Kyogle - 2474

The new year has got off to a dramatic start in northern New South Wales with heavy rain causing waterways across the Tweed to break their banks overnight.

The mayor of Kyogle has been booed and jeered as she faced a crowd of protesters angry over the surprise sacking of the council's general manager.

Fishing for bass as a teenager in the 1940s, John used some willow and a jam tin to make his own lures. Decades later, he's had great success with them.

John Langley still makes and sells hundreds of fishing lures each year.

They started out wild, feral and fearful of humans. Now these brumbies are showing just how loyal and capable they can be when given the chance.

Residents around Glens Creek Road and Frickers Road at Nymboida are being advised to prepare now after a bushfire burning in the area returned to the emergency warning level.

Pip experienced a case of shed envy after visiting ‘the library’, a former feed shed transformed by its owners into a place for family and friends to get together.

The emergency warning alert for the Willi Willi Rd fire in Kempsey has been dropped, but residents are warned to remain vigilant as fire is still active.

Fellow crew members tried to help a volunteer firefighter with a defibrillator until ambulance officers arrived but the man died in what RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers says was the "ultimate sacrifice".

Rice grown in paddy fields is responsible for 10 percent of the world's methane emissions. A small group of farmers in northern New South Wales is growing dry-land rice and hope their smaller methane and water footprint will appeal to customers. Northern growers are also hoping research by plant breeders at Southern Cross University will give them a new black variety sought after as a so called "super food".

Rice is agriculture's second-largest methane emitter, surpassing beef, but a small group of growers is producing a rain-fed crop, with a smaller environmental footprint. The problem is they can't export it.

Australia has a wide variety of plants and animals but protecting that bio-diversity requires another eight per cent of the continent to be set aside for conservation, including private land.

Tony Rowland has given 20 hectares of his bushland block to a conservation project so the land will never be logged and remain a wildlife sanctuary forever.

The Finch family home in Kyogle was once an homage to life at sea — attracting tourists from far and wide. But when its founder Frank Finch passed away, no safe harbour could be found for his maritime memorabilia.

Two recent coronial inquests have thrust kambo into the spotlight in Australia. So why do people choose to burn their skin and apply the frog poison?

The NSW Coroner's Court is told that the organiser of the Dreaming Arts Festival played guitar while Jarrad Antonovich lay dying and later described his death as a "beautiful occasion".

Paramedics tell a coronial inquest in NSW that "no-one was interested" in the fact that they were trying to save a man's life in a "weird" scene that an expert witness said "sounded very disturbing".

The first call for help to the ambulance service suggested Jarred Antonovich, who had a swollen face and was in "discomfort", was suffering an asthma attack.

Research commissioned by the NSW Council of Social Services finds NSW mortgage holders, mostly in regional parts of the state, are experiencing extreme financial stress.

For the first time, the under-40s will make up the majority of voters at the NSW election on Saturday. And they have clear messages about the issues they care about most.