January 2026

Sweet ambition: the story of Bundaberg sugar

This is a story about how sugar transformed a riverside settlement into one of Queensland’s most prosperous regional centres.

Pioneering the Burnett

When surveyor John Charlton Thompson first mapped out Bundaberg in the early 1870s, few could have imagined that the small settlement on the Burnett River would eventually become the beating heart of one of Queensland’s most renowned agricultural industries.

A case study in folly #7: an avoidable inferno – the 2015 Wye River fire

2 January 2026 / 4 Comments

How many disasters must we have, and how much public and private money needs to be spent, before we stop accepting a situation that can and should be avoided?

Professor Mark Adams, landowner at Separation Creek

Introduction

Christmas should be a time of family, rest, and renewal. For the small coastal communities of Wye River and Separation Creek on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, Christmas Day 2015 brought devastation instead.