Fire season has arrived and while the threat is significantly lower than previous years, preparations are still taking place. Almost three years ago to the day, East Gippsland was facing its biggest ever bushfire threat, one that rattled the region to its core - infrastructure and homes were destroyed, tourists were stranded, roads and highways were cut, lives were lost.Despite the events of the...

Thieves targeted Beds R Us in Bairnsdale making off with a truck load of expensive stock in what the business owners believe was a planned raid. CCTV footage from a nearby business captured the group of bandits as they entered the back of the store by forcing the back door with what's believed to be a jemmy bar at 3.30 in the morning. Jenny Easton, who owns Beds R Us with her husband, Brian,...

For nearly 60 years, Eileen Douglas has been dutifully recording the rain that falls at The Brothers, about 10 kilometres north of Benambra. Becoming an 'official' volunteer rainfall reader for the Bureau of Meteorology in 1968, Mrs Douglas would wander out onto her property on a daily basis to check the rainfall gauge erected in a purposeful steel canister. The site was authorised by the...

Bairnsdale resident, Tony, is acutely aware of what it’s like to be homeless. For three long years he didn’t have anywhere to call home. Tony, who has been living in East Gippsland for 18 years, had suddenly found himself homeless. A few years ago, he lost his job at a local food manufacturer, where he had worked for five-and-a-half years. “You lose your job and then one thing leads to another,”...

Brian Box from Grind 2 Go coffee house in Bairnsdale received an early morning call on Monday to inform him that his business had been burgled.  It’s one of those calls every business owner dreads. “Cappa (John Capobianco) from Bairnsdale Dairy phoned to alert me that my window had been smashed and I’d been broken into,” Mr Box told the Advertiser. “The pole cats ended up with nothing...