Elyse Armanini

The historic flour mill walls — constructed with pink dolomite and standing tall in the heart of Mount Gambier for 140 years — are now just a pile of crumbled stone following heavy machinery rolling onto the site. Developers were given the green light by planning assessors to raze the facade of the 19th century Roller Flour Mill to make way for a multi-storey hotel complex, despite a grassroots backlash from the community.

It was early October 2025 when 49-year-old Ben Whitehead had a sudden change in his health. "In a matter of weeks, I went from someone that could run 130 kilometres a week down to someone that struggled to mow a lawn," he said. Ever since, Ben's journey with a rare and debilitating cancer diagnosis has led him interstate and to novel treatments.

Darryl Bruhn remembers he was about 10 years old when his dad, Brice, was filmed by an out-of-town crew while working at a limestone quarry near Mount Gambier, in South Australia's south east. "For him it was just a normal day and the fact there was a film crew there … he would have been concentrating on his job," he said. Little did he know, the film would be distributed around the world and seen by people who would end up moving to Australia.