GALAH (2025)

02/11/2025

Tonight’s places post takes us to regenerative farmer ’s farm in the Nambucca Valley of NSW. This story was in Issue 7 and was written by with these photographs by .

Thirty years ago, Rachel and her husband, actor Bryan Brown, bought the 300-hectare property near Macksville as a weekender and holiday home for their family of three children: Rosie, Matilda and Joe. The 120-year-old farmhouse, on a hill overlooking a large dam created by Ward, is cosy and eclectic, full of paintings, photographs and the clutter of three generations of family life.

Matilda loved their country holidays, and was influenced enough by life on the farm that she and her husband, Scott, have started a regenerative organic ready-meal business, .shop based on Sydney’s northern beaches.

But for many years, the farm was just a backdrop to the hometye family created. “I really didn’t think about it much,” Rachel says. “Paddocks were ploughed, seeds were sown, paddocks were sprayed and grazed, and … I really had nothing to do with the actual running of the farm.”

Becoming a farmer has had some unexpected benefits, one of them being that for the first time in her adult life, Rachel feels as if she belongs. “I understand the notion of Country now and why it’s so important,” she says. It’s as if, in a way, everything she has done in her life was leading her to this path.

Find the full story in Galah Issue 7: Love (available to purchase via the link in our profile).

30/10/2025

Yes, it’s still October. Just barely. But we’re also on the downhill slide to the end of the year, so I wanted to suggest a three-step easy win that will make life a little bit easier come Christmas.

1. Take a few minutes (that’s all), and order up on Issue 13, which by the way, goes on sale 3 November, this Monday and which you can order via the link below.
2. We’ll post them out asap.
3. In the meantime, buy some wrapping paper, cards, ribbon or twine.

And then, come teacher present time, or that busy December morning when you need exactly the right thing to give your sister-in-law, friend, colleague, simply reach for your stack of Galah’s, wrap, write a card, and off you go.
How good. How organised.

Issue 13 lands on November 3 full of summer stories, beautiful photography, and the weight of a proper book in your hands. $30 for a single issue, or $60 for a gift subscription that delivers Issues 13 and 14.

https://shop.galahpress.com/

Annabelle x

Photo by Martina Gemmola from a story on artist Ralph Bristow's garden in the Victorian Alps.

29/10/2025

Giveaway: What do you do when you’re bushwalking with friends in remote Tasmania and bad weather traps you in a tiny shack for days? When you’ve got a little bit of food, a pack of bird-themed playing cards, and a lot of time?

You invent a game called A Game Called Birds.

Four Tassie friends have developed their
cabin-fever tomfoolery into a seriously fun board game called

You spin the we**ie, you twitch, you fight. The game involves a satisfying mix of luck and strategy – and incidental learning about birds –which GALAH obviously approves of.

The Bird Boys are going to make a cameo in Galah Issue 14 next year, but in the lead up to
Christmas, I thought we should celebrate their brilliance with a giveaway.

And because they are generous souls, we have three Birds packs to giveaway, each including a game, a tote, a sticker and a particularly fetching crew neck jumper.

Just follow to go in the running. I love this game. Even if you don’t win, you should buy it for a Christmas present.

(Australia only. Entries close Sunday 2 November, 11:59pm AEDT. Three winners chosen at random and notified by Instagram DMl next week.)

Photography from the 2025 Tawnie by

29/10/2025

What’s on and coming up around the country?

The Hidden Line: Art of the Boyd Women
An exhibition of more than 300 works drawn largely from the Bundanon collection but with key loans from national collections and the Boyd family will showcase the creative work of five generations of women from one of Australia’s most prominent artistic dynasties. At , Ilaroo, NSW, 22 November-15 February.

Nymphaea Nymphaea
Inspired by the work of Claude Monet, this is an exhibition of abstracts made exclusively as a site-specific creative project by Sydney artist Anna Johnson. At New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW until 9 November. .

Mudgee AIR
Galah readers don’t need an introduction to journalist and her husband, We Bought A Hotel columnist . Bartholomew is behind the Mudgee Artist in Residence program (), which will welcome 14 artists to interpret the region’s landscapes ahead of an exhibition opening at on 6 November will host an artist lunch on 7 November. Mudgee, NSW, 6-24 November.

Carcoar Cup Running Festival
Before the Mudgee events, Bartholomew and Varcoe’s home community will host the 11th running of the marathon. Events include the marathon, shorter events and the Carcoar Cup for Kids. At Carcoar, NSW, 1-2 November.

Image by Brooke Bathern is from a story on the from Issue 13. Galah travelled to central Australia to meet the hundreds of artists who create contemporary fibre art of startling originality from native grasses.

Issue 13 goes on sale this coming Monday 3 November.

Head to the link in our bio to read our latest Galah Weekly in full, and if you know of something we need to share in a future Galah Weekly, please comment or send us a DM, and we’ll make sure it lands on editor Dean Southwell’s desk.

27/10/2025

Age of Air T-Rex

Here’s one of the top stories from the latest Galah Weekly news round-up. To read our newsletters in full, please head to the link in our profile.

The future of regional airline Regional Express – better known as Rex – is likely to be dependent on a US company that until now has specialised in air cargo and aircraft spare parts.

Rex administrators have announced that Minneapolis-based Air T has signed a sale agreement expected to be put to creditors in the next few weeks. Air T says it expects the deal to be completed by the end of the year if approved and would see sustainable growth of Rex’s regional business.

Rex was placed in voluntary administration in July last year, creating uncertainty for regional travellers. The federal government has been underwriting its operations while it seeks a buyer.

Meanwhile the financial fallout from the collapse of another regional airline continues. The FBI has accused two of the key figures behind the company that bankrolled the failed airline Bonza of stealing more than $US500 million from investors and customers. Equity firm 777 Partners faced several legal cases last year as creditors moved in and Bonza collapsed.

Image: Tending the flower farm near Dural, 1994-95, by Celia Perceval in The Hidden Line. Courtesy: Bundanon Collection.

26/10/2025

This week’s ‘places’ post takes us back to Issue 2 when garden designer Joseph Corkhill wrote for us about the magic potential of dilapidated out-buildings. In particular, a barn on his family property, originally built in 1926 from a slab house on the river,
 “It was not part of the garden as such, as it was just over the hedge, but often commented on and admired for its rusticity and character.  “Throughout my years designing gardens, I’ve seen many such buildings scattered around properties and have suggested to the owners that they restore them, even in a basic way. Hopefully, when they had ‘a little more time’ to think about it, they could use these charming old buildings amongst the layout of the garden, weaving them into the design, and giving it enormous character. Barns, slab sheds, blacksmith’s workshops, and old rusty garages all could be used in this way.  
“This thought, of course, came into play when my mother stated (after looking at the dilapidated state of the building) that she’d like our barn to be ‘brought back to life again’ in memory of our beloved nephew and uncle who had died recently. My father told her it was a hopeless idea, and he was about to put a match to it. In the end, my mother got her way and engaged my accomplished brother Marty to restore it. I happily became his junior, unskilled, yet always enthusiastic apprentice.
 “Right from the beginning, the building started to come back to life – it was like it had been waiting for someone to give it the love and attention it deserved.”

Photos by .

22/10/2025

What’s on and coming up around the country.

Feathered: Birds in Myth and Memory
This exhibition offers perspectives on the importance of birds. Regional artists are featured alongside a selection of key works drawn from the state collection of the Art Gallery of NSW, including works by Brett Whiteley and Arthur Boyd. At , Taree, NSW, until 29 November.

Crafted at Chalou
Orange winemakers Nadja Wallington and Steve Mobbs are planning a celebration of creativity, connection and community, including hands-on workshops during the day and a food-and-wine gathering in the evening. At , Orange, NSW, 29 November.

Tarnanthi Festival
This 10th-anniversary celebration of Indigenous art started this weekend with the
Art Fair and continues with events including a major exhibition, Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi with highlights of works from previous festivals. At Art Gallery of SA, Adelaide, until 18 January.

Head to the link in our bio to read our latest Galah Weekly in full, and if you know of something we need to share in a future Galah Weekly, please comment or send us a DM, and we’ll make sure it lands on editor Dean Southwell’s desk.

Image by Annabelle Hickson.

20/10/2025

Of all the gardening jobs, mulching the beds with lucerne hay is my favourite. I’ve loved that sweet-green smell of damp, sunshine-y straw ever since I’ve been gardening. But it wasn’t until I was sitting in the atelier of perfumer Katrina Cochrane of the other day that I realised how well that lucerne hay smell would work in a fragrance.

Inspired by a trip to in Braidwood, NSW, Katrina has made a perfume that smells like hay and jonquils and damp earth. It is beautiful. Really beautiful.

And so are the other scents she makes, all using only botanicals – essential oils, absolutes and resins – nothing else.

I want everyone I know to know how beautiful her perfumes are, and in that spirit, we’re going to give away a sample box of eight tiny bottles filled with the different scents Katrina makes in her living room atelier.

Follow and we’ll randomly pick a winner from her new followers in one week. Australia only.

Still photography by Nic Gossage and stylist Kendra McCarthy

19/10/2025

Here’s one of the top stories from the latest Galah Weekly news round-up. To read our newsletters in full, please head to the link in our profile.

Deepfake deception

International criminal gangs believed to have used artificial intelligence to imitate specific people have scammed Noosa Council on the Qld Sunshine Coast of almost $2 million in ratepayer funds.

The council said this week $2.3 million was lost in the scam in December, which is being investigated by Qld police and the Australian Federal Police’s cybercrime unit. About $400,000 has since been recovered with the help of banks.

Noosa Council chief executive Larry Sengstock told ratepayers that the council was not aware of the loss until contacted by police, who had not wanted information released until now because it might compromise investigations.

Cybersecurity expert and former FBI agent Dennis Desmond said AI deepfake technology was probably used to convince a council staff member to approve large transactions. The council has said no staff could be blamed for the incident.

Why it matters. Australians have been told to expect AI to transform the way we live and work, with productivity benefits. Yet the Noosa experience supports warnings about its malicious use. Five minutes on social media shows how AI is already pervasive and why there’s a need for education to help spot the difference between fact and fraud.

Image - Nganampa Ngura – ngunytju munu untalpa (Our Country – mother and daughter), by Betty Chimney and Raylene Walatinna, for the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival. Gift of Mary Choate through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2022, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide © the artists, courtesy of Iwantja Arts.

19/10/2025

Tonight, we visit Cate Barlow’s (aka ) peaceful, rambling weatherboard house on the banks of the Murray River just out of Corowa, New South Wales.
I wrote this story for Issue 4 and the wonderful did the photos.

“For the first few minutes at the kitchen table, I am unable to do anything but gush about the beauty of the nasturtium wallpaper that clads the walls in this airy room. But I have to stop gushing, because this is not a story about Cate’s beautiful house.

“Well, maybe it is a bit, because her house is very beautiful. But it’s also a story about how we value the work of family life. About how Cate values family life.

“Like many women I’ve met since I moved from the city to the country, Cate views the family - paid work balance from a couple perspective rather than from her individual point of view. While I am busy underlining passages from Annabel Crabb’s Men at Work Quarterly Essay and making sure I could stand on my own two financial feet if Ed one day left me, even though he has only occasionally showed signs of wanting to do so, I see a lot of women around me in the country not being as scared as I am of this idea of team.

“They are partners with their partners, not competitors. They operate from a communal mindset, rather than an individual one. It’s as if I can hear them pragmatically saying, ‘Well, someone has to chop the firewood and someone has to light the stove. Let’s work out how we do this together’.”

16/10/2025

This month’s Yes, Chef! We meet Luca Vico, head chef at La Scala in Griffith and the third generation of his family to run this popular Riverina city restaurant. He’s an artist – that’s his fresco behind him in the restaurant. And he’s the maker of some of the finest pizza, pasta and gelato in regional Australia.

Sign up via the link below to read what Luca is cooking and loving at the moment.

https://digital.galahpress.com/membership/

Photo by Pip Farquharson.

15/10/2025

What’s On around the country this week and next…

Head to the link in our bio to read our latest Galah Weekly in full, and if you know of something we need to share in a future Galah Weekly, please comment or send us a DM, and we’ll make sure it lands on editor Dean Southwell’s desk.

Blue Mountains Edible Garden Trail
Explore open gardens ranging from back and front yard farms to school, market and community patches. This is a community run, not-for-profit event organised by with proceeds going to participating schools and community gardens. Blue Mountains, NSW, 25-26 October.

The Authentic Consequence
This exhibition traces 40 years of the career of Mornington Peninsula artist , from his early days with Melbourne’s Roar Studios to recent paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures. At Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, Vic, until 16 November, .

Balance and Abundance
Blue Mountains-based artist says he just wants to make paintings of places that are important to him. Some of his latest work features in this solo exhibition. At , Paddington, NSW, until 25 October.

Huon Valley Studio Art Trail
Over three days, artists and makers will present their work in open studios, galleries, museums and pop-up spaces in Tasmania’s far south. Food and drinks providers and accommodation venues complement the trail. Huon Valley, Tas, 24-26 October.

Image - Sand track, Burralow, by Blue Mountains-based artist in Balance and Abundance.

GALAH

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