To Korumburra resident Branden Kovacs, the town’s old skatepark near the showgrounds offered more than a place to do tricks. The collection of ramps, metal bars and concrete slopes kept him away from trouble and made him feel accepted.

“I will always be grateful I had a facility like that in a country town to express myself,” he told the Monitor. 

“I was bullied for three quarters of my life, pretty much from primary school to as a tradesman. When I was a kid, this park helped me. It was a place where I never felt judged.”

What happened: In March, South Gippsland council unveiled a new skate park next to the old train station along the Great Southern Railtrail and a couple of weeks ago the skatepark at the showground was quietly removed.

Kovacs remembers when the original park opened in the early 2000s: “I started there on skateboards and scooters but once I found the love of BMX bikes, I was sentenced to life.”

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Baw Baw Shire’s population is expected to grow by 50 percent - from about 62,000 to 93,500 - in the next 20 years. 

Housing - from the open market to affordable, public and community - will be placed under immense stress as the shire attempts to accommodate more than 31,000 new residents.

What happened: In the decade between 2013 and 2023, Warragul and Drouin were the fastest growing urban centres in Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

As the housing crisis bites, the rapidly growing population is increasing the number of residents seeking social housing or rental assistance.

In March 2026, there were 387 residents in Drouin and 625 in Warragul on the Victorian social housing priority access waiting list, according to the Gippsland Homelessness Network (GHN).

“These are people who are most in need, people who are escaping family violence, people with disabilities, health issues or people who are escaping disasters,” GHN Coordinator, Chris McNamara, told the Monitor. 

Baw Baw Shire Mayor Kate Wilson told the Monitor the council is “seeing the impact of housing stress on our families. We're seeing it on homeless services and the community services that are there to support them. It's very important that people understand the need”.

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Bass Coast Shire councillors will debate tonight whether they should ban smart glasses that can record footage from council facilities including pools and libraries.

What’s happening? As summer looms and smart glasses become cheaper, there are concerns about the technology being used to film people without their knowledge.

“These glasses have recently been made significantly more affordable and there are instructions online which show users how to remove the ‘recording indicator light’ on these devices,” Councillor Mat Morgan said in his motion to council. 

“Smart glasses pose a risk to general community safety, personal data security, deepfake pornography and other forms of AI facilitated abuse. Everyone has the right to feel comfortable and safe in Bass Coast.”

The motion seeks to have council staff prepare a new council policy to prohibit the use of smart glasses with recording capabilities in all council run facilities, and to prepare a new policy to be put to councillors by no later than December 31.

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Dhalia Robertson, who moved to Korumburra from South Australia with her husband and three-year-old son Logan in May, reckons the magpies are more aggressive in Gippsland.

“In South Australia, we don't get swoopy ones,” she told the Monitor.

Robertson has been taking Logan to check out playgrounds in the area. A neighbour advised her to avoid Coleman Park in Korumburra.

“We went there thinking, ‘Oh, there's other families here, it'll probably be fine’. We were wrong. We were the ones to get swooped.”

On social media some people refer to a particularly aggressive maggie at Coleman Park as Sir Swoopalot. In spring, the magpies win, and many residents choose to stay away.

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In 2003 a team of Australian video game designers and an investigative journalist made a game about escaping a detention centre in South Australia.

It’s called Escape from Woomera, and the controversial adventure game was designed to protest mandatory detention policies in Australia.

My colleague Archie Milligan from the National Account made a video about the game’s history. Take a look at it below.