Victorians experienced well below average rainfall and near-record average temperatures in 2024, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Climate Statement reveals. Across the state, Victoria had 529mm of rain in 2024, about 20 per cent below average, with below to very much below average rainfall in most areas, the statement said. Very much below average means that rainfall was in the lowest 10 per cent since reliable records began in 1900. Meanwhile, Victoria’s temperature in 2024 was 1.08 °C warmer than the long-term average, making 2024 the equal fifth warmest year in Victoria since reliable records began. Drier conditions, particularly in…
Author: Jamie Duncan
From market gardens and fruit-growing to sand quarrying to heavy manufacturing to a major medical and educational hub, the south-eastern suburb of Clayton has seen many changes. These days, Clayton is a vibrant multicultural centre that has a younger-than average population for a Victorian suburb for and a food scene that’s hard to beat. The suburb was named after the owner of a local farm, lawyer John Hughes Clayton, who purchased Clayton Vale on Bunurong land in the 1860s. Clayton was home to a number of car manufacturers including Volkswagen, Volvo and Datsun/Nissan when each was a local car manufacturer,…
Melbourne is an absolutely amazing place to live and work – not that you’d know it the way certain commentators and media types carry on about it. In Australia these days, and especially here in Melbourne, since Covid lockdowns it’s become very fashionable to “shitcan” the city that is my home and my birthplace, the city where I choose to bring up my family. We’re forever being told that Melbourne’s CBD is dead – bleak, dirty, dominated by criminals and thoroughly without charm. We’re being told that Victoria’s economy is dead, and that people are fleeing the city. That latter…
Paul Kelly might be one of Australia’s greatest songwriters, but he’s not a great cook. The boastful recipe in his song How to Make Gravy is just terrible. Here is my correspondence with Mr Kelly after he ruined our last Christmas. Dear Mr Kelly, I wish to complain about the gravy recipe contained in your 1996 Christmas-themed hit, How to Make Gravy. Given that today, as in the song, is the 21st of December, I am reminded about how that hideous recipe ruined my family’s Christmas dinner last year. I now understand why the main character in the song, Joe, was jailed: it…
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics population figures confirm what we already know – that Victoria really is the place to be. The figures, contained in the ABS national state and territory population figures for June 2024, show that Victoria’s population grew by 2.4 per cent in the 12 months to June, faster than the national average of 2.1 per cent growth for the same period. This result puts our state second on the population growth league table, behind only Western Australia, which grew by 2.8 per cent amid a mining boom. By contrast, New South Wales and the ACT…
Cold Chisel delivers its gospel to its Oz Rock faithful Under a huge, triple-steepled big-top cathedral, the Cold Chisel faithful did gather in Melbourne on Saturday night to hear the rock and roll gospel according to Jim, Ian, Don, Phil and Charley. For more than two hours, a massed choir of disciples did proclaim the gospel from Australia’s premier rock band with shouting, screaming and a seething sea of bodies who hung on every word and every note. And, verily, it was good. Very, very good. The latest round of Cold Chisel’s 50th anniversary tour of Australia and New Zealand took…
There’s an old saying about grocery shopping: never shop when you’re hungry. But at Foodle Asian Grocery + Kitchen, it’s impossible not to be tantalised by its well-stocked aisles of Asian delicacies and the heady aroma of Asian cuisine coming from the kitchen in the one amazing location. Australia’s second Foodle store opened recently within the Lower Ground Food Hall at The Glen shopping centre in Glen Waverley, which already has a lively food scene. The Glen’s Foodle joins its first at Maribyrnong’s Highpoint shopping centre, which opened in 2023, with plans for a third store in Victoria by mid-2025.…
Sometimes, slow development has its benefits. Such is the case in Heidelberg. It’s just 11km from the Melbourne CBD but has a special charm all its own. The first sales of Crown land took place in the Heidelberg area in the 1840s but the railway into the city didn’t arrive until 1888, which stifled Heidelberg’s early residential growth. The lack of services and cheap housing attracted artists like Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and others to gather in the district and take advantage of the country scenery and expansive Yarra Valley views to form the Heidelberg School…