Local news for local people
Articles published in February 2025
 | A milestone! 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. |
Let's learn about fossicking On Saturday, January 18, about 150 people registered for an information day about fiossicking at the Oberon Visitor Information Centre. On hand were experts from several fossicking and mineral hunting groups eager to demonstrate such techniques as panning and using metal detectors. There a were also several displays of gemstones and other things that can be found with a little effort and a walk to a stream. |  |
 | "In The A.M." in the PM If you weren't at the Oberon Golf club during the afternoon of Sunday, January 19, you missed a great musical show by the duo In The A.M. The duo consists of locals Adrian Perry and Mal Voerman. They have known each other since high school but the group has only been officially together for a couple of months. |
The Great Schnitty Search - Part 2 It's the second installment in the survey of chicken schnitzel outlets around Oberon. There are also a few Honorable Mentions for places outside the area, plus a couple of places to avoid if you are travelling. Next month - bacon and egg rolls. |  |
 | Watching with wolves Could there be a better way to spend a night out than going to a free movie night with popcorn and hotdogs? Oberon Matters went out to Black Springs to see "200% Wolf" and had a great time. |
School's back. Well almost. School zone speed limits might apply, but the schools are gradually coming back from the holidays. There's a new Acting Principal at Oberon High School and a student doing very well at his sport. |  |
 | All the sport that fits Winners at golf. Winners at organising. Winners at soccer. Winners at bull riding. And the real sporting season hasn't started yet, but people are getting ready. The sports grounds are getting ready too. |
All roads lead to somewhere Everyone knows that the term "Three R's" when applied to councils means "Roads, Rates and Rubbish". There has been some action to fix some roads around town, one obvious one and one hidden away in a back street. |  |
Technical issue
February
13, 2025
A security change at the place which hosts the Oberon Matters web site has broken the internal site search engine. Any search using the form at the bottom of all the pages now says that nothing can be found.
Fixing this will take a little time and effort. In the meantime you can search for a word on the site by entering the following into your favourite search engine: "site:oberonmatters.com.au theword". Google will generally be up to date with site updates after a couple of days. Bing might take a little longer but will never be more than a few days behind.
Sorry about this but it's someone else's fault.
 | It's showtime, folks! The 125th Oberon Show was a great day out (if you got home before the storm) with most of the usual attractions and all of the fun. (Go here for an explanation of the photo.) |
Echoes of the Picture Palace Sunday, February 9, saw a return to the very olden days in the history of the Malachi Gilmore Hall when one of its functions was as a movie theatre. The show consisted of some silent films from back in the day, with musical accompaniment by the Golden Age Quartet. |  |
 | Council vacancy Following the resignation of Jill O'Grady as an Oberon Councillor, a casual vacancy has arisen on Council. Filling the vacancy has to follow a fixed procedure. |
A tale of two markets There are two monthly Farmers' Markets close to Oberon - at the Oberon Showground on the first Saturday and at the Tarana Fire Shed on the fourth Sunday of the month. Oberon Matters went out for a look at both. |  |
 | The schools are back with a bang 2025 has started at the schools around Oberon, with some new staff and some old staff (not old age, just still around from last year), some new students. And a peacock. |
Sport moves into the new year The Tigers are building up towards the 2025 season with some team announcements. And you can't stop golfers from golfing. |  |
 | Oberon Council Mayor's Column This week's column from Oberon Mayor Andrew McKibbin can be seen here. |
Update
February 20,
2025
A solution to this problem has been found. It's not perfect (nothing is) and uses the visitor's default search engine to produce the results. After a bit more testing it should be here next week.
By the way, both Google and Bing had reindexed this whole site within hours of the update on February 13.
February 2025 Oberon Council Meeting The February 18 Council meeting was expected to be lively, with four motions proposed that asked for major changes to ways that Council conducted its business. There was a presentation from Arts OutWest and a quite large crowd objecting to some proposed motions. |  |
 | Get together with some friends On the third Wednesday each month a group gets together at the Oberon Uniting Church for lunch. The Combined Churches Friendship Group is what it says on the tin - a group to encourage friendship. |
Book review: Two books about journalism Journalism is back in the news, with talk about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the generation of content, disappearing local papers, staff layoffs, and with a Federal election approaching, bias and the reliability of content. Here are reviews of two books about journalism written by people who know what they are talking about. |  |
 | The Back Page The various sporting groups are gearing up for the 2025 season, including the Oberon Tigers Senior League. And there's always golf. |
Go! Learn things! It's school time. It seems that everyone at school took advantage of the warm weather and went swimming. Other things happened too - house captains, teachers and prize winners. |  |
Technical issue update
February
27, 2025
There is now a new method for searching for information on this site.
The search box at the bottom of each page will open another window where you can continue the search using your favourite search engine. This solution is not perfect (it leaves two windows into this site open) but it's better than forcing visitors to use a search engine that they might not like.
Checks show that Google, Bing and Yahoo! all update their indexes of this site within hours of the weekly update. Yes, there are other search engines. The new method doesn't appear to work with Dogpile, which simply means that that site doesn't follow the standards that the real sites do so who cares?
Update update - Murphy's Law
February 28, 2025
Despite lots of testing it seems that some setting in some installations of Firefox prevents this from working and just opens another window without filling in the search command. There is no problem with Edge or Chrome.
If you are using Firefox (and lots of people do) and it opens an empty window you need to tell it to search for "site:oberonmatters.com.au search terms".
We will have our best people working on it as soon as they stop crying.
 | Rotate Interiors rotates to a new address Rotate Interiors has moved from the small shop on the corner of Oberon and Fleming Streets to a new location at the other end of town. It's now in the old NAB building which will make it a lot easier to find when the tourists come to town looking for something a little different to buy. |
School bus timetables - O'Connell to Tarana Newman's Bus Services has some exciting news for O'Connell and Tarana residents. Transport for NSW has recently approved an extension of the current O'Connell school bus service. These changes will commence on Monday, 3rd March 2025. |  |
 | Media release: First class lamb from Oberon A unique lamb farmed in Oberon is now being served up to business and first-class class passengers on Qantas . Third generation livestock breeders, Graham Gilmore and his late brother Martin spent years developing the product on the family property, Tattykeel, just outside of Oberon. |
Up in the morning and off to school Lots of things happening at the schools around Oberon, Meeting teachers, getting awards, learning about how to cook delicious thing, banging on things. And meeting the staff who keep it all running. |  |
 | Play the game! Waiting for and heading into the sporting season. The kids are kicking soccer balls around and the golfers, well, the golfers are golfing like they always do. |
Oberon Council Mayor's Column This week's column from Oberon Mayor Andrew McKibbin can be seen here. | |
There were 1819 unique visitors to the site during February, 2025. The most read page was What's On Around Oberon.
"Unique visitors" counts IP addresses that have connected to the site at least once during the month. It doesn't include search engines, but even if it did Google and Bing (who index the site at least once a week) would only be counted as one visitor each. It is the equivalent of "Circulation" for print media.
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