General News
28 January, 2025
Year in Review: September 2024
A complete look into what made the headlines in September 2024.
SEPTEMBER
- Yarriambiack Shire mayor Kylie Zanker puts her hand up for another year on council – her 17th – as one of five Yarriambiack councillors who say they are likely to stand for re-election.
- Former mayor and one of Yarriambiack's longest-serving councillors, Graeme Massey, announces that he is bowing out after 12 years representing Warracknabeal ward on council and, at 77, is ready to hand over the reins, saying "it's time for new blood".
- The Reverend James Wood participates in the Pain Revolution Outreach Tour 2024, rolling out of Mount Gambier and arriving a week later in Horsham in a one-of-a-kind cycling experience combining physical challenge, community service, awareness raising and education to help all Australians "to prevent and overcome persistent pain".
- The collective effort of hundreds of health workers makes a huge difference to Horsham and the wider Wimmera community, Grampians Health CEO Dale Fraser tells a large gathering celebrating 150 years since Wimmera Base Hospital opened its doors.
- Yarriambiack Libraries is among small-town library services chosen to receive funding through a grant program administered by The Learning for a Better World Trust and Friends of Libraries Australia as the Australian Country Libraries 2024 Program distributes $101,429 to 79 libraries across the country.
- Warracknabeal Community Garden celebrates its 10th birthday with a sustainability workshop, a birthday cake and a free lunch featuring guest of honour Costa Georgiadis, and only days later receives the best birthday present possible: confirmation that the facility is now community-owned.
- Warracknabeal's Courthouse project in Woolcock Street progresses as a module unit is lifted onto the site to become an artist studio with the potential to be transformed into an accommodation unit for tourists and visiting artists.
- Yarriambiack voters are able to put down their pens for another four years as the Victorian Electoral Commission announces that the number of candidates is the same as the number of vacancies in all three wards, meaning no ballot packs will be needed in the upcoming election.
- Wheatlands Warracknabeal Agricultural Machinery Museum puts its antique potato planting machinery to use in the paddock behind the museum to kick off a crop that will be transformed into baked spuds for the Easter Rally next year.
- Wimmera farmer Andrew Weidemann says claims that farmland will be restored to former productivity levels after cessation of mining are a fallacy as returning land to its productive pre-mining condition is not possible, adding: "There hasn't been anywhere in Victoria where land has been taken back to its original state.”
- Dimboola resident Pauline Thomson's passion for colour and making women feel special is the inspiration behind Hats by Pollyanna, a business that creates headware for horse races, weddings, debutante balls and the biannual Wimmera Steampunk Festival.