News in 5: The last text teen sent before death in crash; NSW mum wants truth about son; Royals join Queen for Christmas lunch.

-With AAP.

1. The tragic last text message an Aussie teen sent just four hours before her death.

17-year old Kimberley Berente excitedly texted her friends to tell them she got her P-Plates on Tuesday. Just four hours later, she was dead.

The teen from Western Australia celebrated getting her licence by texting her friends and picking them up for a trip to the beach.

On their return home at about 12.30pm, Kimberley lost control of her Subara Outback on the gravel surface in Bouvard, south of Mandurah.

Her car rolled several times before stopping against a tree on the road side.

Her two friends, both 16, were able to crawl from the wreckage and sustained minor injuries, but Kimberley died at the scene.

WA Detective Senior Constable Steven Morgan described the fatality as “just awful”.

“It is a tragedy any time but coming up to this time of year when families want to be together, it is awful,” the told The West Australian.

Police said driver inexperience was the likely case of the crash. Speed was not a factor and all passengers were wearing seat belts.

Kimberley’s friends gathered at the crash site on Wednesday to grieve and pay their respects.

Tributes were also flowing on social media, with friends describing Kimberley as a “beautiful person” and a “precious, precious soul”.

2. Mum wants truth as son found dead on NSW road.

Police have identified a 15-year-old Wantabadgery boy as the person whose body was found in the middle of a rural road near Wagga Wagga. #9Newshttps://t.co/n5b74FTQZ6

— Nine News Sydney (@9NewsSyd) December 19, 2018

The devastated mother of a teenage boy, found dead on a country NSW road, has been left begging for answers.

Braydon Worldon’s body was spotted by a driver at Wantabadgery, about 40km west of Wagga Wagga, at about 1.30am on Wednesday.

The 15-year-old boy’s grandmother lives nearby and his devastated family are trying to figure out why he was on the road in the middle of the night.

Braydon’s mother Crystal pleaded for information about his death.

“I lost my lil’ man to some coward who didn’t even bother to stop and help in any way,” she wrote on Facebook.

Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Spliet says the boy’s whereabouts between 7pm Tuesday and 1am Wednesday are of particular interest to investigators.

Anyone with information is being asked to call Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.

3. Charges over fatal gas mix-up at Sydney hospital that lead to baby’s death.

Five individuals and corporate entities allegedly responsible for catastrophically gassing two newborn babies at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, resulting in one child’s death, are set to face charges | @sallyrawsthorne https://t.co/xEoF1g1E5w

— The Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) December 19, 2018

The people allegedly responsible for fatally giving a newborn baby nitrous oxide at a Sydney hospital two years ago will face criminal charges.

Baby John Ghanem died after he was accidentally given nitrous oxide instead of oxygen at Lidcombe-Bankstown Hospital in July 2016.

Another baby, Amelia Khan, was left with permanent brain damage in a similar mix-up at the same hospital a month earlier.

Senior staff were stood down at the time but on Wednesday Safework NSW confirmed it had filed criminal charges for the matter.

Five sets of criminal charges have been levelled at the state government’s South-West Sydney Local Health District, the gas company and the man who installed the gas, the Nine Network reported on Wednesday.

A report released in August 2016 pointed to “a series of tragic errors” at the hospital including incorrect installations of gas pipelines, flawed testing and significant clinical and management failures.

4. The royal family joins Queen for Christmas lunch.

Despite rumors of “tension,” all the royals looked perfectly unbothered while arriving for the Queen’s pre-Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace https://t.co/os82AjlDaZ

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) December 19, 2018

The Queen has hosted a Christmas lunch for her family at Buckingham Palace, with the Duchess of Sussex and Duchess of Cambridge all smiles when they arrived.

The annual get-together saw members of the monarchy dine at the Queen’s official London home on Wednesday before she leaves for her festive break in Norfolk.

The Duchess of Cornwall did not attend as she has a heavy cold, Clarence House confirmed, and she also cancelled an appearance at the Olympia Horse Show on Wednesday evening.

Meghan and Kate have been the subject of a series of media reports claiming there is a rift between them.

There have been allegations of a dispute over who reprimands staff, tensions during Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress fitting, and claims that Harry and Meghan’s move from London to Berkshire reflects the widening gulf between the women.

But they both appeared relaxed as they arrived with their husbands, with Kate waving for the crowds outside the palace.

William and Harry drove their wives to the event with the second-in-line to the throne bringing his son Prince George and daughter Princess Charlotte, along with their nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo.

Meghan has had an eventful week, visiting a care and nursing home for retired actors, directors and entertainers on Tuesday which followed a public appeal from her father Thomas Markle for her to stop shunning him and get in touch.

Charles arrived by himself from nearby Clarence House, as did the Duke of Edinburgh.

Other members of the royal family who attended the lunch included the Princess Royal and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, Autumn Phillips, the wife of the Queen’s grandson Peter Phillips, and Mike and Zara Tindall.

The Duke of York was another guest seen driving themselves to the event and his daughter Princess Beatrice arrived separately.

5. More heatwaves, downpours on way for Australia.

What’s the state of our #climate? Our latest #StateoftheClimate report co-developed with @CSIROnews shows continued warming of the climate and #oceans. Find out more at: https://t.co/keH2yXqnQ8 pic.twitter.com/FhUoZ4Mq0N

— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) December 19, 2018

Australians face the prospect of sweating through more intense heatwaves, and being swamped by more frequent downpours of heavy rain in the coming decades as a result of climate change.

The worrying predictions are contained in the fifth annual biennial State of the Climate report prepared by scientists at the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology released on Thursday.

Using the latest scientific data on trends in Australian temperatures, rainfall, fire weather and ocean conditions, they discovered Australia has warmed by more than 1C since records began in 1910 as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere climb to record levels.

They predict more extremely hot days on land will be accompanied by rising temperatures in the seas off Australia’s coast, including the waters of the Great Barrier Reef where back-to-back coral bleaching occurred in 2016 and 2017 as a result of warmer conditions.

But there’s also expected to be more intense heavy rainfall throughout Australia, particularly for short-duration extreme rainfall which raises the risk of damaging floods.

“As the climate warms, heavy rainfall is expected to become more intense, based on the physical relationship between temperature and the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere,” the report said.

“For heavy rain days, total rainfall is expected to increase by around seven per cent per degree of warming.

“For short-duration, hourly, extreme rainfall events, observations in Australia generally show a larger than seven per cent increase.”

The scientists behind the report say that while there’s already evidence that downpours are becoming more intense, overall rainfall between May and July in Australia’s southwest has dropped 20 per cent since 1970.

In the southeast, rainfall has eased by 11 per cent between April and October.

“The drying in recent decades across southern Australia is the most sustained large-scale change in rainfall since national records began in 1900,” the report said.

The drier conditions are likely to bring with them more droughts and an increase in the number of high fire weather danger days, as well as longer fire seasons for southern and eastern parts of the country.

One of the report’s authors Dr Helen Cleugh said the aim of the document was to provide credible information to help Australia’s adapt to climate change risks.

“We certainly find that the impacts associated with these long-term trends that we are seeing have an impact on Australia’s environment, economy, our people and health of our ecosystems, and so that is certainly a concern,” she told reporters.

While the Earth has already warmed 1C since the 19th century, experts fear if it heats up by another 1.5C or 2C there will be more heatwaves, water shortages and flooding.

Under the 2015 Paris agreement, countries are required to limit their greenhouse emissions to limit global temperature rise this century to below 2C, with an aspirational target of 1.5C.