One year ago, Tanya Wittmann couldn't swim. Today she is qualified in swift water rescue and hopes to encourage other women to join the SES.

A Sunshine Coast man has been charged with rape and secretly recording a number of his female flatmates using hidden cameras, over the course of five years.

Tourism operators throughout Australia are being told to focus on relationships rather than destinations, or risk repeating the mass-tourism mistakes of Barcelona and Venice.

An unwanted steam locomotive that was left to rust has become a symbol of pride for a Queensland town, thanks to years of painstaking restoration work.

Why does the Australian Tax Office require people to tick a mental illness box for early access to their superannuation to fund gender transition surgery?

When the vet x-rayed their young dog and found a mass in its intestines, Duke's owners never imagined it would be a lump of cement.

Former deputy principal Kenneth Ralph Ernst is found guilty of multiple counts of indecent assault of a teenage girl in the 1990s by a Queensland court.

With dementia rates projected to soar in decades to come, a public pool on the Sunshine Coast is helping people living with the condition to stay healthy and feel included in the community.

Two men are committed to stand trial for the alleged murder of Sunshine Coast butcher Bruce Saunders, whose body went through a woodchipper on a rural Queensland property in November 2017.

Thousands of hectares of native forest north of Noosa, which was due to become national park, will now remain open to the timber industry in order to save hundreds of jobs.

Bourke, outback NSW, has not seen meaningful rain in seven years and while its 2,500 residents prepare for unprecedented water restrictions, their dire plight has helped propel environmental concerns into NSW's political spotlight.

Hundreds of people appalled by the deaths of millions of fish in the Murray-Darling Basin have rallied in far west NSW, calling for a royal commission into the management of the waterway.

Graziers have turned to the help of a landscape ecologist to battle severe drought in rain-starved areas of far western New South Wales.

A group of shearers tired of losing loved ones to suicide hope that, by sharing their stories, they can spark a broader conversation about mental health in regional areas.

Locals at Menindee, in far west NSW, hail funding to seal a key regional road as a project that could "save" the drought-stricken town.

Irrigator Anthony Barlow is fined well below the maximum for pumping water from the Barwon River during an extreme water shortage in Broken Hill.

Buying water entitlement from irrigators, installing cameras on the river, and a subsidy to install water meters are at the centre of a $70 million Government spend to prevent fish kills.

A 36-year-old man is arrested and charged for illegally taking and selling 12 tonnes of golden perch from the Darling River over a 20-month period.

The Federal Government announces it will stump up the funds in a bid to replenish native fish populations that were decimated during the summer fish kills.

Four months ago Kate McBride's video of her father pulling dead cod from the Darling River shocked Australia. Now she's intent on exposing locals' fears about their water and its possible health impacts.

In the shadow of mass fish kills at the start of the year, residents of Menindee in NSW are now worried for the rich and rare birdlife that relies on the area to breed.

Amid the mass fish kills and the ongoing drought, residents of Menindee in outback NSW hope a festival will be the first of many positives that draw tourists back to the region.

Wilcannia locals worry their weir won't ever be built, despite State and Federal Government pre-election promises.

Menindee residents say the New South Wales Government is moving too slowly to prevent the loss of important native fish breeding stock in the Darling River, as authorities warn of further large-scale fish kills in to summer.

Once an outback oasis, Copi Hollow is now almost all that's left of the Menindee lakes system, but its future is uncertain.

New aerial footage appears to show thousands of dead fish at Lake Pamamaroo in the Menindee Lakes System, near Broken Hill, nine months after a mass fish kill event on the nearby banks of the Darling River.

There appear to be further fish kills in the Menindee Lakes on the Darling River, with drone footage showing thousands of fish carcasses.

The president of WA Farmers is calling for higher standards to be met before proposed foreign investments are given the green light.

The City of Albany says it will be just a few hundred thousand dollars out of pocket from investments in failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers, after the latest settlement agreement.

The president of Albany's biggest surfing club says the funds spent on the Western Australian Government's new shark strategy would be better used researching shark repellents.

Nationals MP Wendy Duncan says the State Government is paying the price for the shortage of doctors in regional Western Australia. She says the Commonwealth should fund efforts to attract doctors to regional areas.

Local governments have expressed concern about a decision to kill off merger discussions between four Wheatbelt shires.

The first government funded program to assist those affected by younger onset dementia has been announced in Albany.

The State Government says it has sent a serious warning to the owners of one of Albany's prime vacant lots, by signing off on a plan that would allow it to forcibly reclaim the site.

The State Government says it's sent a serious threat to the owners of one of Albany's prime vacant lots, by signing off on a plan that would allow it to reclaim the site. But the Opposition maintains it's a hollow threat.

The outgoing Mental Health Commissioner says the state's Indigenous population is over-represented in the suicide rate.

Two men have been charged with raping an Albany woman while she was asleep.

The WA Local Government Association (WALGA) says it is hopeful regional councils which lost a combined $20 million in previously allocated funds will be given a State Government reprieve.

Queensland's cotton towns welcome Chinese investment in Cubbie Station and full irrigation dams.

Pat O'Sullivan took over the Hillston Spectator from his dad more than 60 years ago. But now, with his garden calling, the publication could be at risk of folding.

Water is extensively treated before it's used for dialysis

Flamboyant fascinators and fedoras, once destined for fashion's grandest stages, help to overcome isolation and mental health issues in outback Australia.