Established in 1981 as the
proudly serving Sunbury and Macedon Ranges
31 MARCH, 2026
Easter Egg-citement (Damjan Janevski) 540306_01
Egg-citement is brewing as kids across Melbourne’s north-west dream of what chocolatey goodness the Easter bunny will deliver this Sunday. Many will spend their weekend filling up on sweet treats, baking hot cross buns and attending Easter celebrations with their families. Emily, 10 (pictured) is ready to hunt down any chocolate eggs the Easter bunny leaves behind and fill her basket to the brim.
Cash trumps trash By Georgia Tacey Hume council may spend $25,000 to hire celebrity judges as part of its latest push to incentivise cleaner streets. The latest dumping deterrent, which will now be up for consideration during the 2026-27 budget, is the Keep Hume Clean Awards, with $30,000 projected to be spent on hiring two celebrity judges and an industry expert to judge the municipality’s best kept streets, suburbs and neighbourhoods. Following a notice of motion from Cr Naim Kurt, officers prepared a report for
how the awards would work, which would cost ratepayers a total of $82,000 if council attempts to run it on its own. Included in the cost is an awards ceremony with catering for guests, prizes and certificates for winners, as well as the installation of signage reading ‘Best Kept Street 2026’. In a report to council, officers said they could identify no external funding opportunities to run these awards, with a potential partnership with Keep Australia Beautiful Victoria being explored to ease costs. The report stated that costs could be
reduced by varying the judging panel proposed, but when Cr Jarrod Bell spoke on the item at the 23 March council meeting, he suggested another way council could cut costs on the awards night. “Maybe we don’t need to spend $4000 on catering, I think we can fi nd a community group to run a sausage sizzle for a bit cheaper, but I’m happy to have those discussions at the appropriate time in the budget discussions,” he said. Cr Kurt was glad to see the report come to the chamber, and said he had “big hopes and dreams” for his idea. “I said in the chamber I’d love to see
an awards ceremony, where we’ve got big celebrity judges there. [Officers] went out and they spoke to Jamie Durie, they spoke to Costa, they spoke to a few others and apparently, there’s a bit of a fee that’s involved with it,” he said. “I was hoping they could do it out of the goodness of their own heart. But there is some funding in there to partner with the Keep Australia Beautiful campaign, and that’ll be able to provide the apparatus for this.” Cr Kate Hamley was the only councillor to vote against the proposal.
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