Good morning central Victoria!
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We’re in for a mostly sunny day - Bendigo 26, Maryborough 26, Castlemaine 24, Kyneton 20, Redesdale 26, Echuca 27.
Catch up on news here:
Whirlwind romance to a lifetime of love
Six weeks was all it took for Maureen and Ted Fulcher to know they wanted to spend their lives together. After almost 65 years of marriage, the couple will celebrate Valentines Day with a performance by a harpist at Mercy Health Bethlehem, where they both live, along with other residents. Read more here.
Cameras turn on to snap speeding drivers
It might be Valentine’s Day, but there will be no more love for misbehaving drivers at traffic lights on McIvor and Reservoir roads in Strathdale. Read more here.
Southern 80 tragedy won’t slow down thrill-seeking skier
Weaving around razor-sharp snags protruding out of murky river water while being propelled at speeds of up to 120km/h isn’t most peoples idea of fun. But Cody Rigg, third-placed finisher in the Southern 80 water ski race, which claimed its second life in two years on Sunday, is unperturbed. Read more here.
Court hears bias claim
Former councillor Elise Chapman has argued the City of Greater Bendigo should be removed as a party to proceedings in a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing in which she is appealing a code of conduct finding against her. Read more here.
Tragic end to search for man
Police have recovered the body of a young man believed to have drowned near Rushworth at the weekend. Read more here.
Victoria men hold on to beat WA
Victoria survived a scare from Western Australia to remain unbeaten after the second round of the men’s national under-20 basketball championships. Read more here.
State of the nation
Need a national news snapshot first thing - well, we have you covered.
►Leadville, NSW: Family, friends and total strangers are emptying their pockets to help a young family who have been left gutted by weekend fires. More here.
► Cootamundra, NSW: Cootamundra producers have answered the call with hundreds of bales of hay heading to Central West regions devastated by bushfires over the weekend. Paul Manwaring and Andrew Glover are currently coordinating a fodder run to leave Cootamundra on Saturday morning bound for the small town of Coolah. More here.
► Maitland, NSW: Young Maitland drivers are eligible to trial four new smart phone applications expected to replace log books for L-plate drivers in the near future. The state government chose Maitland, along with Sydney suburb Castle Hill, to host the trial and they are looking for 100 L-platers to test the new technology. More here.
► Cessnock, NSW: Parishioners at Cessnock Baptist Church have been left saddened, but not defeated after their beloved church was engulfed by flames on Sunday evening. More here.
► Scone, NSW: Early this morning, on a property west of Scone, a wild dog that has eluded capture for six years all the while killing and maiming sheep was shot dead. Once the news of trapper Jonathan Randle’s success in destroying the legendary dog was passed onto landholder Norm Black, “Sofia Hill”, he cried tears of joy. More here.
► Strathfieldsaye, Victoria: CFA crews were called to a structure fire at a property in Saxby Drive, Strathfieldsaye, shortly at 6pm. A CFA spokesman said a double garage was “well alight” by the time firefighters from the Bendigo, Mandurang and Strathfieldsaye stations arrived. More here.
► Rushworth, Vic: Police have recovered the body of a young man believed to have drowned near Rushworth at the weekend. The body of the 21-year-old Rushworth man was found by police divers on the western side of the weir at Waranga Basin at 4.10pm, more than 48 hours after he went missing while swimming with friends on Saturday afternoon. More here.
► Ballarat, Vic: A 14-year-old boy who racked up a half a million dollar crime spree across Ballarat has been released from custody after receiving a stern talking to from a magistrate. The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was told his ice-fuelled crime spree “exhibited truly shocking offending”. More here.
► Mandurah, WA: The man accused of murdering teenager Hayley Dodd appeared in Western Australia’s Supreme Court on Monday, where he again pleaded not guilty to the crime. More here.
National news
► A combination of massive resources, unprecedented preparedness and good luck spared much of NSW from catastrophic bushfires over the weekend. More here.
► A "network of sexual perpetrators" used an Anglican church youth group to prey on young boys over a period of decades from the 1970s to the 1990s with church leaders failing to report allegations, a royal commission has found. More here.
► Sydney is facing a once-in-a-generation enrolment surge, a NSW Upper House inquiry into inner-city schools has heard, as the NSW Department of Education struggles to keep up with demand. More here.
► Islamic State has taken aim at several Australian religious scholars in its latest propaganda video, calling on followers to kill the sheikhs because they discourage violence. More here.
National weather radar
International news
► Jakarta: Animal welfare activists are calling for a ban on transporting dolphins by plane after filming footage that showed them being boxed into crates in a harness to take part in a travelling circus in Indonesia. More here.
► Washington: Does the US have a traitor as its national security adviser? US President Donald Trump's pick of a wild conspiracy theorist as his national security adviser was always a time bomb, but who'd have thought that retired general Michael Flynn's credentials would become the stuff of national debate in the same news cycle as North Korea's seeming provocation of the new administration with another missile test? More here. More here.
On this day
1779 – James Cook is killed by Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.
1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken.
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.
1929 – Saint Valentine's Day Massacre: Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone's gang, are murdered in Chicago.
1990 – The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes the photograph of planet Earth later become famous as Pale Blue Dot.
2005 – YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.
The faces of Australia: John 'the swagman' Cadoret
ONCE a jolly swagman worked at a Melbourne bank, tired of his office job, camped behind a desk.
So he packed up his things and he headed for the open road, 40 years on and he is yet to take a rest.
Born in 1954 in the Western Victorian town of Minyip, John Cadoret was in his early twenties when he decided to leave his shared flat and party life behind, simply because he wanted to.