For weeks, a makeshift homeless camp with mattresses, swags and blankets, was set up in full view at Little Bridge Street. Read more.

Smythesdale will meet with Central Highlands Football League hierarchy on Wednesday night as it fights to survive. Read more.

Retailers will meet to discuss their priorities for the ailing Bridge Mall, ahead of a push for a long-term master plan to transform the area into the beating heart of the CBD. Read more.

Wimmera shearers picked up lambs and slammed them into the ground, while others stomped on sheep’s heads and necks, a court has heard. Read more.

A 45-year-old man who was found with a metal imitation handgun has two days to prove it was given to him as a present as he claims or he will likely face time behind bars. Read more.

The warm, sunny days continue.

BATHURST: A woman has been taken to hospital in a critical condition after she was trapped in her car in the NSW Central West for more than 11 hours.

BENDIGO: An amateur BMX rider blackmailed children to perform sexual acts online, threatening to take his own life and to publish sexual photos so their families would see them.

OBERON: Less than a metre tall and having just turned three, Timothy went to live with his mother and stepfather in central western NSW. Relatives say he was happy and healthy, rough-housing with his cousins outside, playing video games and chatting on the telephone.

But on August 6, 2014 – just seven weeks after his mother and stepfather brought him to their Oberon home – he was dead.

NEWCASTLE: The city looks set to get its own wholesale flower market, allowing the region’s florists to source blooms from local growers rather than travel to Sydney.  

WA: A school teacher who indecently recorded dozens of children has pleaded guilty to more than 60 offences. The male teacher, who was sacked upon being charged, faced the WA District Court on Thursday and entered guilty pleas to 62 charges, including 57 counts of indecently recording a child.

NT: Work has begun to fix a vital NT bridge which was badly damaged by Tropical Cyclone Alfred last week.

CANBERRA: Senator Cory Bernardi says Tony Abbott should defect and join his new conservative party after the former prime minister was castigated by members of his own party for publicly urging the government to adopt a more right-wing agenda.

CANBERRA: The Australian Border Force has been warned over illegal body searches of passengers at international airports in a report that found immigration officers routinely lacked adequate guidance about their powers.

The biggest swap meet in the Southern Hemisphere is a magnet for collectors and automotive lovers from across the country.  Photographer Luka Kauzlaric was there, too.

HOLLYWOOD: It was the year the Academy Awards ended in chaos. And then there was the ‘other’ Oscars stuff-up. Minor compared to getting the winner of best picture wrong, but another unhappy error.

JAKARTA: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will visit Indonesia next week, in a surprise move that underscores the success of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's weekend trip to Australia and the close personal relationship between the two leaders.

WASHINGTON: Key Republicans, including Trump allies, are talking up the gravity of the US President's Russia crisis amidst signs of heightened paranoia at the White House.

Former helicopter pilot Jerry Grayson has done things most people only dream about. 

By the time he was 25, he was the most decorated peacetime naval pilot in history. He flew over the burning oilfields of Kuwait with German film director Werner Herzog. He helped film the Olympic Games, an IMAX movie, the James Bond movie A View To A Kill, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, and a Rolling Stones concert. Read on