit with fines totalling $17,000 for allegedly exceeding bore extraction limits.
The landholders were reported to have extracted more than 500 megalitres from bores on their Coleambally properties – equivalent to 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The breaches were detected by Natural Resources Access Regulator through Operation Drawdown, a pilot project focusing on enforcing bore water extraction limits to ensure the survival of water-dependent ecosystems.
Fruit grower dies
Prominent Goulburn Valley fruitgrower Ross Turnbull has died.
A leader in the fruit industry, he was a former chairman of Ardmona Fruit Products for 23 years and a major shareholder of the Mooroopna-based company. He also played a key role in the merger of SPC and Ardmona Fruit Products in 2001.
Mr Turnbull, 82, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2005.
Wetlands art trail
Lake Mokoan was decommissioned in 2010 but the Winton Wetlands is still a hive of activity.
Latest developments are an art trail, which will feature 12 works from Yorta Yorta and Bangarang people, and the transformation of the Lake Mokoan Yacht Club into an educational hub and laboratory.
Navy officer honored
Benalla staged a memorial service in late February to honour distinguished local naval officer Hec Waller.
Hector Macdonald Laws Waller was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy in a career that spanned almost 30 years, including service in both world wars.
At the helm of the flotilla leader HMAS Stuart in the Mediterranean from 1939 to 1941, he won recognition as a skilful captain and flotilla commander.
Transferred to the South West Pacific as captain of the light cruiser HMAS Perth, he went down with his ship during the Battle of Sunda Strait in early 1942. Waller entered the Royal Australian Naval College aged 13 and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Bar, and twice mentioned in despatches, for his achievements in the Mediterranean.
He received a third mention in despatches posthumously, and in 2011 came under formal consideration for the award of the Victoria Cross for his performance as Perth's captain.
The submarine HMAS Waller is named in his honour.
Square Dinkum
G’day
Two Queensland police officers, in separate police vehicles, were chasing a vehicle at high speed in a southerly direction towards Goondiwindi.
When the suspect vehicle sped across the state border, the first police car pulled over.
The second vehicle also pulled over and the driver got out and said, ‘’Hey Sarge, why did we stop?’’
The sarge replied, ‘’We can say goodbye to that car now; it’s entered NSW. They’re an hour ahead of us, so we’ve got no chance of catching him now.’’
Hooroo!