Two homicides in two months last year rocked Maryborough in regional Victoria, a town whose residents already felt they'd become too accustomed to putting themselves down over the years.

School principal Michelle Wilson spent a stressful two hours on the phone, convinced she owed $8,000 and could soon be arrested if she didn't pay up. Then she realised the whole thing was an elaborate hoax.

Every night Allanah Morel packs her daughter's school bag ahead of time because she knows that by the next morning she could be in too much pain to get out of bed.

The ABC understands the Victorian Department of Corrections considers the Hopkins Correctional Centre in Ararat, 200 kilometres west of Melbourne, to be the most appropriate place to send the high-profile cleric.

Around one person dies on Victoria's rail lines every week, with most long-term train drivers experiencing at least one fatality in their career.

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.

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.

Running With Scissors is a humourous yet disturbing account of his observations of the unhinged world he now inhabits.

Chloe Maxwell

Beekeepers in New South Wales are hand-feeding their hives as the drought cripples the bees' ability to make honey, with a shortage expected to sting consumers at the checkout.

A woman on trial accused of murdering her partner allegedly poisoned him with a "cocktail of dangerous medication" so she could benefit financially from his death, an Adelaide court is told.

Jobs growth versus environmental concerns reignite with a coal company's proposed expansion under Sydney's water supply.

An Adelaide judge remains tight-lipped on his reasons for declaring a mistrial in the case of a woman accused of poisoning her partner with a cocktail of dangerous medication.

The renowned painter launches legal action against his stepdaughter, saying she influenced her dying mother who "suffered from cognitive impairment" to withdraw $2.2 million from a bank account in 2016.

The NDIS cuts off at 65, so anyone who gets an acquired disability has to make do with an aged care supplement. This is not enough, according to a family caring for a quadriplegic.

Lorelei and Peter Murko, and other members of their family, have taken an incredible journey together because of problems they have faced with their kidneys.

St George Illawarra player Jack de Belin has withdrawn his legal challenge to the NRL's no-fault stand down policy, with his lawyers telling a Federal Court in Sydney there was "no utility" in proceeding.

A man who had a container of railway detonators in his bag on a train on the New South Wales south coast pleads guilty to possessing an explosive device in public.

A court has been shown video footage of a carer yelling and swearing at her 81-year-old dementia patient before police allege she punched the elderly woman in the leg.

Winds of up to 90 kilometres per hour leave a trail of destruction across Sydney, with rescue crews pushed to their limits and warnings still in place for southern parts of NSW.

Artist Tanya Stubbles created 22 artworks for a Chinese client six months after leaving a brain injury unit in Sydney.

As students stress and cram for final-year exams in the hope of getting into university, a small group of students prepares to finish high school without having to sit one test.

The University of Adelaide says the departures of chancellor Kevin Scarce and vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen have nothing to do with its finances despite admitting it is facing a budget shortfall of $100 million.

As most of the world struggles to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, one country which should have been vulnerable is keeping deaths and case numbers extremely low.

Celebrities, cooks and internationally renowned performers offer online masterclasses, as those in coronavirus isolation look to upskill.

The ACT Government's decision ends weeks of uncertainty about when the gradual return to "normal" lessons would begin. It comes as Opposition Leader Alistair Coe tells ABC radio that the coronavirus pandemic has ended.

MORNING BRIEFING: The proposed changes allow councils to apply the rate cap more flexibly and comes as local governments suffer financial hardship from the coronavirus pandemic.

Police arrest a 67-year-old man and his son on Queensland's Sunshine Coast over an alleged line dancing scam after searching for the pair for more than a year.

South Australia records its first new COVID-19 case in a fortnight, with a man who returned from the UK in March testing positive weeks after he is believed to have contracted the virus.

It seems famed street artist Banksy is particularly inspired by the challenge the coronavirus pandemic has presented humanity as he gifts a new artwork honouring the live-saving efforts of medical professionals to a British hospital.

Tasmanian students can return to classrooms by the end of May under the Premier's plan to roll back coronavirus restrictions. Rules around national parks, funerals and aged care visits will ease from Monday, with two consecutive days without new cases.

A white former police officer and his son are arrested and charged with the murder of an unarmed black man whose death had been captured on video.

James Stuart Logue, a 29-year-old kitchenhand, also pleaded guilty to watching videos of young children being sexually abused in "depraved" ways.

It is a piece of Australian history never heard how a waitress, a TV repair man and a young Croatian migrant in a remote WA town helped the US win the space race by sending man to the Moon half a century ago.

A boy who stole from a pizza delivery driver and caused $6,000 damage to a vehicle at a construction site was being given cannabis by his family at the time, a court has heard.

Once the scene of entrenched, intergenerational alcohol abuse, a historical hotel in WA's remote Pilbara region is now a symbol of hope and cultural pride.

The tiny WA town of Wiluna has long struggled with disadvantage. But a couple years after opening, an unorthodox training centre is showing remarkable results.

A measles outbreak in Perth's south spreads to Western Australia's mining industry after a fly-in, fly-out worker for Fortescue Metals Group is diagnosed in the Pilbara.

A 37-year-old woman is in custody on charges of murder and attempted murder after a fatal head-on collision in Western Australia's north-west.

Nature Based Solutions is an environmental approach that seeks to counter the negative effects of climate change by working with nature.

MIT research scientist, Andrew McAfee, argues we need to rethink our assumptions about capitalism and the environment.   Economic growth, he says, has been gradually decoupling from resource consumption. So, if capitalism survives this current crisis, we may need to adapt our understanding of the way it all works.  We also hear from Annmaree O’Keeffe, from the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Program, about the value of Australia’s international public broadcasting effort now that the Pacific is once again an Australian geopolitical focus.

Railton is full of topiary with hedges cleverly clipped into animals, words and objects but there are hopes it can reinvent itself and boost its economy like the north-east town of Derby on the back of newly-opened mountain bike tracks.

MORNING BRIEFING: Many regional Tasmanian areas are in a population decline, and Hobart scores high on drug waste water testing.

The family of a Gold Coast man who died after being hit by a car on Sunday night say they're "absolutely devastated" that a fight between two friends led to him losing his life.

The WA Attorney-General casts doubt on whether more than $600,000 worth of severance payouts, made to former Health Department employees embroiled in a decades-long corruption scandal, will be recovered.