Ahead of the huge preliminary clash between the Geelong Cats and Richmond Tigers tonight, one player has a unique way to unwind All-Australian defender Dylan Grimes takes to his tractor and tends to his grapes.

A new willingness to open up about personal struggles and finding a rural sanctuary is empowering Richmond defender Dylan Grimes and his teammates.

For players of the Balloon Football League, or BFL, the passion and competitiveness is just as intense as AFL the only difference being the players are disabled.

A local council warns Victoria's "culture of recycling" is at risk as the state's waste crisis deepens and an estimated 780 rubbish trucks' worth of recyclable material is sent to landfill in a week.

Their average age is 75, but that's not stopping this group of retirees powerlifting their way to good health.

A man in his 40s suffers non-life-threatening injuries after he is allegedly assaulted by a young person at the Malmsbury Youth Justice Centre in central Victoria.

The Swan Hill and Robinvale regions produce more $800 million in agricultural goods each year, but a "dangerous" C-class road connects them to Melbourne. The community says the lack of funding is a "human rights issue" and the system "needs to change".

Three men accused of attacking staff at a youth justice centre in central Victoria with a plastic cricket bat will be sent to adult prison. It follows another incident earlier this week when an inmate allegedly attacked a worker with a makeshift knife.

The lockdown of a youth correctional facility in central Victoria continues after two alleged violent attacks on staff in as many days saw workers walk off the job.

Talks between the union and justice department officials produce new "zero tolerance" rules on the behaviour of offenders and more powers for staff in violent situations, after alleged attacks on workers sent the centre into lockdown.

A Victorian woman who entered a sexualised relationship with a 14-year-old WA boy has been jailed but immediately released after a judge deemed her past had left her with "clouded boundaries".

As more children are diagnosed with both anorexia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), experts call for more research to come up with better treatment and support.

A Melbourne court is told Phillip Galea was preparing a document which he hoped would lead to "thousands upon thousands" of terrorist acts because of a perceived threat from Muslims and the political left.

A judge indicates a woman who pleaded guilty to dangerous driving over the death of cyclist Jason Lowndes, who was killed when he was struck from behind while on a training run in 2017, is unlikely to go to jail.

A northern Victorian man has walked free after 21 months in custody after he was found not guilty of murdering a man with a machete on Boxing Day two years ago on grounds of self-defence.

Buried among the hundreds of witness statements submitted to the aged care royal commission is a table showing how one of the country's biggest for-profit chains employs just one registered nurse for 106 residents on the night shift.

A court is told a Melbourne man only pretended to plan for terrorist attacks to expose a "mole" he thought was embroiled in a police conspiracy against right-wing groups.

A refresher course is helping older drivers increase their confidence and safety on the road, often many decades after they first sat a licence test. But when the time comes, how do you tell a loved one it might be time to give up driving for good?

The 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, is celebrated worldwide and for the first time in Bendigo.

A woman who forged documents to become an au pair is arrested for allegedly kidnapping two girls aged four and 10 months.

A Bendigo court orders a woman charged with child stealing to provide a DNA sample after she refused to cooperate with authorities. Her lawyer says the woman remains in hospital waiting for an MRI test.

World jousting champion Phillip Leitch of Kryal Castle, near Ballarat, defeats challengers from as far away as the Netherlands, Russia and Canada to claim the title for another year.

The supermarket giant announces it will bypass processors and contract milk directly from dairy farmers in New South Wales and Victoria from July 1.

A Melbourne doctor is banned from practising after sparking outrage with online chat room posts, including one that said "some women deserve to be raped" and another that said his marriage "would end in murder" if it fell apart.

An autoimmune disease that has robbed textile artist Annemieke Mein of her sense of touch will not stop the ecologist, collector, researcher, and activist.

Since the privatisation of Victoria's coal-fired power stations in the 1990s, the Latrobe Valley has struggled with high unemployment. But a workers' group has decided not to wait around for new jobs to appear.

Energy Australia finds a unit controller at the Yallourn power station, Graeme Edwards, 54, was doing nothing wrong when he was fatally injured performing a routine task in November last year.

From sky-high water costs to prohibitively expensive livestock feed, new forecasts show how drought will impact Australia's exports and agricultural production.