Around the traps

The punter knows his footy well enough to know that couldn’t be quite right so queried a couple times if those generous odds weren’t for Collingwood’s women’s team not the men’s team.

He got the answer he was hoping for “No it’s definitely for the men,’’ came the reply.

He promptly placed a nice bet and was congratulating himself on a possible windfall when he received a call from the TAB to tell him he should have been given odds of 5/1 not 25/1 and would he consider returning or altering his bet.

John quickly advised the operator it wasn’t his blue and he wouldn’t be changing his bet.

Downpour needed

Farmers watching Channel 10’s news last week wouldn’t have been too impressed with the female weather presenter — or rather what she said.

She was announcing a cool change was to sweep across Victoria overnight, but ‘‘luckily’’ not much rain would accompany it.

Luckily!

Talk about rubbing salt into an already raw drought-hit wound.

When it doesn’t rain, it pours

And while on the weather, lack of rain in our district and many others is getting more than serious.

May produced only 4mm for the month which follows well below averages in March and April.

Sown crops desperately need soaking rain pronto to kick-start the cropping season.

Kyabram’s rainfall for 2025 totals is a mere 84mm which is well below the long term average of 214mm for the same period

‘‘Yes we are up that well known creek at the moment without any oars in sight,’’ one cropper told Traps.

Office to close

Another district newspaper shopfront is set to close its doors.

The Cobram Courier office will no longer have a base in the town after June 27.

McPherson Media Group executive chairman Ross McPherson said the expense of maintaining a bricks and mortar presence was no longer viable in an increasingly digital age.

Courier staff will remain available via direct phone numbers and emails and the paper’s reporter Owen Sinclair will remain on the ground in Cobram Barooga to produce the news.

The Courier closure follows another of the McPherson Media Group newspaper shopfronts at Seymour which closed its doors last year.

Full-time officer on way

Katamatite is soon to get a full-time presence of the law.

Victoria Police has confirmed it is internally recruiting a full-time officer to live and work out of the single member police station following the retirement of its previous officer.

Legend remembered

Cobram lost a community stalwart, champion sportsman and storyteller when Kevin Bourke died in April.

Kevin immersed himself in community life and was a key player in getting a new bridge over the Murray River between Cobram and Barooga.

When he wasn’t working with various community clubs he found time to play golf and was very good at it winning club championships and tournaments near and far.

Cash taken

A significant amount of money was stolen from Nagambie’s Royal Mail Hotel on May 20.

The money was taken from an office in the hotel while other rooms at the hotel were also broken into.

Downsizing

Victorian Fisheries Authority is set to cut numbers and close two of its stations.

But the Arcadia native fish hatchery south of Shepparton is not one of them.

Fifteen of its 69 fisheries officers positions will go, leaving 59 officers to patrol 2512km coastline and more than 250,000km of inland water frontages in the state.

Season open

The Victorian Murray crayfish season opened on June 1 and runs through to August 31.

This is a limited open season, lasting for the three winter months.

Murray crayfish are found north of the Great Dividing Range in Victoria, including the Goulburn, Ovens and Loddon rivers and in some NSW southern streams, but the Edward River is out of bounds with no craying allowed.

There is a daily bag limit of two crays per licensed person and a possession limit of four.

SQUARE DINKUM

G’day

Every weekend I tell myself, ‘‘John, you have to stop drinking so much … Thankfully my name is not John.’’

Hooroo!!!