The pair will appear in the Tauranga District Court charged with murder.

The Bewt trust wants Kelston Boys’ converted by January 2026 under new management.

When you think of Bilpin, you think of apples.

The historic town on the Bells Line of Road in the Blue Mountains is synonymous with apples, but this season there's a problem.

There's not enough of them, and it's all a mystery.

"I've not seen a season where there's been such a devastatingly poor set of apples," Bill Shields says.

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And he would know.

Shields has run Shields Orchard since 1980, and it's been in his family since the 1950s.

"We estimate we have between five and 10 per cent of what we usually have on our apple trees," he says.

That's five to 10 per cent of the 40 tonnes of apples they would pick in a normal season.

"It would be like me saying to you, I'm only going to pay you 10 per cent of your salary for this year," Shields says.

And it's not just as Shields Orchard.

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At a recent growers meeting, six of the eight orchards in Bilpin said they, too, had problems with the area's best-known product.

And nobody seems to know why.

A few kilometres up the Bells Line of Road at Pine Crest Orchard, it's the same story.

"We've hardly any apples on the trees, and we've got no rational explanation for that," says John Galbraith, who has also been in the game for decades.

By this time of the year, clusters of apples should be visible just by walking past trees, but currently there are very few, and in some cases none.

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It's bad news not just for the orchards, which rely on "pick your own" tourism for a large part of their income, but for tourism in the area on the whole.

"There's a flow-on effect for perhaps the local cafes, coffee shops and bakeries, because of people not coming to the district," Galbraith says.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development says the issue is localised and that it's working with growers in the area to work out exactly what has gone wrong this season.

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Detectives questioned an alternate suspect over the Easey Street double murder almost 50 years ago and "had no doubt" he had killed the two women, a defence lawyer claims.

The bodies of Suzanne Armstrong, 28, and Susan Bartlett, 27, were found by a neighbour inside their home in Melbourne's Collingwood on January 13, 1977.

Details of the killings and near-50-year journey, before police extradited accused killer Perry Kouroumblis from Italy to face the two murder charges and one rape charge, were aired in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

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Bartlett was found fully clothed with 55 stab wounds, lying near the entrance to Armstrong's bedroom, prosecutor Zubin Menon told the court.

Her housemate and long-term friend Armstrong was found on her bedroom floor with a polka-dot nightie pulled above her chest, pools of blood under her head and shoulders, and semen stains on the carpet underneath, he said.

She had suffered 29 stab wounds and had allegedly been raped.

Neighbour Janet Powell saw a dog belonging to the two women wander into her front yard about 5pm on January 11, Menon said.

Powell knocked on the door but there was no answer, so she took the animal inside and returned to knock eight times, before placing a note on their front door saying she had their dog.

Three more people visited the house between January 11 and 13, including Ross Hammond, an acquaintance of Bartlett who had met her a week before, who knocked but there was no answer.

Menon said Hammond went around the side of the house on the evening of January 11, wrote a note for Bartlett and left.

A man who had gone on a blind date with Armstrong, Barry Woodard, visited on January 12 after calling her with no answer, and he left a note on the kitchen table.

Each of these people are expected to give evidence to a committal hearing over the deaths.

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Menon said Kouroumblis, then aged 17, was interviewed by police the day after the women's bodies were found.

He alleged officers searched a vehicle and found a knife inside the boot, and Kouroumblis gave differing accounts to police and his friends about how he got it.

The prosecutor claimed he told police he found the knife on the ground but told a friend he had stolen the knife.

He said Kouroumblis was living 230 metres away from the Easey Street home with his family.

Kouroumblis was spoken to again about the double killing in January 2017, and had agreed to give a voluntary DNA sample but then refused and left Australia for Greece in May of that year, he alleged.

Menon revealed police seized a "tissue sample" from Kouroumblis in 2018 after searching his vehicle and used this to compare against evidence from the crime scene.

DNA found on a towel, which contained blood, a lamp shade and semen found at the scene was "100 billion times more likely to observe those results if the accused was a contributor", Menon alleged.

Kouroumblis' defence team will question the admissibility of forensic evidence that had been preserved for almost five decades, as well as how their client's DNA was collected.

His barrister Dermot Dann KC said Kouroumblis would plead not guilty to the murders if the case went to trial and he would apply to have the rape charge thrown out at the end of the committal hearing.

"In issue is the identity of the person or persons responsible for the tragic and brutal deaths of Ms Armstrong and Ms Bartlett," he said.

"There is evidence of an alternate suspect being interviewed by police in 1977, when these events were fresh in the minds of homicide detectives.

"They had no doubt the alternate suspect was the person who killed Ms Armstrong and Ms Bartlett."

The committal continues.

The man, who has been sent to prison, now admits he has ‘ruined his little girl’s life’.

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Nine inmates refused to leave the day room, sparking a midday lockdown.

A 35-year-old man from Brisbane's south has been sentenced to six years in prison for preparing to travel to Syria and help overthrow the government.

He was sentenced to six years behind bars with a non-parole period of four years and six months yesterday in the Queensland Supreme Court.

A joint investigation conducted by the Queensland Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) found that between July 2016 and February 2017 the man undertook multiple activities attempting to enter Syria to help fight to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad-led government.

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This included lodging an Australian passport application and researching flights from Brisbane to Türkiye, where he planned to cross the Turkish border illegally and enter Syria. 

In May and June 2018, a search warrant was executed at the man's Kuraby home, where several items that were consistent with preparations to fight in Syria were found.

The items included a USB containing electronic copies of publications related to hostile activities, including books on guerrilla warfare, guides for building explosives, as well as multiple issues of a magazine produced by al-Qaeda.

Devices with content related to extremism, martyrdom and jihad were also seized.

On June 30, 2018, the man was arrested and charged with three counts of making preparations for incursions into foreign countries for the purpose of engaging in hostile activities.

He entered a guilty plea on May 30, 2024.

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AFP Assistant Commissioner Stephen Nutt said the AFP were targeting violent extremism, whether it was planned to happen in Australia or overseas.

"The AFP holds a great focus on protecting Australia and Australians from acts of domestic terrorism, but we are also watchful of people here at home who wish to engage in violent activity on foreign soil," Assistant Commissioner Nutt said.

"We denounce violence in all its forms, and our investigators pursue matters tenaciously to ensure people who wish to commit acts of violent extremism here or overseas are put before the courts."

"I'd like to acknowledge the thorough work undertaken by all of the officers involved to gather and analyse the available evidence in this matter and bring criminal charges," Queensland Police Service Assistant Commissioner Charysse Pond said.

"This result is a credit to the hard work and commitment of the Queensland Joint Counter Terrorism Team to keeping the community safe."

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The pair were pulled from the water in only the clothes they had on when the boat flipped.