Bendigo is a city in Victoria, located near the geographical centre of the state and 150 kilometres north west of the state capital, Melbourne. As of June 2018, Bendigo had an urban population of 99,122, making it the fourth-largest inland city in Australia and fourth-most populous city in the state, it is the administrative centre for the City of Greater Bendigo, which encompasses both the urban area and outlying towns spanning an area around 3,000 km2 and over 111,000 people. The discovery of gold in the soils of Bendigo during the 1850s made it one of the most significant Victorian-era boomtowns in Australia. News of the finds intensified the Victorian gold rush, bringing an influx of migrants to the city from around the world within a year and transforming it from a sheep station to a major settlement in the newly proclaimed Colony of Victoria. Once the alluvial gold had been mined out, mining companies were formed to exploit the rich underground quartz reef gold. Since 1851, about 780,000 kilograms of gold have been extracted from Bendigo's goldmines, making it the highest producing goldfield in Australia in the 19th century and the largest gold-mining economy in eastern Australia.

It is notable for its Victorian architectural heritage. The city took its name from the Bendigo Creek and its residents from the earliest days of the gold rush have been called "Bendigonians". Although the town flourished in its beginnings as a result of the discovery of gold, it experienced a reversal of fortune in the early 20th century. However, its growth accelerated in the postwar years and has continued to increase since; the original inhabitants of the Mount Alexander area that includes Greater Bendigo were the Dja Dja Wurrung people, who exploited the rich local hunting grounds. These grounds were noticed by white settlers, who established the first of many vast sheep runs in 1837; the Mount Alexander North sheep run was bordered by a creek that came to be known as Bendigo, after a local shepherd nicknamed for the English bare-knuckle prizefighter William Abednego Thompson. Gold was discovered in the area in September 1851, just after the other significant goldfields in neighbouring Castlemaine, from where many diggers migrated, bringing the total to 40,000 in less than a year.

In 1853, a massive protest was held over the cost of the licence fee for prospectors, though it passed off peacefully, due to good diplomacy by police and miners’ leaders. From being a tent city, the boomtown grew into a major urban centre with many grand public buildings; the municipality became a borough in 1863 known as Sandhurst until 1891, but always unofficially as Bendigo. The railway had reached here by 1862, stimulating rapid growth, with flour mills, woollen mills, quarries, eucalyptus oil production, food production industries, timber cutting; when the alluvial gold ran out, the gold fields evolved into major mines with deep shafts to mine the quartz-based gold. Bendigo was declared a city in 1871. Rapid population growth brought a water shortage solved with a new viaduct that harnessed the Coliban River; the architect William Charles Vahland left an important mark on Bendigo during this period. He is credited with the popular cottage design with verandahs decorated in iron lace, a style, soon adopted right across the state of Victoria.

Vahland designed more than 80 buildings, including the Alexandra Fountain, arguably the most prominent monument in Bendigo, with its granite dolphins, unicorns and allegorical figures. A tram network was in use by 1890. After a temporary drop in population, renewed growth occurred from the 1930s, as the city consolidated as a manufacturing and regional service centre, though gold mining continued until 1954. Recent growth has been most concentrated in areas such as Epsom, Kangaroo Flat and Strathfieldsaye. In 1994, the City of Bendigo was abolished and merged with the Borough of Eaglehawk, the Huntly and Strathfieldsaye shires, the Rural City of Marong to form the larger City of Greater Bendigo; the population of the city increased from around 78,000 in 1991 to about 100,617 in 2012. Bendigo is one of the fastest-growing regional centres in Victoria; the city is surrounded by components of the Greater Bendigo National Park, as well as the Bendigo Box-Ironbark Region Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International because of its importance for swift parrots and other woodland birds.

A dozen species of insect-eating bats and the pollinating grey-headed flying fox inhabit the area. Bendigo has a dry temperate climate with warm to hot summers and cool to cold winters. Under the Köppen-Geiger classification, it lies on a humid subtropical/oceanic transitional climate zone, due to its location being on the boundary of the hot, sultry inland areas to the north and the cool, damp Southern Ocean to the south. Bendigo gets 109.9 clear days annually. The mean minimum temperature in January is 14.3 °C and the maximum 28.7 °C, although temperatures above 35 °C are reached. The highest temperature recorded was 45.4 °C, during the early 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave. There is a disputed recording of 47.4 °C. The mean minimum temperature in July is 3.5 °C and winter minima below 0 °C are recorded 28 nights per year on average. Mean maximum winter temperatures in July are 12.1 °C. Most of the city's annual rainfall of 582.1 millimetres falls between September. Snowfalls are unknown.

Woodleigh MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit station on the North East line, located in the planning area of Toa Payoh, Singapore underneath Upper Serangoon Road, at the junction with Upper Aljunied Road and Youngberg Terrace. The station is built on part of the former Bidadari Cemetery, will serve the upcoming Bidadari estate. Woodleigh station has one of the lowest riderships on the MRT network due to the lack of development in its vicinity; when the North East line opened, it was one of the 2 completed MRT stations in the entire system, non-operational, the other being Buangkok, opened on 15 January 2006 prior to the opening of the Circle line. It was closed for 8 years because of low development in the vicinity. Art In Transit artwork in this station is Slow Motion by April Ng Kiow Ngor. Part of the station's interior was shown on an episode of Building the Biggest on Discovery Channel, it was estimated that if the station was opened, its daily ridership would be under the 2,000 general benchmark deemed necessary for a station to make economic sense to operate.

However, on 8 March 2011, SBS Transit announced the opening of the station on 20 June that year. On the eve of the grand opening, maintenance on the lifts and fare gates was conducted and the platform was polished; the station was opened on that day by Minister for Transport, Mr Lui Tuck Yew to celebrate the 8th anniversary of the opening of the North East line in 2003. Published information in the Singapore Master Plan as well as several reports in the newspapers have mentioned a planned major housing project where the former Bidadari Cemetery sat. Existing nearby condominiums include Avon Euro-Asia Park and Blossoms at Woodleigh. There are several new condominium projects under development in the area including, Parc Mondrian, Park Colonial, The Woodleigh Residences and 8@Woodleigh. Other buildings around it include a Salvation Army stockhouse and a few shophouses; the station is close to several schools such as Maris Stella High School, Stamford American International School permanent campus, Cedar Primary School and Cedar Girls' Secondary School.

The Central Expressway, Pan Island Expressway and Potong Pasir MRT station are just minutes away, allowing quick and easy access to the city and the CBD. Mount Vernon, nearby, houses the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Mount Vernon Camp. Cash top ups are not accepted at the passenger service centres from 5 January 2018 at this station. On 18 April 2017, Woodleigh station was closed for about three hours after a suspicious substance was found in various areas in the station. At 1.49pm, SBS Transit announced that all trains will skip Woodleigh station due to a "security incident". The station subsequently reopened at 4.20 pm after police established the substance to be baking flour. A 69-year-old man has been arrested for causing public alarm. Two other men, aged 53 and 70, are assisting police with investigations; this was the second security incident in more than two weeks after Hougang MRT station was temporarily shut down on 2 April 2017. Preliminary investigations show that the trio were helping to mark a hashing trail before a run organised by the Seletar Hash House Harriers took place.

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Kohllapse is a gothic-doom metal band from Canberra, formed in the early 1990s. They were one of the better-known Christian gothic metal bands active in the 1990s, was followed by the newsportals of the scene throughout the band's career. While Kohllapse released its only two albums independently, their catalogue was distributed through Nuclear Blast USA and Blast Beats distribution; the band is notable for its innovative music, said to be ahead of its time, that combines darkwave and progressive doom metal, the fact that they became well known in both secular and Christian metal scenes. Distant Mind Alternative was their most popular and critically acclaimed album, has been re-issued by Soundmass in 2005; the band consisted of guitarist-vocalist Ro Edwards and drummer-keyboardist Matt Aitchison. After Aitchison left in 1999 the band split up in 2001. In 2005, Edwards indicated in an interview. Kohllapse was formed by guitarist-vocalist Ro Edwards and drummer-keyboardist Matt Aitchison in the early 1990s as a death metal band.

By the mid 1990s, just like many other former death metal groups, Kohllapse began developing their sound away from its roots to more experimental direction. In the year 1995, the band began independently recording its first album intended as a promotional cd; the band released Kohllapse in 1996. It was noted for its exceptionally dark and varied track listing that combined death, doom and electronic elements. One song, "An End to Pain" features black metal type out put. Kohllapse was chosen as the "Pick of the Litter" in HM Magazine March–April issue in 1997, was described as "the first Christian band that sounds like Type O Negative"; the song "Tell Me Your Fears" was released on the magazine's sampler in 1998. After the release, the Christian metal scene press began to follow the band's career, reported any updates given in interviews or Kohllapse's website. Since Kohllapse are an Australian band, the European and United States labels were uncertain whether to sign the band, the Australian labels couldn't sign a studioproject group, thus the band remained unsigned.

However, they got a distribution deal with a Texas, United States based Blast Beats music seller, which distributed the album further. The album received positive notice: in 1997 they began receiving major label interest, in 1998 the band signed a distribution deal with Nuclear Blast USA; this distribution deals helped Kohllapse to reach new fans all over the world. During this time, few bassists joined and left the band, Bevan Carroll was one of them, it remains unknown whether Kohllapse played concerts in the local scene of Canberra. Around 1998, it was reported that the band went through "very rough times", while details of this were never revealed. In 1999, Paul Sweeney joined as a bassist, the band recorded and released Distant Mind Alternative, their darkest and most atmospheric album; the album introduced a more mellow and somber direction with more emphasis on dark electronical sounds. Edwards switched his vocals to deeper baritone singing in contrast with the previous death grunt style.

Distant Mind Alternative was distributed through Nuclear Blast, achieved rave reviews and critics called it innovative for its style that combined darkwave with doom metal. Annie Marootians did some female vocals on the song "Contort". A musicvideo was shot for "Thorn", was released on Heaven's Metal Video Magazine Volume 6 VHS. Soon, underground magazines began to call Kohllapse as one of the big names in Australian doom scene together with Paramaecium and Avrigus. However, Aitchison left Kollapse after the release. According to Edwards, after the release of Distant Mind Alternative, some notably big secular labels showed serious interest towards Kohllapse, but since Aitchison had left at a crucial point in the band's career, to pursue his own musical interests, the band couldn't sign a contract. After 2 years of silence, Ro Edwards announced the end of Kohllapse in 2001, he mentioned about starting a project called Dead Sea, which would focus on a far more electronical style than Kohllapse.

However in an interview Ro stated that he had recorded only two songs for Dead Sea, left Dead Sea as an inactive project. In 2005 the Australian label, reissued Distant Mind Alternative. Afterwards, it has been recognized as a masterpiece. Kohllapse's music combines a variety of different melancholic doom genres including atmospheric doom, melodic doom-death, gothic-doom, melodic doom-black and funeral doom. Influences range from My Dying Bride to Katatonia to Circle of Dust, their sound was compared to Anathema or Paradise Lost. The band's trademark is the strong darkwave an industrial element on songs like "Real Man in Quicksand". Although they incorporate strong gothic influences, Kohllapses music has been labeled as a dark brand of progressive metal. However, their music is dubbed gothic metal. Edwards' vocal patterns on the last album are said to be reminiscent of Peter Steele while he incorporates some extreme vocals. Kohllapse C. Y. E demo Distant Mind Alternative Kohllapse at Metal-Archives Kohllapse at Doom-metal-com Interview with Ro Edwards