Latest news with #Northcote
ABC News
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Wild One: Keyo Roses Flying Circus - A Man
Whirling camerawork, throbbing lights, and questions about what it really means to be 'A Man' all await under the psychedelic big-top of this Wild One — the first ever video from Naarm act Keyo Roses Flying Circus. Directed by Hugo Morgan, 'A Man' combines distorted frames, fluid camera manoeuvres, and choppy cuts for a video that is truly trippy. Shot in the Northcote Theatre, Hugo, Keyo and the team wanted to create an uninterrupted performance that invites the viewer into the theatre as the only patron. "All the movement is continuous," explains Hugo, "but we also played with continuity and lighting to shape the environment and guide the audience through the different sections of the track.' 'This song is a conception of many hours spent smoking cigarettes in my room, unravelling the rope of masculinity to find balance and identity' says circus conductor Keyo Rhodes. 'I suppose it questions the idea of a man, the conflict between grace and strength, and if you dance around a bit things usually make more sense.'
News.com.au
2 days ago
- News.com.au
Police make arrest after allegedly stolen car ploughed through Northland Shopping Centre
A man has been arrested after an allegedly stolen SUV ploughed through a Melbourne shopping centre on Wednesday. Chaos broke out as the white Toyota LandCruiser ploughed through Northland Shopping Centre on Wednesday just after 4pm, sparking a major emergency response. Police allege the LandCruiser was trying to evade officers at the time, after they earlier tried to block the car at a park. Footage circulated widely online shows the car – believed to be driven by a man – speeding through the shopping centre, smashing through the doors as shoppers huddled inside stores. 'Thankfully, no one was struck by the car and there are no reported injuries,' police said in a statement. Police later discovered the vehicle dumped on Beavers Road in Northcote about 5.10pm the same day. They allege it was stolen from Ivanhoe East on June 2, using an 'electronic key reprogramming tool'. The shopping centre incident sparked an overnight manhunt for anyone involved. Police arrested a 27-year-old East Melbourne man at a Hoddle St address at about 8.30am on Thursday. 'An electronic key reprogramming tool was seized during the arrest,' police said. The man will be interviewed by detectives. No charges have been laid. Authorities are not looking for anyone else in relation to the incident. Witnesses have recalled their terror during the shopping centre rampage, saying stores forced their shutters closed as the car sped through. Merchandiser Tanya Nava told Today she was working in Kmart when the gates were pulled down. 'Everyone was just in a panic,' she said. 'A young girl runs up to me and she goes, 'Oh, there's a car in the shopping centre'. And we just all went 'oh my god', and then everyone was just freaking out.' Staff put the customers to the back of the shop as the incident unfolded outside, the sound of the commotion echoing through the centre. 'It was like we heard gunshots, but it was just this car ramming through the shopping centre,' she said. On Wednesday afternoon, a witness who was 'locked in a store' during the incident warned others of the speeding vehicle. 'If (you're) planning on attending Northland this afternoon don't,' she wrote. 'A car smashed through a door and went right through the shopping centre.' Another woman recalled seeing the car 'quickly' speeding through the centre. 'I saw the car drive through and lucky no one was hit from this exit,' she wrote online. The horror incident comes three weeks after the centre was plunged into lockdown due to what police allege was a fight between machete-wielding teens. Northland Shopping Centre confirmed it would continue to operate as normal on Thursday. 'Following yesterday's incident, we confirm that our stores are open and trading as usual today,' a statement read. 'We continue to work with the Victorian Police, with increased security and police presence in centre over the coming days.' The centre also offered support to anyone affected by the incident. 'We understand the incident that took place at our centre was distressing, and we want to reassure our community that we are taking this matter seriously,' the statement read. Shopping centre management said it would have extra team members and an increased security presence around the centre.
News.com.au
5 days ago
- Lifestyle
- News.com.au
Northcote: Reno transforms cottage into masterpiece
It was love at first sight for Amy and Mat, who purchased 34 Andrew St in 2015, after seeing the property only once. 'At the auction, no one was bidding and it was about to be passed in, so we put in a bid and luckily got to buy it,' she says. Initially attracted to the street, which Amy describes as 'one of the best in Northcote,' the challenge to renovate an old double-fronted house in the area was also a motivation. 'The original house was a very basic workers' cottage,' she says. 'It was a case of worse house, best street, but we could see the potential.' The couple started working on the plans for Andrew St with architect James Lane and Tom Eckersley in 2018, but due to other commitments and life events, didn't start the knockdown of the original home and the rebuild until several years later. 'The inspiration for Andrew St originally came from our architect, who made a compelling point that we are not living in the past, so why not create something that reflects how we live today, rather than replicating a bygone era we never actually experienced,' Amy says. 'That comment really resonated with us, and the twisting shape of Andrew was created.' The exterior of the home demands attention with its trendsetting facade, while the interior blends bespoke design and luxury appointments, including exposed brickwork, polished concrete floors, and solid stone surfaces. Functionality and space are key to the double-story home's layout, an element Amy says is one of her favourites. 'Functionality was most important; we wanted the house to grow with our family of four,' she says. This feature continues outside, with a landscaped backyard that wraps around to an entertaining area with an in-built barbecue, wood-fired pizza oven and a sparkling lap pool. 'We wanted grass from them to play on, and we are big entertainers, so the whole house needed to know how to entertain,' she says. 'The unit above the garage suited our lives with both our parents living in country Victoria, and they just love the space and sleep-ins they can still have when staying with us with small children.' While contemporary, the home also features elements of its original form, Amy says, with timber beams and classic Northcote red bricks salvaged from the demolition and used in the home. 'Our incredibly talented next-door neighbour crafted the timber into our current front door and also built the bench seat out front. The salvaged Northcote reds found a new life in the outdoor entertaining areas,' she says. 'A little bit of the past is still present in the future.'
ABC News
6 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
All Are Welcome bakeries shut three Melbourne locations with staff entitlements unpaid
Three popular inner-Melbourne bakeries have closed their doors for good on Sunday, with questions about more than a quarter of a million dollars in superannuation owed to staff up in the air. All Are Welcome bakery, which has shops in Northcote, Ivanhoe East and Thornbury, first started in 2016 and recently employed 61 people. The company entered voluntary administration in February this year with more than $1 million in debt, but company director Boris Portnoy subsequently bought the business back under a different entity in an attempt to continue on. The ABC reported in recent days on documents showing staff were owed $243,000 in superannuation and $125,000 in leave entitlements. Mr Portnoy told the ABC he decided to shut up shop this weekend for good after being locked out of the Northcote shop on Friday. He did not comment on what the future might hold for staff waiting for superannuation and leave entitlements, but said he would try to "minimise any harm" as part of a "journey to unwind everything". "This is not a top-down 'big bad boss versus staff who don't have any say'," Mr Portnoy said. "I want to take responsibility for what has happened as far as entitlements. Frustrated former staff members have told the ABC anonymously they were missing months' worth of superannuation payments, amounting to thousands of dollars. Mr Portnoy said the bakeries had "cemented ourselves in our neighbourhoods". "We've had staff [who] have been with us for five years," he said. "We've gone through COVID with everybody. We were able to support the community and the community has supported us during these times." The ABC contacted administrator Hamilton Murphy for comment.
ABC News
12-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Rare earth magnet crisis creates Australian opportunity out of US-China trade war
From his tiny outlet in Northcote, just outside Melbourne's CBD, Mike Newbon has unwittingly found himself at the centre of a stand-off between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Ever since April, when Chinese authorities quietly shut off access to rare earth supplies to the US, Newbon has been fielding emails and calls from suppliers and manufacturers desperately scouring the globe for a highly specialised bit of gear. From a corner of a shop that specialises in selling rugs, Newbon has built a niche business, Fastmag, supplying manufacturers with magnets. But not just any old magnets. He supplies what's known as permanent magnets, components that incorporate a rare earth known as Neodymium, which are used in everything from health imaging to sound equipment and electric motors. Suddenly, he's found himself a man in demand from buyers he's never heard of. "They're desperate and they're big orders," he explains. "You can see what's happened. People have woken up and realised they need half a million magnets to produce half a million widgets, and they can't get them until this disagreement gets sorted out." It all began shortly after US President Donald Trump launched his "Liberation Day" tariffs in April. China retaliated, not just with trade barriers of their own, but with a ban on the export of rare earth magnets to the US. Given the magnets are used in everything from cars to refrigerators and almost every conceivable appliance, shortages like this play havoc with industry across the economy. It was a situation that continued even after US Treasury Secretary Mike Bessent met with China's Vice-Premier He Lifeng in Geneva last month, and has left US manufacturers reeling. Little wonder it has precipitated further talks between the two superpowers in London this week. As the meeting wrapped up, the US president used his social media platform to declare a "deal with China is done", and was sure to single out the in-demand metals. "Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up-front, by China," he posted on Truth Social, but a formal agreement is yet to be inked. Like all trade disputes, both sides are hurting as a result. "The factories that we deal with in China, it took them a while to realise that they were caught up in this as well," Newbon tells ABC News. "They literally cannot get exports of rare earth magnets through their customs. "That's all they produce, so these factories are in all sorts of trouble too, so their bosses are trying to get dual certificates or exemption certificates and we're in the process of doing that ourselves." For all the talk about rare earths, they remain a mystery to most. For a start, they aren't all that rare. Most of the 17 rare earths are scattered widely across the planet's surface. And that's part of the problem. Because they're so widely distributed, it's rare for them to be found in any concentrated form. Mostly, that requires miners to churn through vast amounts of dirt to extract relatively small amounts. Often, they are a by-product of sand mining or incorporated in other deposits. Refining them is an equally difficult and dirty job, occasionally involving nuclear waste. First, they need to be separated from other compounds, then isolated into their individual components. That's before they are refined into a product that can be incorporated into an industrial use. All up, it's an expensive process. And not all rare earths are equal. Neodymium is a light rare earth, useful for producing magnets for componentry for everyday products. It is the heavy rare earths that have become prized — supplies of heavy rare earths like Terbium and Dysprosium have become constrained while demand is accelerating. Their main advantage is that they have a resistance to demagnetisation, allowing them to continue working in higher temperatures. That makes them ideal for use in military applications, aerospace, electric vehicles and in renewable energy generation. When it comes to rare earths, China rules the roost. Endowed with large and more concentrated deposits, it plunged headlong into extraction and, more importantly, refining and industrial application back in the 1990s. It is never easy to isolate the exact numbers. Overall, Beijing controls about 90 per cent of rare earth refining. But in the all-important arena of heavy rare earths, it has total domination. Chris Bevan, the executive chair of Metallicum Minerals Group, which has aspirations of rare earth processing, describes China's effective monopoly as a "major problem". If the US government wants to keep building F35 fighter jets, it will need to rely upon Beijing delivering the magnets that will allow them to fly, a situation that could become tricky if hostilities ever escalate into a military confrontation. When it comes to light rare earth magnets, China has a commanding lead at around 70 per cent market share while the US has several prominent permanent magnet manufacturers. But that all could change. A few hours north of Perth in the tiny town of Eneabba, a huge mound of rare earth-rich monazite has been fortuitously accumulated for decades by mineral sands group Iluka Resources. No-one quite knows or can recall who gave the order to store what then was an unsaleable by-product. But, with the help of federal government funding, it is about to transform Iluka into a strategically important operation. It is in the advanced stages of constructing a refining plant that will supply the heavy rare earths required to sever the Western alliance's dependence upon China. Lynas Rare Earths, another major Australian operation, for years has been a major producer and refiner of light rare earths. But it recently announced that it would be looking to isolate heavy rare earths. With processing plants in Malaysia and Kalgoorlie and another under construction in the US, Lynas is in a race with Iluka to be the first operator with a plant capable of refining heavy rare earths outside of China. As luck would have it, the Lucky Country is also richly endowed with rare earths and, importantly, heavy rare earths. Extracting them has been difficult because the world's biggest producer, China, has been accused of routinely manipulating the market to force prices lower whenever a potential rival emerges. And in recent years, it has used its dominant position to punish countries it deems has acted against its best interests, as it has done in recent months against the US. That now has Australian politicians pondering whether Australia could utilise its strategic advantage and create a new manufacturing base, to add value to our minerals rather than merely sending them off in raw form. It has poured more than $1.6 billion into Iluka's new plant, provided tax incentives for critical minerals and announced plans to create a fund to buy mineral reserves. The Iluka plant will produce refined heavy rare earths. But perhaps an opportunity has arrived that could break China's stranglehold on high-end rare-earth magnets and add even more value by manufacturing them instead in Australia.
