Working 7 days a week, juggling multiple gigs, all for $28,000 a year this is the life of an Australian artist in 2019.

More than 500 protesters stop traffic outside the Victorian Parliament to rail against the planned destruction of trees sacred to Aboriginal people in Victoria's west.

Rachel Griffiths's biopic about Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne, Ride Like a Girl, will remain unchanged despite horse trainer Darren Weir being banned from horseracing for four years.

The family of former AFL star and coach Danny Frawley say they are "totally shocked and devastated" by the loss of "a remarkable man who touched the lives of many", a day after he died in a car crash in western Victoria.

WorkSafe and police investigate the death of a construction worker who was demolishing a Ballarat home when he was killed in a wall collapse this morning.

Former St Kilda star and Richmond coach Danny Frawley dies in a car crash in western Victoria aged 56. The player, coach and commentator is remembered as a "legend" of the Saints.

Garry Lyon pays an emotional tribute to former AFL star Danny Frawley as he returns to his radio show, speaking of the "utterly, impossibly heartbreaking" reality of his friend and former colleague's death.

The wife of former AFL star Danny Frawley reveals her husband had removed himself from treatment and medication for his depression about eight months before his death last week.

There are only 600 registered British White female cows in Australia, but farmers hope selling the meat will increase consumer demand and breeding.

Police arrest a Victorian man over the stabbing murder of Adelaide woman Suzanne Poll at a shop in April in 1993 after a DNA breakthrough.

A Victorian man accused of murdering Adelaide mother-of-two Suzanne Poll at her workplace in 1993 will plead not guilty to the charge, a court has heard.

Ride Like a Girl's real strength is it never lets anything get in the way of telling the superb true story at its heart.

The green hills of south-west Victoria couldn't be further from the latest outbreak of the highly contagious viral disease African swine fever (ASF) in Timor-Leste, but pork producer Xavier Meade isn't taking any chances.

Police charge Melbourne Cup-winning horse trainer Darren Weir and two other men with animal cruelty offences following raids on Weir's stables near Ballarat and Warrnambool in January.

Twelve years ago Paul Preusker was disqualified for possessing an electronic jigger. Now he's back, training the Melbourne Cup favourite and insisting he's a changed man.

A group of wool makers launches a new trademark to recognise textile producers whose homegrown fibre is 100 per cent Australian from the farm right through to the finished product.

Backyard beekeeping is abuzz with popularity with long waitlists to own a hive in some parts of Victoria.

A jury hears of the moment the woman accused of causing a crash that killed four people in western Victoria realised the deceased were "probably grandmothers" as well.

Richard B Wright

When a fishing trawler is wrecked off the coast of New Orleans, the Coast Guard is called in to investigate the cargo found below deck. Sabre-toothed tiger cubs, snakes with legs, bear-sized foxes and other genetic freaks are locked in dozens of cages - destination unknown.

When Kevin Richardson was a boy, all he wanted was to be eaten by a lion when he grew up.

Paul Carter

Paul Levitz

The familiar and nostalgic, philosophical and witty candour are all alive in this documentation of Gold Coast beaches

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader. You can hear Dan Gardner being interviewed by Warren Boland on Sunday 13th Weekends with Warren.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

It's 'Koori chick lit' for the very first time; A romantic romp in the vein of Sex and the City with some big plusses - a little reluctance for love and an Indigenous Australian central character in the international art world.

Kari Gislason concedes it would have been very easy to write a sad memoir about his relationship with his dad - but he made a concerted effort not to go down that track.

Author Mary Groves has lived the great outback dream and knows how tough it can be.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

Gordan Lomas

Rob Minshull is an avid reader, and the producer of Weekends with Warren Boland.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader

Making the right choice in life is never straightforward but is one of the main reasons we find ourselves and each other so fascinating. Three Dollars is the story of Eddie Harnovey, a honest, compassionate man with a brilliant wife, Tanya, and a beautiful, if possibly epileptic, daughter Abbey. Eddie's life revolves around work and the three women in his life; the third is Amanda, a childhood sweetheart who re-appears in his life with mathematical precision every nine-and-a-half years. Eddie has a lovely house in the suburbs, he has a strong moral conscience, he's intelligent and witty, and the world around him is falling apart. On the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name, has he made the wrong choices?Perhaps a large part of the answer lies in the speed with which we live our lives. It is easy to feel sympathy for Eddie as he bemoans the pace of change: "Everything happens too quickly to be understood while it is happening. Analysis is impossible until the event is over."A more likely cause of Eddie's predicament may lie in the fact that his wife is about to lose her teaching position at the university and Eddie, an engineer working for the Department of Environment, has been asked by his wife's former lover to falsify a report to allow a smelting plant to be built by Amanda's father.The depth of these relationships is explored with insight and great wit, unpicking those worries that come to us at night while, like Eddie, we lie and notice (and usually ignore) the cracks and flaking of paint on the bedroom ceiling. For Eddie, it is a time to rank debts and what has become the persistence and tyranny of the day-to-day struggle to financially survive.Three Dollars was written in 1998, but set in the times of Australia's introduction to what the surely misnamed 'economic rationalism'. The obsession with material goods and the soulless never-ending pursuit of profit are both a target for Eddie's scorn as well as a source of hilarious black comedy. Written with great humour and prose which at times may seem just a little too deliberate, Three Dollars is as pertinent today as it was in the 1990s.There are times, however, when the characters' tendency to editorialise or sermonise is a touch overwhelming, even if the sentiments seem sound or relevant to Australian politics today. Take this monologue from Eddie's wife, Tanya:"People's fear of change and their despair at the lack of certainty in any area of their lives, particularly where the social and the personal meet, that is with respect to their jobs and income, if it lasts long enough, will lead them to abandon reason, to be suspicious of it and to look for scapegoats and simplistic solutions. The wisdom or correctness of a government's decision will scarcely be discussed but instead attention will be focused on the strength with which the decision was made, the apparent certainty, the conviction with which it was implemented."Admittedly, Tanya is a university politics lecturer, but the moral hectoring in the novel can easily distract from the plot and soon become tiring.Ignoring the occasional sermon, however, Three Dollars an entertaining read, beautifully written and extremely funny. It sat on my bookshelf for over a decade and was rescued only because the mixed reviews for Perlman's latest novel, The Street Sweeper, made me curious. No ambiguity about Three Dollars though: compelling, dramatic and a disconcertingly humorous reflection of the way so many of us live our lives. In 2005, Three Dollars was made into an Australian movie, starring David Wenham. A superb interpretation of the novel, both film and book are highly recommended.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader

Tim Baker

Katherine Howell

A classic of the genre that only lightly shows its age, this novel is more an essay in speculative Anthropology than Science fiction per se.

Marion von Adlerstein

Jesse Blackadder

Mike Ladd

Gold Coast author Richard Davis says the time is ripe to re-evaluate the life of Australian opera singer, Marjorie Lawrence.

Majok Tulba