Australia

Methadone clinics in the US charge anywhere from $50-300 a week, which may be covered by private insurance. However, many clinics demand that patients to pay up front. Patients who lack insurance often struggle to pay the fees.

The Victorian Tenants' Union got a call from a student living in a house in Melbourne where 10 people shared a room with five beds. "They'd take it in turns to sleep. It was one of the more shocking things that we heard about," Toby Archer said.

Language
8. Interview with Dagmar Taylor (see pp. 14–19)

Travel
14. Interview with John Heagney (see pp. 28–33)

People are moving to Melbourne. Young families want to live there and immigrants are arriving in record numbers. With its long-term population growth of 1.3 per cent a year, Melbourne will displace Sydney as Australia's largest city before 2040.

Archdeacon Gary Harch will be working in the Irish Club Hotel in Toowoomba on Easter Sunday. "I enjoy a drink or two, and so do a lot of people; and I think some people will enjoy the more informal-style mass." The church is coming to the pub.

Drinkers from New Zealand have long enjoyed it. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd loves it. And now it's the leading white wine sold across the "Ditch", as some Kiwis call the Tasman Sea — the body of water between Australia and New Zealand.

The weather in Sydney is warm. It will be mostly sunny today. Sydney enjoys more than 340 sunny days a year. The average minimum temperature in the winter months of June to August is nine degrees Celsius. The warmest winter month is January.

A 16-year-old Australian girl sailed her yacht out of Sydney Harbour in October, beginning an attempt to become the youngest person ever to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe unassisted.

It is among the top 10 most livable cities in the world says The Economist. Spotlight's Janina Schneider-Eicke, who spent a year studying in Australia, shares her photos and impressions of the most spectacular city in the land down under.