World No.1 tennis player Ashleigh Barty has become the latest Australian sports star to join fundraising efforts for bushfire victims, pledging to donate all of her Brisbane International prize money. After donating more than $30,000 late last year to the RSPCA to help wildlife affected by the national disaster, Barty said she wanted to dig deep again for families who …

NSW Emergency Services Minister David Elliott, who went on a European holiday during the ongoing bushfire crisis, has labelled his absence “inexcusable”. Mr Elliott had been away in Europe as the bushfires ravaged much of the country and his state of New South Wales. On Friday night, he tagged himself in a social media post as being at the NSW …

Senior NSW Liberal Andrew Constance says the Prime Minister got “the welcome he probably deserved” when he was yesterday driven out of a bushfire ravaged town. Pictures from Scott Morrison’s awkward visit to Cobargo, on the NSW South Coast, were beamed around the world and went viral on social media. People in the town, where a father and son died in …

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been confronted by angry protesters in the bushfire-hit town of Cobargo in New South Wales. Two people died near the Bega Valley town when it was hit by a raging bushfire early on New Year’s Eve. Visiting the town on Thursday to meet emergency services workers and offer his support to bushfire victims, the PM found …

A volunteer firefighter has died and two others have been injured while working on a fire burning near Albury, the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has confirmed. The RFS said the three firefighters were the same truck working on a blaze near Jingellic, near the Victorian border, when it rolled over after being hit by extreme winds. One firefighter was …

It was a family business on the brink of collapse, but by harnessing the power of social media, Bridestowe Lavender Estate has become a global tourist destination. Robert Ravens could see the potential as a tourist site in 2007 and purchased the property as a retirement project. “We had no customers and no technology. We didn’t know anything about anything,” …

A well-known Queensland snake catcher has been released from hospital after being bitten by an eastern brown snake at a house south of Brisbane. Tony Harrison was live-streaming on Facebook on Saturday when he was bitten by a brown snake which was hiding under an air conditioning unit outside the home in Pimpama. The video shows the snake striking at …

Sydney Harbour New Year’s Eve fireworks display to go ahead despite bushfire risk The City of Sydney Council says the harbour’s New Year’s Eve fireworks will go ahead as planned but the Rural Fire Service (RFS) has refused to rule out cancelling the event at the last minute. Heatwave conditions are expected across large parts of the state next week, …

Volunteer firefighters battling long-running NSW blazes could receive up to $6000 in financial support for their efforts. The federal government on Sunday bowed to pressure to provide payments to those on the firefront this bushfire season, which in NSW has already cost eight lives, as many as 1000 homes and millions of hectares of bushland. The payments of up to …

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has conceded he caused “great anxiety in Australia” by taking a family holiday in Hawaii as bushfires burned across Australia, saying with the benefit of hindsight he would have made a different decision. Mr Morrison announced he would cut his trip short on Friday, after the deaths of two volunteer firefighters in New South Wales. He …