Articles published in June 2026
Three ways to avoid being fooled by AI slop
June 4, 2026 in General News  Sorry to keep harping on about Artificial Intelligence and how it's taking over everything, but here's a handy set of suggestions from The Conversation about how to tell what's real from what's not. It's bad enough that it's becoming hard to work out whether
the words you read come from a human or are just condensed plagiarism, but now you can't even trust the pictures that are supposed to be worth a thousand words.
Read the article here.
| | |
Parents for Climate picnic
June 4, 2026 in Opinion  On Saturday, May 30, Oberon Matters was a guest at a picnic at the delightful 3 Veg Farm in Bathurst. (Yes, a real vegetable farm right among the houses in Bathurst!) It was organised by the Bathurst branch of Parents for Climate to raise awareness of the need to fight back against the flood of dis- and misinformation coming from the opponents to renewable energy projects in the region. There were lots of people there with their kids (who will inherit whatever Earth we old folk leave behind) and the gathering was around an open fire heating up soup for lunch and boiling water for tea (and nothing makes tea as nice as water boiled in a billycan). Councillor Elaine West from Bathurst Regional Council spoke as did Jack Fry, President of the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network. Someone also spoke about the situation in Oberon.
It's too easy to think that the people with the loudest voices are the only ones who should be heard and whose position has much more support than it really has, so it was educational to meet some of the quieter speakers presenting a different point of view. | | |
All the schooling you can eat
June 4, 2026 in Schools  Things are roaring along at the schools around Oberon.
See all the action here
| | |
All the sport. All the time.
June 4, 2026 in Sport  Another weekend of running, jumping and walking (if you were a golfer).
See the sports results here
| | |
Goodbye to Instagram
June 4, 2026 in General News  Oberon Matters has had an Instagram account for some time where the weekly site updates have been publicised. The idea was to attract visitors to the site, but it hasn't worked. As posting there just increased the workload without any benefit the account has been closed.
 | What do those statistics mean?
June 4, 2026 in General News  I'm a bit skeptical of the numbers of visitors that are supposed to be coming to this site each month. Could it really be true that about twice the number of people in the Oberon LGA have a look at the site every month?
I have access to three ways of counting visitors: - AWstats is a program accessed through the cPanel site management system at the web hosting site. It seems to be highly regarded.
- Weblog Expert runs on my computer using data from visitor logs downloaded from the web server. It has a bug which causes it to give absurd results for certain counts. I have been using it for years but it's no longer supported by the developer, and as it seems unreliable anyway I won't be using it in the future.
- A system with the rather generic name of Analog Stats, also accessed through cPanel. The results are a bit of a dog's breakfast, but as the developer's web site isn't secure (HTTP instead of HTTPS) and also causes Norton 360 to throw a fit about the danger of going there because of a possible virus it looks like another one to be avoided.
What all three have in common is that they all show traffic increasing in line with the graph above. The numbers aren't all the same because they all use slightly different ways of gathering and processing the data but they roughly agree. A big number of visitors come here each month. There is always the possibility that the numbers are inflated by robots trying to hack the site. An example of this is the large number of attempts to access the administrator login page for WordPress (all "404 not found" because I don't use WordPress) but these are accounted for, and in any case the bots would have to use literally thousands of different IP addresses to make any significant difference. So, in summary, the visitor count might not be exact but it's what mathematicians would say is the right order of magnitude and what cliché writers would call "in the ballpark". | | |
Oberon Council Mayor's Column
June 4, 2026 in Community This fortnight's column from Oberon Mayor Andrew McKibbin can be seen here. It's finally open
June 11, 2026 in Business and Community  Back in March this year, Oberon Matters visited the embryonic Crafters & Collectors @ 104, a new craft shop in the old rectory building at 104 Oberon Street. The place was just being set up and an official opening was still some time away. Well, now it's officially open for business.
See some photos of the wares on display here
| | |
Moron alert!
June 11, 2026 in Community  If you wander around Oberon you will see lots of those teardrop shaped flags at various locations. One of them offended an idiot so much that they had to go running to Council to complain that it was a danger to the public. Just one, not any of the others.
See the horrors of all the dangerous flags here
| | |
Carriages congregate for cars and Coffee
June 11, 2026 in Community  It was the first Sunday in June so the fancy and not-so-fancy cars assembled on Oberon Street for the monthly Cars and Coffee meeting. Got a nice or unusual car? Bring it along next month.
See some pictures of cars here
| | |
Book review: "Risk" by Dan Gardner
June 11, 2026 in Reviews  There are things we should worry about but we don't. There are things we shouldn't worry about but still do. This book looks at the way we perceive risk and what we can do about it to make the right decisions.
Read the review here
| | |
The more things change the more they don't remain the same
June 11, 2026 in General News  Aaaaaarrrgghhh!! Microsoft in their great wisdom have changed how the Bing search engine handles search enquiries handed to it telling it to only search a particular web site. This means that if you entered a search term into the box on any page here you didn't get just the results from Oberon Matters, you got a search of the whole WWWeb.
So, as much as I hate Google, that's where searches from this site go now. Of course, that could change at any moment as Google change things daily as well. | | |
A reduced weekend of sport
June 11, 2026 in Sport  With most sports taking the long weekend off, it was left to the soccer players and pony riders to hold the side up. And the golfers of course.
See some of what happened here
| | |
This week's Moron Alert
June 18, 2026 in Community and Opinion  Perhaps I should make this a regular weekly feature like Sport and Schools, because it seems that there's no shortage of idiots around Oberon. This week it's someone with almost negative driving skills who decided that the new Sports Complex would be the place to try out driving a 4WD on dirt. There's that old saying about the inability to drive a nail into a piece of balsa, and it certainly applies here. And if the moron is offended that's a good thing.
See the damage and some thoughts about it here
| | |
Investing in regional jobs and RFS fleet management
June 18, 2026 in General News  There are about 6,000 vehicles in the NSW Rural Fire Service fleet. These are currently owned and maintained by local councils. From next year, ownership and maintenance obligations will be transferred to the NSW Government. This can only be a good thing and will be a boost to the budgets of councils across the state. It will certainly be an advantage to smaller rural councils like Oberon that will have more money to spend on the things that councils are supposed to do.
See the media release from the Minister here
| | |
Getting scammed via a text will be harder from July 1 - but more businesses need to act
June 18, 2026 in Business  We've all received those deceptive texts messages looking like they come from a reputable organisation but which turn out to be scams. From July 1 there will be a way for legitimate businesses to put a virtual big green tick on the top of SMS messages and for the people receiving those texts to be confident that they can safely be opened and acted upon. If you have a business, you need to get on the "Verified" register and if you are anyone else you need to know what to look for. This article from The Conversation lets both parties know what they have to do. And yes, Oberon Matters will be a verified text sender as soon as the bureaucratic niceties have been satisfied.
See the article here
| | |
What Did You Learn in School Today?
June 18, 2026 in Schools  Pete Seeger asked this question in 1964 and it's just as relevant today. And when we look around Oberon's schools the answer has to be "Lots of things".
See the report cards here
| | |
Another weekend of running, jumping and chasing balls around
June 18, 2026 in Sport  With the long weekend out of the way, everyone was back onto the sporting fields (or "course" if you are a golfer).
See some scores and results here
| | |
Oberon Council Mayor's Column
June 18, 2026 in Community This fortnight's column from Oberon Mayor Andrew McKibbin can be seen here. Grab your Grab Bag. They're great.
June 25, 2026 in Community  The Grab Bag, a new community health initiative aimed at improving emergency readiness for residents across the Oberon region was launched on June 19 outside the Oberon Council Administration Office. An initiative of the Oberon Health Council, the idea is to have all your medical information in one place if an emergency arises and you have to go to hospital.
See the details here
| | |
Finally, some mobile coverage in Black Springs
June 25, 2026 in Community  It's only taken ten years of waiting and complaining but finally there is now mobile phone coverage in parts of Black Springs. Thanks to a grant from The Pines Wind Farm, there are now Telstra Cel-Fi GO Repeaters at the tennis courts and the community hall. It's not a perfect solution like a tower would be but something is better than nothing and nothing was what was likely to happen before the generous grant came along to pay for it.
A year ago a petition was started to try to get coverage for the whole of the Black Springs area. The petition is still open, so go there and sign it. | | |
Rotary Changeover
June 25, 2026 in Community  Saturday, June 20, saw the annual Changeover at the Rotary Club of Oberon, with outgoing President Neville Ross handing the Chain of Office over to Sharon Wilson for the next year. The Club is quite small but has an effect in the community much greater than the size of the membership would suggest. Unfortunately there won't be a Shakespeare Festival in 2027, but one of the penalties of having few few members is that it can be a bit difficult to organise too many big events, and the Festival that has run for the last two years is certainly something big. The plan for 2026-27 is to concentrate on charity work, something for which Rotary is renowned, so keep your eye on the Club's Facebook page for the news about their activities.
Congratulations to Sharon and the rest of the hard-working committee. The Club's membership is small, but it was increased on the day by the induction of new member Matthew Newton. If you have some spare time and would like to make a difference to the life of Oberon, joining Rotary might just be the thing you need to do. Again, the Club's Facebook page is the place to start. The Club meets every Tuesday at 6:30pm at the Oberon RSL and visitors are always welcome. | | |
Census paranoia
June 25, 2026 in General News  This year's census will happen on August 11. Every time a census rolls around there are people whining about privacy and the government (or "gubmnt", if you prefer) wanting to know everything about us. This is an updated version of something I wrote a few years ago when Facebook seemed to be full of people expressing much concern. And yes, when I was distributing forms for the 2021 census I was threatened by someone who refused to allow me to put the forms in his letterbox.
Read the article here
| | |
Learning things you never knew before
June 25, 2026 in Schools  And that's what school is for, and Oberon's schools are really good at doing the job. It's not just the Three Rs any more because now there's a lot more to learn.
See the report cards here
| | |
All the sport that dodged the rain
June 25, 2026 in Sport  Rain caused a bit of disruption to the weekend's sports but enough survived to make it all worth talking about.
See the talking about here
| | |
There were 15,656 unique visitors to the site during June, 2026.
The most read page was
Some good news for a change (2024!). This hit the top spot in
the last two days of the month, edging out
This week's Moron Alert
which had been at the top since the day it was published. Strange
days indeed.
The number of unique visitors during June reported by the server log analysis
software was 22,692. This was adjusted downwards by the 7,036 attempts to access
the Wordpress administrator login page. Just as well I don't use
Wordpress, isn't it? "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. Put another way, it is the lowest estimate of the number of visits to the site during the month.
|
Every three months, representatives of the Pines Wind Farm give a presentation to Oberon Council about the status and progress of the project. The most recent meeting took place on June 9.
