Latest news with #SouthernAustralia
The Sun
13 hours ago
- The Sun
Missing head of decapitated model's boyfriend ‘still not found' as Beauty & The Geek star, 34, charged with murder
A FORMER Beauty and the Geek star has been charged with the murder and decapitation of her boyfriend — as cops desperately search for his missing head. Julian Story, 39, was reportedly found burnt and dismembered on the bathroom floor of an apartment in Port Lincoln, southern Australia. 7 7 Officers made the grim discovery last Tuesday after responding to reports of a small fire. His girlfriend, Tamika Sueann-Rose Chesser, 34 — a model and reality TV star — was arrested two days later under the Mental Health Act and charged with murder. Detectives have launched an urgent public appeal to help locate Mr Story's missing head, which was allegedly removed after his killing around midnight on June 17. Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke told reporters on Friday: 'While I won't provide any further detail about that at this time, I can tragically say that we have not recovered the head of Julian Story. 'I can only imagine, and I want you to imagine, the grief this news is causing Julian's family. 'Recovering Julian's head to return it to his family so they can have a peaceful outcome, have a funeral and lay him to rest is a really important aspect for us.' Police have circulated CCTV footage and stills of a woman alleged to be Ms Chesser strolling through Port Lincoln hours after the alleged murder. The woman was seen with three dogs — dressed head-to-toe in black with a head covering, cops said. Officers hope locals might spot something that could lead them to the missing remains. 'Killer' told man he 'tortured to death he was going to s**g his ex' 'I'm appealing to local residents to review CCTV or dash cam footage which they may have, which may assist the investigation,' Supt Fielke said. Court documents reveal officers found Ms Chesser sitting in the back garden of the property 'in a catatonic and unresponsive state' before arresting her. She's also been charged with disposing of human remains to pervert the course of justice and assaulting a police officer, The Telegraph reports. So far, police say there's no obvious motive, with Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott admitting there were still 'a lot of unanswered questions' in what he described as a complex crime scene. In court on Friday, a suppression order protecting Ms Chesser's identity and banning publication of the alleged circumstances of Mr Story's death was lifted. The ex-reality star, who appeared via video link, has been denied bail and remains under a mental health detention order ahead of a committal hearing set for December. Ms Chesser's sister, Kiya-May, claimed her family is shattered by reports she'd been charged with murder. They told Daily Mail Australia: 'Please report how my sister is in a mental psychosis... This is not her... She would never do these things.' She added her sister had suffered 'a life of trauma and abuse, and now this – it has fried her brain'. Meanwhile, Mr Story's grieving family has thanked police, emergency workers and the community for their support during what they called an 'unimaginable loss,'. 7 7 'Your care has brought comfort amid the chaos,' they said. Neighbours have also recalled how they tried to tackle the blaze, unaware of the horror inside. Local resident Jody Miller told 7News: 'It's devastating. This doesn't happen in a small town like Port Lincoln.' He added he'd seen the couple before, saying: 'She seemed normal, she was good.' It comes as eerie footage emerged of a woman believed to be Ms Chesser reportedly standing topless at the Port Lincoln war memorial wearing a wedding veil, just days before her arrest. The bizarre clip showed the woman silent and motionless at the Garden of Remembrance while holding what appeared to be a sharp object — an unsettling stunt filmed by a horrified bystander. 7
ABC News
06-06-2025
- Climate
- ABC News
Victorian drought devastates farmers, businesses and communities
The effects of drought creep insidiously into every corner of the Edenhope community. It is like many towns throughout southern Australia suffering greatly at the whim of the weather. Farmers, local businesses and sports clubs — none are immune to a prolonged dry as bad as any can recall. Parched paddocks and dry dams mean farmers are spending tens of thousands of dollars buying feed, carting water and sinking bores, or selling off livestock they can not afford to feed. The money bucket is not bottomless, and for some, the bottom is already being scraped. In a town like Edenhope, almost entirely reliant on surrounding farmers to inject money into the local economy, that means everyone suffers. Paul McDonald farms at Charam, not far from Edenhope. He recalled a time in recent, but fading memory, when it was so wet he could not get around his paddocks. "November, December 2023 you couldn't drive in the paddocks, so I ended up buying a new motorbike to get around," he said. "Well, that motorbike is still sitting in the shed with seven kilometres on the clock, unused because of the dry spell we've had since. He has measured just 50 millimetres of rain for the first five months of this year. The long-term average annual rainfall for his region is about 550mm. Paddock feed is non-existent and his grain reserves are gone. "I've started buying in grain from the next-door neighbour; I had 70 tonnes of grain on hand, but anyway, that's just how the dice rolls I suppose," he said. Mr McDonald said the effect on the town was obvious as farmers tightened their belts. "A lot of times you'd battle to get a car park out the front of the pub or the department store, but now you can just pull up anywhere," he said. "The activity's just not there at the moment. "You're down to the bare necessities." Nick Brahmbhatt, who has owned the local take-away shop for three years, moved to the town during more prosperous times. "When we started here, the lake was full and a lot of people were coming into town and bringing economic activity," he said. He said his income was down by about 20 per cent. "When there's no [rain], the farmers are going to hold back spending," he said. "They're struggling … and everybody just keeps looking at the sky and hoping for rain to come around." But despite the challenges, he said there was no other place he would rather be. Mental health is at the forefront during the drought. The Edenhope-Apsley Football Netball Club, where Liz Kealy is president, provides farmers a critical escape from the drudgery of drought. "Years like these people need the club more than ever — if they don't have that reason to go out, they won't," she said. "For my family, being active and being fit is, first and foremost, getting out and getting those endorphins pumping, being on the field or on the court. Ms Kealy said the conversation about mental health was much more open than during past droughts. "My father is a farmer and talks about the '06 drought and the ones before that and there was not as much support as there is now," she said. Like many in small towns, Ms Kealy wears several hats. She is also an accountant, working with farmers through the financial impacts of drought. She said some of her farming clients were spending $40,000 a week on bought-in feed. Some in the area, she said, would be forced to sell land to keep farming. Grampians Health rural outreach worker Murray McInnes works across a region with an elevated suicide rate. There has been a big increase in people referred to him for help, particularly from the farming community. "It is heavy because people are finding it difficult to leave their farms — they're isolating themselves because they're busy feeding and doing what they need to do and they're not taking time out," he said. Mr McInnes said a break in the drought would not fix everything, but it would certainly help. "It's like coming out of winter, the rain will immensely make people in this area a lot happier," he said. On another farm near Edenhope, Clayton Caldow and his brother Ashley were flat out feeding sheep when ABC Rural stopped by. "It's pretty bad, real bad," Mr Caldow said. He is no stranger to tough times — he lost his dad to suicide in 1984, when Clayton was only 17. "We never saw it coming … and it's still happening," he said. Grief struck his family again in 2016, when his wife Sophie died from breast cancer at 42. "The kids were 3, 7, 12 and 14, but I wasn't just going to sell out … we soldiered on and the support from my family and the town was phenomenal," he said. He has continued to soldier on, raising his children while battling drought. "The youngest one, Poppy, is 11, she's my little gate opener, she asks a lot of questions and she knows how tough it is," he said. He did not know what the future held for the next generation, and said farming was a tough sell in a drought. "You get times this tough — why would you want to do it," he said.
ABC News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Aussie orchid turns heads at London's prestigious Chelsea Flower Show
Celebrity sightings at the Chelsea Flower Show are a dime a dozen. The prestigious annual garden extravaganza — widely considered the world's most famous — draws a stream of A-listers to west London. If you looked up from the colourful exhibits this year, you might even have caught a glimpse of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who are annual attendees. David Beckham, Joanna Lumley and Piers Morgan were also among those sashaying between the blooms. But spotting the Australian Great Sun Orchid. Well, that's much rarer. It was the first time the purple flower has ever been displayed at the show, and that's for a good reason. The orchid grows naturally only in specific parts of southern Australia, where it flowers between September and December. But at Chelsea this year, it bloomed months out of season, thousands of kilometres from its natural habitat, in a completely different climate. The incredible feat saw judges from Britain's Royal Horticultural Society — the centuries old charity behind the show — reward it with a gold medal. "It's like winning the plant Olympics," said Kinglsey Dixon, the West Australian botanist who masterminded the Great Sun Orchid's appearance. "The gold is beyond the icing of the cake. It is the cake." But it almost didn't happen. The Australian flower was part of a wider exhibit which also showcased orchids from South-East Asia and the Pacific. Assisted by the elite team at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens and other collaborators around the world, each display featured orchids as they would look in their natural habitat. The Great Sun Orchid was planted in sandy soil amongst granite rocks and blackened sticks, taken from Professor Dixon's own Western Australian property after a recent bushfire. It was in stark contrast to the tropical displays around it, and that was exactly what Professor Dixon intended. "It's us. It's Australia," he said. "It's a country of extremes and amongst all this, orchids are growing." Kew's orchid team pitched the idea of bringing the rare flower to Chelsea eight months ago. "I said, 'Yeah, but we need years,'" Professor Dixon said. With transporting the plant from Australia and getting it to flower logistically impossible in that time frame, the team called on a colleague in Germany for help. "I knew he had material that he's been growing for about 40 years from seed … I begged him, and he agreed," Professor Dixon said. With the centrepiece secured, every other aspect was planned with the utmost precision, in the pursuit of winning gold. The show's judging is notoriously strict. It dates to 1913 and draws the world's most prominent gardeners to the smart streets of West London, not to mention celebrities and the British aristocracy. Standards are eye-wateringly high, eclipsed perhaps only by the cost of an entry ticket, which can cost over 130 pounds ($270). "We had some intel from previous years one display was disqualified because the font size was not quite the correct accredited size," Professor Dixon said. "So we just were literally going around with tweezers, pulling off sand, pulling off grass and making sure the rocks are perfect." Their hard work not only won gold, but the admiration of Camilla and Charles, who grow orchids in their Wildflower meadow at the king's country estate, Highgrove. Charles has supported the species' conservation for many years. The exhibition organisers hope the win at Chelsea can attract more support to protect them, as the species faces growing threats in every corner of the globe. There are more than 30,000 species of orchids globally. They grow on every continent except Antarctica. But their future is far from guaranteed. "If you have degradation of land, fires out of season, other types of disruptions due to climate change, for example, then many plants and animals are then disrupted by those," said Mike Fay, the senior research leader in conservation genetics at Kew. "The orchids are particularly sensitive." Professor Fay explained the complex interactions orchids had with the environment meant they act as early warning systems for looming issues. "If the orchid starts doing badly, then it's a sign that there's something major going wrong … they are the canary in the coal mine," Professor Fay said. Scientists believe up to 60 per cent of orchids face possible extinction, and they're considered the most threatened plant group in Australia. "It is important that every effort is made to arrest this decline for future generations to experience our incredible diversity," said Australian Orchid Foundation (AOF) co-chair Helen Richards. "The AOF is delighted with the success that Kingsley has had with his display at Chelsea as it focuses local and international attention on the plight of Australia's orchid populations and the attempts being made to preserve our orchid heritage." That sentiment is shared by the gold medal winners. "It's not a message of despair but it's a message of a call to arms," Professor Dixon said. "We can do it, and we can change it from bad news to a good news story very quickly."
