The driver of a Fonterra milk tanker was killed yesterday when his truck crashed into a drain near Dargaville. The man died at the scene, said Northland fire service spokesperson Tania Matthews.

A judge declined home detention for a Dargaville man who admitted viewing child pornography and sent him to prison for 15 months.

A three-year-old girl who was run over in a marae carpark near Dargaville on Saturday is in a stable condition in Starship Children's Hospital.

A man who sexually violated a 73-year-old Dargaville woman in her home, dressed in some of her clothes and beat her up has been sentenced to nine years in jail.

A 22-year-old man is dead and three others seriously injured after an overloaded car lost control and landed in a ditch in Northland early this morning.

Dargaville and the southern Kauri Coast are often overlooked but as Cate Foster finds, the region has hidden charms.

Robbers bashed, bound and robbed a 67-year-old woman in her home in the third aggravated robbery in Kaipara in a month.

Just over a fifth of all working-age Northlanders were on welfare benefits at the end of March.