They were the words of Wangaratta mayor Rozi Parisotto on the day her council was given its marching orders by the Victorian Local Government minister Jeanette Powell in September 2013.

Part of the minister's justification for the dismissal of the first regional Victorian council was her belief a toxic culture had developed since the previous year's elections and the senior management team led by chief executive Doug Sharp was repeatedly at war with newly elected councillors including Dr Julian Fidge.

The crisis escalated when Mr Sharp and co resigned and a municipal inspector, Peter Stephenson with the latter's report tabled to the Victorian parliament the ultimate tipping point.

A team of administrators led by Ailsa Fox and including a former Wangaratta mayor, Irene Grant, were appointed to see out the remainder of the council term before publicly elected representatives were returned in 2016.

Similarly controversial was the merger of Corowa and Urana shires to become Federation Council in 2016 as part of reform right across NSW which included Albury and Greater Hume councils elected to remain standalone entities.

Former Sydney rugby league star and lawyer Mike Eden was appointed administrator from the outset with the most contentious item being the green light given to a compost plant at Howlong tip.

The decision was overturned when councillors, led by inaugural mayor Pat Bourke from Urana, were elected with the other bombshell being the dismissal of general manager Chris Gillard and former Urana general manager Adrian Butler appointed.

Wodonga residents were left fuming when the Victorian Ombudsman found its council had been overcharging them $18 million for a 10-year period

Ombudsman Deb Glass' damning 2018 report revealed the extra fees from its waste management levy and spent the money on other services to avoid a general rate increase.

Mayor Anna Speedie defiantly faced the media to say the council did no wrong and in a letter co-signed by chief executive Patience Harrington to Premier Daniel Andrews said: "Council's reputation with the community has been seriously damaged".

"While council will rectify the problem by reducing its waste management charge the community should not be misled by inaccurate comments about what occurred and why it occurred."

But there was no support from Mr Andrews.

"The Ombudsman has found monies were charged not only for waste management purposes, but for other purposes to get around rate-capping," he said.

It wasn't the only time in her reign Ms Harrington felt the rage of ratepayers.

In 2015, she admitted a report she compiled from a ratepayer-funded trip to a conference in South Korea the with Cr Lisa Mahood had largely been a cut and paste job.

Mayor Rod Wangman said the council didn't support plagiarism, but he and other councillors had accepted Ms Harrington's apology for the faux pas.

Ms Harrington resigned as chief executive in November 2018 with a press release issued on Melbourne Cup day.

INDI'S safe-seat status well and truly ended in the decade with the initial challenge thrown down to Liberal incumbent Sophie Mirabella at the 2013 election.

The Voice for Indi movement was launched and the daughter of a former Indi Liberal powerbroker in Cathy McGowan set about testing the status quo in a campaign which soon attracted attention outside North-East Victoria.

The 2013 count went down to the wire with Ms McGowan scraping over the line by 431 votes to halt Mrs Mirabella's federal parliamentary career which began in 2001.

Mrs Mirabella was the only Liberal incumbent to lose her seat at the 2013 election.

Three years later, Ms McGowan and Mrs Mirabella locked horns again when Liberal Party members gave the latter a chance to atone for her 2013 defeat.

The final result was an even bigger victory by the independent MP in 2016 after a campaign which turned nasty at a nationally television candidates forum held at Wangaratta's Pinsent Hotel.

Mrs Mirabella attracted most attention on the night when she made the revelation her loss in 2013 cost the Wangaratta hospital a $10 million funding pledge.

On the same night, Ms McGowan refused to answer questions about reports she had been pushed by Mrs Mirabella at a campaign event at a Benalla nursing home with the allegation reported in the town's Ensign newspaper.

Mrs Mirabella successfully sued the newspaper for defamation and was awarded damages of $175,000.

She had announced after the 2016 defeat her political career was over and shortly after scored a job with mining magnate Gina Rinehart.

The Coalition's margin was reduced after the 2016 election and Ms McGowan and fellow cross-benchers found themselves in a stronger position to influence the happenings in Canberra.

Ms McGowan had guaranteed the Coalition confidence and supply in the event of a hung parliament, but in the final days of the government she sided with Labor and the Greens to push the Medevac legislation through the parliament.

The laws were repealed in late 2019, but Ms McGowan was no longer in parliament after resigning after two terms and handing the Orange baton to Helen Haines, who created history in defending the seat as an independent.

SOME iconic businesses which were among the region's biggest employers in their heydays didn't survive the decade.

One of the first to go was the gearbox manufacturing site in Lavington, which opened in 1971 and at one of its peak period in the 1980s employed more than 1200 people at the site.

DSI Holdings shut in October 2014, when a contract to supply gearboxes to SsangYong expired.

The workforce was down to about 140 when the last gearbox rolled off the production line.

In May 2017, a major bombshell came when Murray Goulburn announced plans to shuts its factory at Tangambalanga with the loss of more than 130 jobs in addition to closures at Rochester and Edith Creek in Tasmania.

Five years earlier, 200 permanent and casual employees worked at the Kiewa Valley plant which was first built more than 120 years ago.

A lifeline came for some of the workers who lost their jobs came in 2018 when Canadian company Saputo agreed to keep the plant open as part of its takeover of Murray Goulburn.

This year, newsprint manufacturer Norske Skog announced the closure of its Ettamogah plant which had been operation for nearly four decades.

The last roll of newsprint was produced in December, making 180 jobs at the factory redundant.

Australian paper giant Visy has purchased the site with plans for its future use still to be revealed.

This year Norske Skog was charged with workplace health and safety breaches following the deaths of Lyndon Quinlivan and Ben Pascall after a suspected gas leak at the paper mill in May 2018.

Moore Paragon, Kimberly Clarke and Bradflo also disappeared as did the Lavington Sports Club in 2014 when owners, the Panthers Group, decided it no longer wanted to keep propping up the licensed club.

Forty staff lost their jobs.

The one-time nightspot of choice for border partygoers was labouring under debts of more than $5 million when the Panthers took over in 2001.

The Panthers Group sold the adjoining sportsground to Albury Council for $1.2 million in 2009, to ease part of the financial burden.

The decade has ended on a tragic note with the death of NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer Samuel McPaul in the worst bushfires witnessed in the region since Black Saturday 2009.

The Upper Murray fire which has destroyed homes and left farmland scorched comes during a sustained dry spell rivaling the Millenium drought of the late 2000s.

Corowa and Yarrawonga had their lowest spring rainfall since the 2000s and Culcairn had its lowest spring rainfall since 1936 when only 46.6mm fell.

But it was a far different story in 2016.

The winter rains came in large volumes with Albury experiencing its wettest July in 21 years when 116.8mm tumbled down with Mitta faring even better with 199mm for July after receiving 201mm in May and another 148mm in June.

There were so much rain in the Mitta Valley it looked almost certain Dartmouth Dam would spill over.

It didn't, but downstream Lake Hume did for the first time when daily releases went from 5000 megalitres to 25,000 megalitres in the space of a week.

The Murray River burst its banks at Noreuil Park and the Riverdeck Cafe went under as did large parts of the Corowa caravan park further downstream.

The large amounts of water being released from Lake Hume infuriated downstream farmers who took aim at the 'live river data' information posted on the Murray Darling Basin Authority website.

MDBA officials met angry farmers in Albury and Corowa later in the year, but defended its actions.

"A lot of people with the benefit of hindsight think they are better operators than my very skilled and experienced team," MDBA chief David Dreverman said.

"Increasingly in Australia we are seeing people looking for someone to blame."

A major flashflooding event occurred in December last year when motorists who became stranded on the Hume Highway near Wangaratta had to be winched to safety.

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