Local News

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact It takes a lot for sheep and cattle farmers to put aside their differences and unite for the greater good. On a national level, the fight for drought relief and market protections has brought them together in the past. But today, on a more local level, locals from the Northern Lakes district on the Betoota City Limits have united to...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact Her keepers say she's harmless but Brett Galloway knows that orangutans have a dark side. The 54-year-old initially said no to a photo opportunity with the great ape, citing that he wouldn't go into the enclosure unarmed or alone. But his family convinced him. He spoke to reporters this afternoon about the ordeal and the associated terror...

TRACEY BENDINGER | Culture | Contact Walking into the office this morning, Jaysern Vukovic (37), was greeted by an unusually high number of judgmental scowls from his colleagues. Immediately thinking the worst, Jaysern looked down to see if he was exposing himself or had spilt coffee on his shirt, however, to Jaysern’s untrained and sartorially-starved eyes, he could see nothing...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact With the guilt of a two-month long pig out resting on his conscience, Mike Jung decided enough was enough and set himself a goal of getting fit. The mildly-successful Betoota Ponds buyers agent downloaded the FatTwoFive app to his rapidly slowing iPhone 4 yesterday morning and visited his local Cucklete's Foot to pick up some seemingly high-quality Nike runners. Aside...

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT Local demolition expert, Digby Schuster, has tentatively accepted to suss out a new gig at the now defunct South Betoota Ladies College - but he's not gonna show up if it isn't worth his time in cash payment, or copper. While walking through the Queenslander-style stilted single-sex primary school today, Digby asks the boss if he has any idea...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact "I'm so going to get you to defend me if I get done for DUI or something, how funny would that be?" That's the fourth time Alice Munro has been told that since she posed with her parents for a photograph out the front of the Queensland Supreme Court in Brisbane late last year, admission...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact In the ultimate act of disrespect, a South Betoota man has struggled to keep a straight face this afternoon after handing his visiting cousin a bootleg, nigh-on-unusable Nintendo 64 controller as the pair sat down to enjoy a quick game of Blast Corps before tea. Levon Danko popped in from nearby Windorah earlier today and called in to see...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact With his fellow housemates at the forefront of his thoughts, a popular mortgage broker wandered home last night from the Pingouin Aveugle Bar & Grill in the French Quarter when he spied something he thought his friends would like. As this morning was the first of four shire council cleanup services this year, the footpaths and roadsides of the...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact Along with his 3-foot wallet chain and pork pie hat, a local rude boy's slip-on checkerboard Vans have sat idle in his wardrobe for a number of years now - waiting for Ska music's next inevitable revival. It was 1999 and Western society was teetering on the edge of collapse. The threat of communism was replaced...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact The music industry is reeling today from the findings of a decade-long study into two of it's biggest names. For many years now, many insiders have long suspected US rock bands Kings of Leon and The Killers are actually the same band. Earlier this afternoon, the music industry's peak scientific body, PitchGronk, published the controversial study...