General News
18 January, 2025
Year in Review: January to April
A complete look at what made the news in Dimboola from January to April 2024.
JANUARY
- Dimboola is well positioned to attract tree-changers escaping the high prices of Melbourne, having been ranked as the fourth most affordable location in the state with a median house price of $208,896 in the year to September 2023.
- Watching grass dry can help to keep Wimmera communities safe this summer, according to the CFA, as residents are asked to become ‘citizen scientists’ to contribute critical information about the state’s fire risk.
- Chris Hilder and Alethea 'Olly' Flodin give the former Harris Mensland Dimboola a new lease on life, settling into their new hometown and opening the new-look Dimboola Trading Co for business.
- More than two million recyclables have been returned across the Wimmera in the first month of the new container deposit project, and although Horsham has led the way in the region, Dimboola has done its fair share, recording 166,585 recyclables.
- The Dimboola community comes together once again to embrace and celebrate Australia as at least 50 people attend the morning tea and Australia Day Awards ceremony hosted by the Dimboola CWA.
- The Wimmera Steampunk Festival, organised and run by the Dimboola Progress Association, with Chan Uoy as the mastermind behind the genre's introduction to the region, takes out the Hindmarsh Shire Event of the Year award.
FEBRUARY
- Patient transfers for Dimboola Care Community’s care team are made easier when the family of resident Victoria Baker donates a new lifter to the Grampians Health campus.
- Three men from Ballarat are arrested after smashing the front windows and stealing cigarettes and other tobacco products from Ellerman Street Metro Petroleum in Dimboola.
- Dimboola Art Inc committee members Jo Donnelly, Angela Walker and Deb Moar, Pink Lake Creative employee and local Desiree Cross join forces to create new interpretive signage to bring to life the history of Tower Park.
- Food takes gold, silver and bronze in a survey asking people what they want to see sold at Dimboola Tower Park Market, fruit and vegetables, bread, cakes and biscuits, and fresh-cooked street food being the top three choices.
- Local secondary schools prepare to introduce anti-vaping material into their lessons as teachers go on the attack against the dangerous habit after three in 10 students admit to having used e-cigarettes.
- Competitors from across the country and two international skiers contest the Peter Taylor Memorial Barefoot Waterski Tournament, hosted by Dimboola Boat and Water Ski Club.
MARCH
- The death of a third local farmer in three weeks sends shockwaves across the Wimmera as it mourns Merv Thomas of Wallup, Mark Huebner of Warracknabeal and Mick Morcom of Kellalac.
- After three months of container recycling, Dimboola's Container Deposit Scheme has collected $250,000, of which Dimboola Lions Club is preparing to distribute its share to community groups seeking to buy items.
- Wimmera Machinery Field Days organisers wind up the year with a sense of satisfaction that the 2024 event has met the expectations of both participants and the 10,000 specatators who attended the 60th annual event at Longerenong.
- When The Body Shop At Home in Australia shuts down, the decision stuns both loyal and regular customers and 20-25 consultants across the Wimmera who receive a “cold email” advising them of the closure with little notice.
- The region's biggest health provider, Grampians Health, emphatically denies there are any plans for a merger with Warracknabeal-based Rural Northwest Health "any time soon".
- The cost-of-living crisis takes its toll on the district's most vulnerable, driving record numbers of people to seek groceries and financial assistance and many battling local families to plead for help for the first time from the Christian Emergency Food Centre.
- Three Wimmera schools – Horsham's Holy Trinity Lutheran College, Dimboola's St Peter’s Lutheran School and Nhill Lutheran School – announce that they will merge in 2025 to form Wimmera Lutheran College, coming under one leadership structure to provide a more consistent education.
APRIL
- Concerns are raised over the future of an olive tree dating from 1859 in the backyard of Dimboola's Senior Citizens Building in Victoria Street, which is now permanently closed.
- Victoria Police Superintendent Sharon McCrory says her first year in the Wimmera has been a "good move" and she has no plans to leave the region until she retires.
- Wimmera residents are most at risk of experiencing crime inside their own homes according to new data showing that of 2758 criminal incidents reported to police in 2023 across the local government areas of Hindmarsh, Horsham Rural City, Yarriambiack, Buloke and West Wimmera, offences in residential buildings were highest.
- As the Grampians enjoys its busiest weekend since the February fires, a respected news website flouts safety protocols by publishing a controversial image of a visitor sitting on the rock ledge at Boroka Lookout, where two tourists have fallen to their deaths, making it the national park's most notorious beauty spot.
- Hindmarsh Shire Council announces the appointment of Dimboola local Monica Revell as its new chief executive officer.
- In a move that pleases researchers but disappoints farmers, dingoes in North West Victoria remain protected despite the state government having varied an existing order of protection across the rest of the state.
- A bridge near Dimboola is named by GrainGrowers as one of many across the state that urgently needs funding to address efficiency and safety issues, despite the federal government having pledged $45 million for regional safety upgrades.
- Flocks of corellas cause havoc at Dimboola Bowling Club, driving greenkeeper Daryl Argall to the end of his tether as the birds rip up the greens.
- District police say they are listening more to the community as a lively and constructive neighbourhood meeting – the first of its kind in the Wimmera – gathers senior police from across the region to present and discuss numerous issues.
- A new wave of funding is made available in the Wimmera as applications for the fourth round of the Murra Warra Wind Farm Sustainable Community Grant Fund open to not-for-profit groups or organisations.