Tasmania

170-year-old horse hair from convict-built walls in Tasmania is among the remains from colonial Australia being scrutinised to tell the story of how the animals were used and where they came from.

Hydro Tasmania confirms the Basslink interconnector, which links Tasmania to the national electricity grid, has experienced an outage but expects it to return to service on Monday.

Twenty-five years after the surviving the horrors of the Rwandan massacre, Tasmanian migrant Faina Iligoga and her husband find a way to help those still struggling at home.

In Tasmania's deep south, a group regularly gathers to learn age-old skills of culling and "dressing" animals for meat and preserving fruit and vegetables. They say it's becoming more mainstream as the ethics and availability of food weighs on people's minds.

The barriers to finding a rental home have become so taxing that some tenants are forced to enlist outside help.

Tasmania's largest not-for-profit foster care organisation commits to the National Redress Scheme after the threat of a funding cut, but says its needs more government money to look after the 120 children in its care.

MORNING BRIEFING: A Hobart church is planning an arty response to Dark Mofo's inverted crosses, as a trio who allegedly bashed an elderly man appear in court.

Smoking rates have dropped massively since the 70s — down from 40 per cent to only 14 per cent — but some areas of the country are not getting the message.

Three years ago baker Joshua Humphries was confronted at work by two masked men with a shotgun. He and others in the bakery still feel the impact and urge Tasmanians to take advantage of a police gun amnesty.

A woman killed in a housefire yesterday is remembered as a good friend and neighbour, as it emerges the fatal blaze started when a wheat bag was overheated in a microwave.

Tobias Bockholt and Marisa Schlichthorst had been following the tiny house movement online for years when, inspired by tiny house enthusiasts on Instagram, they purchased an old school bus.

Despite recent rain, and snow even in the past few days, soil moisture levels remain relatively low for large parts of the east and west coasts — and the BOM's latest outlook doesn't leave much room for optimism.

Amid international efforts to find a vaccine for the deadly pig virus, Australian authorities and industry are bracing for an outbreak that some pig farmers fear is "inevitable".

MORNING BRIEFING: New data reveals the animals most at risk of being hit or killed on Tasmanian roads, a former physician at Royal Hobart Hospital unloads on the handling of reports detailing health system failures, and charges are laid over a brutal bashing.

A case against a Tasmanian man accused of trying to procure a teenage boy for sex collapses after a judge rules evidence from a self-proclaimed "paedophile-hunter" is inadmissible.

It's the hideous hairdo your dad probably had in the 80s, and it's making a comeback according to hairdressers who say they're fielding requests for the mullet every week.

MORNING BRIEFING: Good snowfalls have Tasmanian ski enthusiasts hopeful it's a sign of things to come and two Tasmanian paramedics come to the aid of a tourist who suffered a heart attack atop Uluru.

Ordering a shot of coffee in Hobart can now be done using sign language at a new cafe catering for the hearing-impaired, and they have a special way of making sure the cafe isn't too noisy.

The Australian Education Union appears poised to backflip on its endorsement of the Tasmanian Government's wages and conditions offer over concerns about the significant pay cut it would include for relief teachers.

The apparent suicide of a 16-year-old boy was an avoidable death and too much for his mother, who later took her own life, the boy's father says outside an inquest in Hobart.

Tasmania's health system is failing to meet the growing demand for emergency department care and is severely compromising patient safety, according to a scathing report handed down by the state's auditor-general.

Some of Hobart's public places could be renamed to honour Aboriginal people under a plan floated by the city's Lord Mayor, but a historian warns changing names could sweep away history.

MORNING BRIEFING: A Tasmanian teenager who killed himself is remembered as "gentle and sensitive" by his father at an inquest, the state's motor vehicle registry is yet to cancel a single Wicked Camper registration under laws banning offensive slogans and snow is falling.

It's been a watering hole, a brothel and a nightclub, and soon it will be a boutique hotel. If the walls of this building could talk they'd have plenty of stories to tell.

It's a public memorial in the heart of Melbourne's CBD — but many are still unaware of the fate of the two Australian warriors who were hanged at that site more than 150 years ago.