Did you know that plastic packaging and single-use plastic items make up 60 per cent of all litter in NSW?

The operations manager of the Byron Music Festival says her attempts to run the event this year were cruelled by Byron Council staff, who allegedly provided organisers with false information and spoke to them like they were ‘idiots’.

There is something magical about a country hall. These small wooden buildings dot the landscape. They have a frugal modesty and an old fashioned generosity. If they had names they’d be called Thelma or Rose or Alan. They’re a pungent olfactory mix of last week’s wedding enmeshed with yesterday’s committee meeting. Curry and Jatz, tea and beer, tears and laughter.

Big ideas are easy. Finding the big money and big names to back them is not. But a long-term plan to turn WA’s Pilbara into the largest renewable energy hub in the world has just taken a giant leap forward.

It all started with a simple dream, to convert its original farmhouse in Ewingsdale into a restaurant in which...