There’s something special about biting into a perfectly ripe peach or nectarine, with juice running down your chin and the taste of summer in every mouthful. Stone fruit season is now underway, and local grower Rajesh Kumar is bringing a beautiful selection of fresh fruit to the farmers’ markets.

The arts are an essential industry. We need artists as much as we need accountants. We need dancers as much as we need doctors. We need comedians as much as we need civil engineers. We need filmmakers as much as we need financial planners. We need musicians as much as we need ministers.

It is the age-old story – the lack of public transport across the Northern Rivers that leads to high car ownership and a failure of local and regional public transport infrastructure and use.

In Michelle Anderson’s Kanpala, circles of red, orange and yellow bring a place in Western Australia’s Spinifex Country into view. It’s a place she returns to often in paint: Kanpa, the Country where her grandmother was born.

Hundreds of handmade jewellery pieces have been stolen from a Bangalow artists’ collective, leaving some members without any work to sell ahead of the crucial Christmas trading period.