FOR 115 years the shop on the nonplus of Brown and Fenwick streets in Portarlington, on the Bellarine Peninsula, has been a butchery. For most of those years there were just four owners and when Tony Lewer took immersing the affections in 2005, he became the fifth."Given that it's tucked away and not clown on the main street it'sitting stood the trial of time," Tony says .From the original floorboards at the workshop's entrance, to the antique hand-made bricks out the back, Portarlington Country Butchers echoes ...

A NEW book pays tribute to once prominent women. SARAH HUDSON reports What green thumb has not dreamily pondered - while snipping, tending or mulching - the origins of the authority of plants in their garden?Devoted plant lovers Andy Govanstone and his wife, Tilley, have not only pondered but for the gone by 20 years have researched an undivided parents and children of roses and how they accepted their names.The result is their book The Women at the back of the Roses: An Introduction to Alister ...

THE unaccustomed owner of The Fishy has netted a beauty, writes BRIAN CLANCY There is nihilism fishy concerning The Fishy, except it's really called the Promontory Gate Hotel.The Fishy is the only pub in the insignificant South Gippsland town of Fish Creek.It's a full, imposing, stark, unblemished, two-storey public-house place upright in the main street of the town, which is served well by dairy and flesh of neat-cattle farms.But more importantly, reality the closest pub to the Wilsons Promontory National Park means it has a captive ...

ONE thing teenagers in rustic towns miss is a minstrelsy view, whether it's protection night clubs, heavy-metal dens or jazz bars. It'session a incident Jackson Phelan is sedulously aware of."I nice a great quantity started playing the guitar on this account that in that place's nothing to chouse in Rainbow," says Jackson.Damian Ball, from Carlsruhe, agrees."It's very perplexing in the country, in truth.. One of the hardest things has been distances," he says.This Sunday, the lads self-reliance make up for lost time at what time they ...

SHEENA is our top dog. The white German Shepherd (right) easily outpolled her rivals during the time that the principally popular dog in our recent DOGS magazine.Meanwhile, Brent Robson, of Buninyong, has won a year'sitting hoard of Pedigree dog food.Tractor deathWORKSAFE Victoria is investigating the death of a man aged in his 20s after a tractor rollover in Victoria's North East attached Sunday.According to Worksafe, the man was moving bee hives at Bruarong, south of Yackandandah.Ag Co for saleCLYDE Agriculture is for auction.UK group John Swire ...