The Ballarat Bulletin

21/09/2025

Ballarat, 1998. A night out that should’ve ended with laughs and late-night chips instead turned into one of the most horrific unsolved murders the region’s ever seen.

Tracey Howard was just 33. Full of spark, bursting with energy, the one who lit up every room.

She worked at the Mars factory, had a house in Brown Hill thanks to a lotto win, and a wide circle of mates – from office execs to bikies. Everyone who knew her said she was magnetic, selfless, impossible not to like.

In the early hours of Sunday, November 22, Tracey hit up Cheers, Ballarat’s over-30s nightclub. It wasn’t even a planned night – just a spur-of-the-moment kinda thing.

CCTV shows her leaving alone at 3:08am, heading towards the taxi rank. She spoke briefly to a bloke she knew, got in a cab, and vanished into the night. Her best friend Sue Slater never saw her again.

At first, no one panicked. Her partner of five years thought she’d just crashed at a friend’s place. But when hours turned to a day, worry set in.

Seventeen hours after she was reported missing – 37 hours after she was last seen – Tracey’s naked body was found dumped on the side of Clarkes Hill Road, Pootilla, about 20 kilometres east of Ballarat.

The scene was sickening. Her clothes – jeans, a black-and-orange velour top, underwear, lace-up ankle boots – were scattered along a 500-metre stretch of bitumen, tossed out like garbage by whoever killed her.

The post-mortem revealed she’d been strangled. No evidence of s*xual assault. No attempt to hide her. Just brutality. Coppers even reckon she might’ve been murdered in her own home before being dumped.

They apparently interviewed 54 taxi drivers from that night, working the angles for decades. And still – no justice. The cold case squad openly admits they have a suspect and believe they know why she was taken out.

They also reckon the killer is local, still in the area, walking the same streets, and living a normal life – all while Tracey’s friends and family live with unanswered questions.

“It sounds unreal, but everyone loved her. It was as simple as that,” Sue recalled. And yet someone out there hated her enough – or feared her enough – to strangle her and leave her body naked on a back road.

Tracey's story is more than a case file. It’s a scar on Ballarat. A reminder that monsters don’t always hide in the dark – sometimes they live among us, smiling, pretending, while their secrets rot the whole city from the inside.

If you know anything, now’s the time to speak. Tracey’s family deserves answers. Her friends deserve peace. And Ballarat deserves to stop carrying the weight of this unsolved horror.

16/09/2025

Ballarat cops it hard, but you’ve gotta laugh. From golden showers to the “Ballarat cravat,” it’s a roast we almost deserve. Lake Wendouree’s a glorified backyard bucket, our weather’s either frostbite or dust storms, and Eureka was just a tax tantrum. But hey – we take it on the chin, crack a beer, and keep standing proud in the cold.

Founded during the gold rush, Ballarat began life as a ramshackle shanty town populated by thousands of grubby diggers. Around 150 years later it has completely transformed into a ramshackle city populated by thousands of grubby housos.

In its early days, Ballarat earned the moniker ‘the Golden City’ due to locals’ fondness for golden showers, while residents also referred to it as ‘the Athens of Australia’ due to their predilection for a**l s*x. The deviance continues to this day with the city lending its name to the ‘Ballarat cravat’, a euphemism for the popular Ballarat activity of shotgunning a blast of diarrhoea all over another person’s neck.

Ballarat is perhaps best known for the Eureka Rebellion, when a bunch of gold-grabbers took up arms against the government because they couldn’t be fu**ed paying tax. Ironically, these violent immigrants who refused to assimilate are now lauded as heroes by rednecks across the country, with the Eureka flag enduring as Australia’s second-favourite white supremacist icon after the Southern Cross tattoo.

Ballarat’s proudest feature is Lake Wendouree, a big hole that is regularly filled with recycled wastewater to stop it completely drying up (even water doesn’t want to go to Ballarat). Wendouree was originally called Black Swamp, before being renamed after an Aboriginal word meaning ‘f**k off’.

When it’s not baking hot enough to evaporate a lake, Ballarat defaults to freezing cold. It’s also known for its poor air quality, being smoky as a bogan’s breath in winter and dustier than a nun’s m**f in summer, ensuring it is a truly terrible place to visit at any time of year.

12/09/2025

East Ballarat is set to look a bit eerie tomorrow afternoon, but it’s all for show.

V/Line is running a large-scale emergency management exercise at the East Ballarat Train Depot on Corbett Street between 12pm and 4pm.

Emergency vehicles from a range of agencies will be driving in convoy from a staging area on Scott Parade, cutting through Humffray Street North to the depot.

They won’t have sirens going, but the lights will be flashing. A smoke machine will also be used on site, meaning some people nearby might see smoke rising for a short time.

Authorities are stressing this is only a drill, though for anyone in the neighbourhood it may feel unsettling.

The point is to test how services respond in a large incident – and for locals, the advice is simple: don’t mistake it for the real thing.

08/09/2025

53,000 new purple-lid glass bins are stacked at the Ballarat Airport, ready to hit households later this month, with the city’s new four-bin system – landfill, recycling, organics, and now glass – soon to kick in. 🚮

30/08/2025

Tractors storming through Ballarat, firetrucks blocking the Premier, and Albo’s motorcade chased out of town like a rabbit bolting from the spotlight.

This wasn’t some tame protest with polite signs and slogans – this was an uprising. It was raw, it was real, and it had the spirit of the Eureka Stockade written all over it.

Back in 1854, miners stood up against arrogant authority. In 2025, it’s farmers, firies, and everyday Aussies standing up against arrogant Labor governments that think they can trample land, rights, and livelihoods without a fight.

These people aren’t extremists. They’re the backbone of the nation. They’re the ones growing the food that ends up on every plate in Australia.

And now they’re defending their homes and families, because no one else will. You can’t buy off that love of the land. Like in The Castle – it’s their home, their castle.

The message couldn’t be clearer: hands off our farms, hands off our bush. Stop selling us out to inner-city ideology.

The Southern Cross still flies high over Ballarat. And the fire of Eureka? It’s burning hotter than ever! 🔥

29/08/2025

Dramatic scenes unfolded in Ballarat today, as furious farmers in tractors chased Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s motorcade through the streets, turning what was meant to be a polished appearance into a raw display of rural anger.

The clash came on the heels of last night’s controversial move by the Victorian Labor Government to ram through legislation allowing $12,000 fines against landholders who refuse access for the widely unpopular VNI West transmission project.

24/08/2025

Ballarat councillor Ted Lapkin will speak at the Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism, a controversial Gold Coast event offering councillors free travel and accommodation while promoting Israel’s political agenda.

Lapkin grew up in Israel, served as a combat-intelligence officer in the IDF, and went on to co-found the Australian Jewish Association before moving into federal politics.

A former military officer, political strategist, ministerial adviser and published novelist, he holds a Bachelor of History from Tel Aviv University and a Masters of Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

He has published numerous op-eds equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, bringing those arguments directly into council chambers, and positioned himself as a defender of Israel in local debates.

In March, he was accused of orchestrating the axing of a $285,000 grant from a local community group after scraping a board member’s social media posts that criticised Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Within a week the grant was gone, the board member had resigned under pressure, and the group had lodged formal complaints accusing Lapkin of defamation and leaking confidential information to the media.

The summit itself is built around embedding the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism across local governments – a definition that blurs the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel.

Human rights groups warn it is being weaponised to silence peaceful campaigns such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which calls for Israel to end its occupation and apartheid policies.

In Victoria, adoption of the IHRA definition has already sparked fallout, with the Bendigo Writers Festival losing 11 sessions this year after authors pulled out in protest.

The timing is especially fraught. Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza has killed tens of thousands, left families starving, and driven millions from their homes, with the UN and multiple human rights bodies widely describing it as genocide and collective punishment.

For critics, the distortion of “antisemitism” is grotesque – Palestinians are themselves Semitic people, yet their mass killing is ignored while those who speak out against it are smeared as bigots.

Despite the controversy over the summit, some Australian councils are signing on. Lapkin – with his Israeli military past, ideological fervour, and willingness to weaponise council processes – stands out.

His presence underscores the concern that this summit is not about protecting Jewish Australians from hate, but about importing a foreign government’s agenda into local councils, even as Gaza burns at the hands of Israel.

What are your thoughts? Should councillors elected to serve their communities be lending their voices to a foreign state’s political agenda at the local government level? 💬

17/08/2025

Some sad news for the region, folks – Ballarat has officially copped a spot on the dreaded Sh*t List Power Rankings :’(

Yep, the old gold rush town that gave us Eureka is also the same place where a gronk wearing a cardboard box as a disguise stole $40k worth of copper wiring from a housing development. 📦

Bloody rough blow for a city with so much history and heart – but hey, when you make the Sh*t List, you’re at least famous for something! 🙌🏻

S**T TOWN POWER RANKINGS 17/8/25

1. Sydney, NSW - 6 blokes hospitalised after allegedly being stabbed by group of feral 14 to 15-year-olds

2. Redlands, QLD - Acupuncturist couple jailed after tricking patient into having s*x with them for the ‘health benefits’

3. Tennant Creek, NT - Old man allegedly bashed and robbed by pack of feral girls

4. Melbourne, VIC - Masked neo-Nazis march to protest about their tiny little pen*ses, allegedly assault bystander

5. Townsville, QLD - Fu***it beats up Macca’s worker over refund dispute; serial s*x pest jailed for wanking in public park

6. Broken Hill, NSW - Dumbarse carjacker fought off by 89-year-old great-grandma with broken leg

7. Perth, WA - Prisoners on supervised work program at animal shelter allegedly steal and eat guinea pigs

8. Logan, QLD - Crowd bombarded by malfunctioning fireworks at carnival

9. Ballarat, VIC - Gronk wearing cardboard box as disguise steals $40k worth of copper wiring from housing development

10. Kalgoorlie, WA - Drongoess fined after firing slingshot at women in front of police station and hitting officer’s car

11. Port Pirie, SA - Still s**t