2025 - General and miscellaneous articles - Page 2

Triple whammy: how three types of drought crippled southern Australia this year
August 28, 2025 in General News

Oberon might have been getting its share of good rain recently and the dam is full, but that doesn't mean the area is drought proof. Here is an article from The Conversation about the way weather has been behaving in the southern parts of Australia over the last few months. It even mentions climate change, which is happening despite denials by those who reject science.
See the article here

What to say and how to help if someone close to you has attempted suicide
August 14, 2025 in General News

It might be a surprising statistic, but more than one in three Australians have been close to someone who has died by or attempted suicide. Another surprising statistic is that suicide takes about three times as many lives as the road toll, but gets nowhere near the publicity. With numbers like these it's important to know how to act and what you can do when suicide or the attempt touches your life. This article from The Conversation contains some good advice about what you can do to help and to handle a very distressing situation.
Read the article here

Media release: NSW Government delivers world-first foot and mouth vaccine
August 7, 2025 in General News

Australia is one of the few nations with a livestock industry that is free of foot-and-mouth disease, but it's only a boat ride away. The good news this week is that a vaccine has been developed which can control any outbreak that threatens the country's meat industries.
Read the media release here

Wood fires, warm drinks, hot water bottles:
5 expert tips on how to avoid burns this winter
August 7, 2025 in General News

It's no secret around Oberon that it's winter and this means cold and how to manage cold. This article from The Conversation has some good advice about how to keep safe while keeping warm.
Read the article here

The Peter Clyne Memorial Lecture.
June 12, 2025 in General News

Everyone hates paying tax, so with the end of June fast approaching here is some good advice about how to make sure that you pay the minimum amount of tax for this financial year.
See the expert advice here

Another winter driving hazard to worry about
June 5, 2025 in General News

Now that winter is here, this is your annual reminder about freezing fog. This is a road hazard that rarely gets mentioned but which can be very serious (and frightening) when it happens.
See more about this here

Congratulations to Andrew Gee
May 8, 2025 in General News

Oberon Matters would like to congratulate Andrew Gee for his reelection as the federal Member for Calare, and we look forward to seeing him around the electorate in the future. There was some nastiness during the campaign but his main opponent, Nationals Sam Farraway, was gracious in defeat. While the overall result for the election across the country was unexpected by all sides of politics (but not apparently, the bookmakers), we are lucky in Australia that everyone gets on after an election even if half of us are disappointed in the result.

Moron Alert!
May 1, 2025 in General News
Updated February 19, 2026

There have been some examples recently of people with very limited brain capacity damaging things around Oberon. None of the behaviour is life-threatening, more just a nuisance, but it affects everyone who likes to go through life without idiots making life difficult.
See some examples here

Now we know who we're voting for
April 17, 2025 in General News

A bit more information is available about the coming federal election, like who the candidates are, where you can go to cast a vote before polling day and where the polling places will be on May 3.
See the details here

Questions for election candidates
April 17, 2025 in General News

We asked the election candidates some questions about what they would do if elected. The response was ...
See the questions and answers here

It's election time again
April 3, 2025 in General News
Updated April 9, 2025

With a federal election coming up on May 3 there are lots of things you need to know. There are things we all need to know about the candidates as well, and there's even an article about how we do elections better than anyone else.
Read all about it here

A milestone!
February 6, 2025 in General News

They said it wouldn't last. They said it couldn't be done. They said all sorts of things. But they were wrong.

This is the 50th edition of Oberon Matters and over 300 articles of local interest have been published since the site went live on February 1, 2024. The number of readers has been constantly increasing and in some months over half the population of Oberon has a look at something. As Paul Kelly sang (in a different context) "from little things big things grow", and Oberon Matters intends to keep growing and featuring the "local news for local people".

Thank you to all the people who come here every week, who send nice emails and say complimentary things when met around town. You make the effort all worthwhile.

The staff here are very excited and are having a cake for morning tea.

A bit of housekeeping
January 30, 2025 in General News

Back from the Christmas and New Year break, there are some things that need mentioning.

• The page inviting contributions to the site has been updated to clarify the situation with media releases and to include some guidelines about how to submit material in the easiest way.
• People have suggested asking for donations towards the cost of running the site, and some investigating has been done.
  • One popular site for collecting donations wants people to put their work on the donation site in a subdomain (www.oberonmatters.theirname.com), presumably so visitors can be exposed to advertisements. Despite suggesting that a donation button on your own site will work, experience running another web site suggests that all you ever get from them is the occasional email saying that someone has committed to monthly donations. The money never turns up.
  • One donation site that looks very useful has a registration process that asks you to set up a username and password, tells you that everything is now OK and then rejects the combination when you try to log in. There is a link to receive an email to change the password but that email never turns up. All of this discourages enthusiasm about using the service.
  • PayPal seem to make the amount of paperwork outweigh any money benefit.
  • No, I will not set up my own credit card payment system. One benefit of the third party systems above is that they have to do all the worrying about security and privacy.
  • Still looking.
• There won't be a print version of Oberon Matters in the near future. Options were looked at but none were financially sustainable for a short print run.
• A suggestion has been made that Oberon Matters might return to that old standby of local papers - the announcement of births, deaths and marriages. This would depend on people letting us know about these things. Local Facebook groups seem to be the places where these are announced these days, but obituaries would fit in here.