Newsletter: Satellites and sea levels

Plus: Gippsland's offbeat botany fair.

Author

Jacob Wallace
April 15, 2026

⏱️ This Wednesday edition of our newsletter is a six-minute read.

👋 Hello Gippslanders, it’s Jacob here.

🌺 On Saturday, I visited the Rare and Unusual Plant Fair at Broughton Hall near Jindivick. As you’ll see in my photo below, the garden has a glorious view of the Tarago Reservoir.

I had a chat to the owner of the garden, David Musker, about how he came to start this event, and his favourite plants.

❝

People come to buy [rare plants] to fill their gardens with, because it's fabulous. You only have to look at the foliage around here, the way things look is amazing. You can't get that at those big supermarkets and hardwares.

Broughton Hall owner, David Musker.

More on that story later.

👀 Looking ahead. In today’s newsletter we’re talking about:

  • 🌊 How Wellington Shire is preparing for rising sea levels;

  • 🛰️ New low-orbit satellite technology to help tackle mobile blank spots;

  • 🎋 Peculiar botany;

  • 💰 How much the government makes off our gambling losses, and;

  • 🥧 Pie Addict’s lamb souvlaki pie in Morwell.

🎊 WHAT’S ON THIS WEEK 🎟️

🧺 FARMERS MARKETS 🥧

🚀 Alright, let’s jump into the Monitor’s latest yarns!

🔍 HEARD THIS WEEK👂

Years of dropped calls and communications blackouts in rural South Gippsland may be one step closer to a fix, after the federal government made a commitment to rolling out low-orbit satellite technology.

What happened: South Gippsland Mayor, Nathan Hersey, told the Monitor the federal Minister for Communications, Anika Wells, had committed in March to rolling out low-orbit satellite technology across the region.

“Gippsland's got an exceptionally high number of mobile phone black spots," Hersey said. “That's largely due to the dispersed population and also the topography.”

The new technology will be delivered by NBN Co - a government-owned company responsible for building, upgrading and operating the National Broadband Network.

How does the tech work? The network of low-orbit satellites rotate around the planet at a much lower altitude than regular satellites.

This leads to faster connection speeds and better coverage because the satellites are physically closer to the receiver.

  • Last year, NBN Co announced it has partnered with Amazon’s low-orbit technology and planned to begin rolling out the service from the middle of 2026.

Hersey said the service will initially provide voice, text and data services in times of crisis or emergency situations, before being rolled out to support general communications. 

🪻 A day at Gippsland’s Rare and Unusual Plant Fair

Over the weekend I visited the picturesque Broughton Hall on the banks of the Tarago Reservoir near Jindivick to take a gander at some peculiar and eccentric plants.

The fair is put on by the garden owner, David Musker, who has maintained the property for 30 years.

Musker told me he started a nursery for offbeat plants after he began using them in his work as a landscape architect.

Take a look at a video about the fair below.

🌊 How is Gippsland preparing for rising sea levels?

Last week, I published a story on how Wellington Shire is updating its flood maps with new data to better display how rising sea levels will impact the landscape.

I’ve now turned that story into a video explainer, take a look at it below.

LOOKING NATIONALLY 👀

Australians lose an estimated $32 billion every year to gambling, but how much does the government make from those losses?

My colleague Archie Milligan from the National Account is continuing his coverage of gambling profits in Australia. This week, he looked at how much money state government’s profit from gambler’s losses.

Take a look at Archie’s video below.

🎥 Watch: Pie Addict’s lamb souvlaki pastry review 🥧

In my never ending quest to locate the most scrumptious pie in all of Gippsland, I stopped into Pie Addicts in Morwell and taste tested an unusual filling - lamb souvlaki.

Take a look at my video review below.

Thanks for reading our Wednesday newsletter. I hope you enjoyed this issue and we’d love to hear from you.

☎️ Call out. This week, I’m looking to write a story around a new wind farm development in Alberton. I read there was a petition from town residents to Wellington Shire asking the council to loosen planning constraints they claim are blocking Alberton’s growth.

It looks like a new federally funded wind farm project could generate some of the economic growth residents are after, so if you live in Alberton or signed the petition, I’d love to hear from you.

You can email us at [email protected].

I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday with more local stories, informative videos and upcoming events.

Cheers,
Jacob & the Gippsland Monitor team

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