Mooroopna, Australia News

Mooroopna music students are still breathless after a visit to South Australia where they met the greats of Australian jazz.

Third year apprentice at Tatura's Hotwire Mobile Auto Electrics, Tyson Dollar, has been named Rotary Club of Tatura's Jim Bell Award winner for 2012.

It's all hands on deck as school students are rowing on Victoria Park Lake for the first time in 16 years.

''We had pansies this year so the children painted egg cartons and we put seedlings in them,'' Ms Ivory said.

O PERA singer Deborah Cheetham stands up at the cafe table to make her point: "I'm actually not that tall," she says, "and I'm Aboriginal." OK, so that explains the name of her three-year-old Melbourne company for indigenous singers: Short Black Opera.

Shepparton's first automatic public toilets created a public embarrassment this week when the doors opened before a woman had finished using the facility.