Australia Day Celebrations
January 30, 2025 in Community

Oberon got together to celebrate Australia Day and to honour the citizens who have made significant contributions to the life and welfare of the community.
See the stories from the day here

Oberon gets a taxi. At last!
January 30, 2025 in Business and Community

The good news is that Oberon now has a taxi service. It's run by Ashdeep Nash, who has a fleet of taxis servicing Bathurst (including some with wheelchair access). Currently there is only one taxi working ion Oberon but this could change.
See more about this great news here

Fun at the Colour Run
January 30, 2025 in Community

Creative Community Concepts were back in Oberon on January 15 for a Colour Run at the Oberon Recreation Ground. About 170 kids turned up in perfect weather for some sports practice and the real event - running around the oval getting covered in coloured paint after being hosed down from a fire engine. This is not something that parents dress their kids in their best clothes for.
See the fun and the photos here

The Great Schnitty Search - Part 1
January 30, 2025 in Community and Business

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald's food guide talked about an entrepreneur who was going to revolutionise pub food by taking it back to its basics. The revolution would include dropping "clichéd" meals like chicken schnitzel and bacon and egg rolls. As these two items are essential elements of pub cuisine there will probably be a story in the SMH shortly about the unfortunate closure of this revolutionary pub bistro. One can only hope. Oberon Matters set out to sample the schnitzel offerings at clubs, pubs and cafés around town
See Part 1 of the quest here

On for young and old at the Malachi. And by them, too.
January 30, 2025 in Music

It was an interesting concert at the Malachi Gilmore Hall on Saturday, January 25. The main act was the ever excellent The Safety of Life at Sea, but what made the show special was the three performances by some very young musicians.
See the story here

An Australia Day Party
January 30, 2025 in Community

Oberon might be a bit far from the coast for a picnic at the beach, but its certainly possible to have a picnic in the garden next to the Tourist Hotel. So we did.
See some pictures from the day here

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.