SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS: Outdoor weddings are rising in popularity – and based on attendance at Love A Fair 2017, so too are outdoor bridal expos.

About 1000 people poured onto Bradman Oval in Bowral on January 22 looking for inspiration for their upcoming nuptials. Read more.

BRAIDWOOD: New doctors at Braidwood Medical Centre love Braidwood’s thriving community and beautiful rural surrounds.

Dr Shilpa Dahal and Dr Noor Ahmed have both recently begun work at Braidwood Medical Centre and are excited for the challenges and joys that working in rural health will bring. Read more.

WINDELLAMA: Police are appealing for information after a home invasion early Saturday at Windellama, 45kms south of Goulburn.

Emergency services were called to a home on Lumley Road, Windellama about 2.30am, following reports of a home invasion. Read more.

CROOKWELL: Sunday’s Hewitt Memorial race day at the Goulburn Paceway was on all accounts a huge success.  A great program of racing, combined with a very worthy charitable cause, saw a big crowd of spectators pack out the Grace Millsom Function Centre. Read more.

QUEANBEYAN: Bungendore’s Graeme Thomas is a self-confessed rev-head but he admits he and his family and friends are a “different brand of rev-heads”.

Mr Thomas has been addicted to American vintage cars since he was 10-years-old and the bug has been caught by those close to him. Read more.

GOULBURN: Goulburn Classic Riders Club annual swap meet appears to be the largest the club has held in the 20 plus years they have been running their charity fundraising event. Read more.

The Southern Highlands rail line is running on time this morning and there are no delays on the roads.

Need a national news snapshot first thing – well, we have you covered. 

► PORTLAND, VIC: Adelaide driver Chris Stewart, 48, died when his purpose-built drag car crashed into a wall during a Portland race meeting on Saturday.

About 1000 people were at the track for the two-day South Coast 660, including family and friends of the driver, when the accident happened about 1pm, police said. An Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullen said the driver was deceased when they arrived and was unable to be resuscitated. Read more. 

► HORSHAM, VIC: A toddler who was seriously sunburned allegedly despite wearing SPF50+ sunscreen, is healing well.

Two-year-old Zayden ended up with large blisters on both shoulders, which bled and became infected, after a family trip to the beach last week.

Following a trip to the hospital and multiple doctor’s appointments, Zayden’s mum Jennifer Moore said he is doing much better. Read more. 

► NEWCASTLE, NSW: Rescuers say a life jacket has saved a rock fisherman from drowning after a rogue wave washed him into dangerous surf between Avoca and Copacabana beaches on Sunday morning. 

The 58-year-old fisherman was swept into the sea about 8am, spending about half-an-hour bobbing around off a spot known as Winnie Bay before two volunteers from Avoca Surf Life Saving Club pulled him into an inflatable rescue boat.

Club president Garry Clarke said the man was about 500 metres out to sea when they got to him. Read more. 

► DUBBO, NSW: Athletes at the start of their career through to those who have plenty of experience were at the Athletics NSW Country Championships at Barden Park.

The youngest athlete that lined up was just nine years old, according to officials, while one competitor in their 90s also took part.

“That’s the interesting thing about athletics,” Athletics NSW board member and meeting manager for the Dubbo tournament Peter Higgins said. Read more. 

► BALLARAT, VIC: If the Ballarat Vegan Festival is anything to go by, more locals are willing to give up meat and animal products than ever before.

“It’s easy being Vegan,” festival attendee Anna Hills said.

Ms Hills and her sister grew up vegetarian but decided to follow in their father’s footsteps and adopted a vegan lifestyle two years ago.

Ms Hills hasn’t looked back. Read more. 

The best of the best photos from the Tamworth Country Music Festival Day three. Click HERE to see more from the Northern Daily Leader’s coverage of the festival. 

► HEALTH: Andrew Mullard reckons diabetics have enough to contend with without the Federal Governmant imposing more costs on them.

Regular visits to GPs, the cost of medication including insulin, trips to dieticians, podiatrists and optometrists and now the extra burden of blood test strips is pushing their medical expenses to the limit.

Mr Mullard, of Windella, was diagnosed about seven years ago with type 1 diabetes. He will still received subsidised strips, but his type 2 counterparts will now have to fork out $60 for one pack of 100 test strips. Read more. 

► EMPLOYMENT: There's an "exciting new world of work" out there, and not only is Sarah Moran embracing it, she's encouraging others to do the same.

Ms Moran, 32, is chief executive of Girl Geek Academy, which builds technical and entrepreneurial skills among women. She said the lines between traditional jobs and entrepreneurship were "blurring further and further".

When a school careers counsellor recently asked her about the future of work, Ms Moran told her: "You get a job or you make a job, and it's totally OK to bounce in between." Read more. 

► SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: The Turnbull government's proposed version of marriage equality would further entrench discrimination by allowing civil celebrants and service providers to refuse to undertake gay weddings, the peak law body says.

The Law Council of Australia will on Monday tell a parliamentary inquiry the proposed laws would allow discrimination against same-sex couples on "no proper basis" and undermine fundamental principles of the law.

"The current bill that they're looking at doesn't strike the right balance," council president Fiona McLeod, SC, said. It went "too far" in appeasing religious groups and was "inconsistent with the current federal law", she said. Read more. 

► USA: Now that's a counterpunch. Forever telling Americans that if he's punched, he'll counterpunch, Donald Trump woke from his first sleep at the White House to find the streets of the capital flooded with probably as many people protesting against him as were there on Friday to welcome his inauguration.

As his slap-in-the-face inauguration speech sank in, Trump took himself off to see a bunch of guys he's punched relentlessly – the CIA. And around the world, leaders tended to be mute or, like Malcolm Turnbull, tweeted platitudes that seemed to pretend Trump's threatened war on the world is just bluff and bluster. Read more. 

► USA: Donald Trump's ascent to the White House has been met with a tidal wave of peaceful protest across the country, with hundreds of thousands flooding Washington, DC, and huge crowds in other cities across the United States and the world expressing anger, disgust and defiance at the new President and demanding equal rights for all.

The Women's March on Washington, DC, the largest march to take place on Saturday, inundated the national capital, with huge crowds spilling from the designated rally area to the south of the Capitol, sprawling across the National Mall and into surrounding streets, and jamming the underground Metro service. News network MSNBC estimated half a million people were at the Washington march by 1pm, though organisers later put the figure around 1 million people. No official city figures for the march were made available. Read more. 

► ANTARCTICA: More used to marching penguins, it was a different kind of movement that swept across one of the most remote places on the planet in recent hours.

The protests against Donald Trump's rise to the US presidency have reached faraway shores, with a Women's March held in Paradise Bay in Antarctica.

A group on an expedition ship to the frozen continent have joined millions around the world to stage their own protest march - with gentoo penguins out in force to support them. Read more

One of Inverell’s young Aboriginal dancers will represent her culture and her country when she takes part in two of Sydney’s major Australia Day events.

Wiradjuri teenager Alex Jeffery will take part in the official Sydney launch event for the day’ celebrations at Barangaroo Reserve on Thursday morning and perform for the massive, sold-out Sydney Opera House Australia Day concert that evening. Read more of Alex’s story here.