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Community Event: Suicide Prevention, Depression and Anxiety
July 23, 2026 in Community and People

Suicide is a very worrying thing, and Oberon Men's Shed in conjunction with the Australian Men's Shed Association and the charity Talk to Me, Bro will be hosting a community meeting in November to consider and reflect on the issue.
See some preliminary information here

New owners for Oberon's taxi
July 23, 2026 in Community and Business

When Ashdeep Nash brought a taxi service to Oberon last year it was very welcome. Ashdeep is moving interstate and NSW laws require that taxi owners live in this state so there was a possibility that Oberon would lose this valuable resource. But the taxi has new owners and will be staying in town.
See the good news here

Thanks for the donations
July 23, 2026 in Community

The Oberon Garden club have announced two donations to local recipients. $10,000 goes to the Oberon Hospital Auxiliary and $1,000 to Oberon Museum. The money was raised from entry fees at the Club's Autumn Open Garden Festival.

Thanks and congratulations.

Time catches up with St Dymphna's Church in Burraga
July 23, 2026 in Community

Not just time but a reducing population and smaller congregations have led to the closure of St Dymphna's Catholic church in Burraga. Unfortunately this sort of thing seems inevitable for small towns and villages where the cost of upkeep means that some things just can't be justified any more. The final Mass was conducted on Saturday, July 18, by Bishop Michael McKenna.
See more of the story here

School Daze
July 23, 2026 in Schools

Schools were still closed for the holidays last week, but a book review I wrote (coming next week) reminded me of this article I wrote some time ago for Australasian Science magazine about a perennial and dangerous teaching practice which keeps arriving uninvited into schools.
See the article here

School life gradually returns
July 26, 2026 in Schools

It's a slow start to the term but there are things going on behind the curtain.
See some of the action here

Chasing things around paddocks
July 23, 2026 in Sport

Nothing but winners this week, in soccer, league and golf.
See the scoreboards here

Two good to be true?
July 23, 2026 in Sport

It has just been announced that the NSW Rally Championship will be returning to Oberon in November, based at the Sports Complex and using Hampton and Jenolan forests. As the Australian Motor Sport Action Group (AMSAG) have a round of their series scheduled for Black Springs two weeks earlier we are facing a likely plethora of forest action. The two series attract different fields of competitors so all we have to do is hope that neither event is cancelled because of weather or some other manifestation of force majeur.
See more here

Winter Seasonal Markets at Edith
July 16, 2026 in Community

It was definitely wintery at Edith for the Winter Seasonal Markets but that didn't stop a good crowd turning up to sample some local products and produce. Oberon Matters put on the winter woolies and wandered around pointing the camera at things.
See the pictures here

How to stop fraudsters tricking disabled people out of their NDIS funding
July 16, 2026 in General News

There is a temptation to blame welfare recipients for fraud and wastage in government programs. There are almost certainly people claiming benefits to which they are not entitled, but almost all the fraud in the NDIS is being conducted by those people pretending to be the ones doing the helping. This report from The Conversation provides some details of the fraud involved.
See the story here

Black Springs Community Association
July 16, 2026 in Community

The Black Springs Community Association AGM results are in with the new elected committee being:

• President: Andrew Sempell
• Vice President: Renae Barron
• Secretary: Michelle Swaan
• Treasurer: Renae Barron
• Ordinary Committee members:
  • Lois Gibbons
  • Leanne Knowles
  • Christa Costa

Congratulations to all new committee members. We would like to extend a big thank you to the outgoing committee members for all their work and effort put in over the past year. Here's to another great year.

Book review: "The Fibre Factor" by Dr Joanna McMillan
July 16, 2026 in Reviews

One of the most profitable niches in book publishing is the "Fad Diet", where someone writes at length about the dangers of a food component or the benefit of another. Into this milieu comes this book extolling the advantages of fibre in our diets, but the red flags start waving before you even open the book.
See the review here

Left Behind: Transitioning to Work Getting Tougher
July 16, 2026 in Schools

Research carried out for the Smith Family points to a disappointing employment future for students who leave high school before Year 12. This is possibly a bigger problem for students in regional areas who might have an even narrower range of job possibilities than students living in more highly populated cities.
Read the media release from the Smith Family here

A little bit of sport goes a long way
July 16, 2026 in Sport

Weather cold enough to freeze the balls off a golf green but that didn't stop Oberon's sportspeople from getting out there and having a go.
Look here for the results

The Carers' Retreat is finally open
July 9, 2026 in Community

It's taken two years from the idea to the reality, but the Carers' Retreat at the Oberon hospital is finally here, with the official opening happening on July 7.
See the story here

There was movement at the station ...
July 9, 2026 in Community

The train station, that is. Work is proceeding nicely on the construction of the station at Hazlegrove on the Oberon Tarana Heritage Railway. Getting the line running again is a slow process but that's the sort of thing that happens when the workers on the ground are volunteers and the professionals are in the bureaucracy, shuffling paper from one in-tray to the next. And often back again for another round of rule checking and obfuscation. The railway will run again one day but people have given up on predicting when because predictions have a way of coming up against train loads of red tape.

Could this be Australia's warmest winter ever?
July 9, 2026 in General News

Hottest June day ever in the UK. Heat waves across Eastern Europe and the USA. Hottest ever start to winter across most of Australia. But don't mention climate change or someone will tell you that it was really cold in Oberon last Friday so global warming is a HOAX (the word is always capitalised). This article from The Conversation is written by a couple of academics who probably know what they are talking about.
Read the article here

School's out! So sang Alice.
July 9, 2026 in Schools

The original song said "School's out for summer" but Oberon doesn't feel like summer right now, so we will have to make allowances. The last week of term was still filled with activities, with no winding down for the schools around the town.
Find the end of term reports here

Sport. That's what the back page is for.
July 9, 2026 in Sport

People kicked things. People rode things. People chased little white balls around a paddock. People won things. Just another weekend of sport around Oberon.
See the score cards here