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/ 29 October 2004
Parrots in Sydney’s Royal Botanical Gardens are getting drunk on tree nectar that has fermented in the spring sunshine, it was reported on Friday. The Sydney Morning Herald said rainbow lorikeets in the central Sydney reserve were staggering around tipsy after eating nectar from the Schotia brachypetala tree.
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/ 27 October 2004
An Australian court ruled on Wednesday that a convicted heroin dealer can claim a Aus 000 (about R1,02-million) tax deduction for money that was stolen during a drug deal. The Australian Taxation Office lost a bid in to overturn a lower court decision that Francesco Dominico la Rosa could write off the money as lost income.
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/ 14 October 2004
A respectable, middle-aged woman with a steady partner would leave the house while sleepwalking and have random sex with strangers, an Australian doctor said in a report on Thursday. Peter Buchanan, who treated the woman, said this was an example of a recently identified disorder known as sleep sex.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of turning his back on Asia, kowtowing to the United States and being Australia’s most bland leader. On Saturday, he assured himself a place in history with his fourth straight election victory, which will make him Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister in December.
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/ 30 September 2004
When mutineers from HMS Bounty were looking for a place to hide in the Pacific in the late 1700s, their leader, Fletcher Christian, exploited some sloppy map making to set up home on an island they knew was in the wrong place on British Admiralty charts. It was an inspired choice that led to the establishment of one of the world’s most isolated communities.
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/ 20 September 2004
A blind man was jailed for eight years by an Australian court on Monday for slashing a deaf man’s throat because he was so enraged by the noise from his stereo and television. George Gerard Goeldner (49) pleaded guilty at the Brisbane Supreme Court to the manslaughter of Francis John Butcher (54).
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/ 18 September 2004
Police discovered scores of reptiles, including deadly snakes and three crocodiles, in a suburban Sydney home, officials said on Saturday. David O’Shannessy of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said his staff found three baby crocodiles as well as snakes among more than 100 animals in the house.
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/ 9 September 2004
A powerful explosion went off outside the Australian embassy in central Jakarta on Thursday, killing up to nine people and injuring as many as 100 injured in the blast, sources said. Officials at the nearby MMC Hospital in the Kuningan district, home to many foreign embassies, said that five Indonesians had been killed, including an embassy security guard and driver, and 99 others were brought to the hospital for treatment.
Packs of wild dogs on Australia’s Fraser Island have merged into one ”superpack” that poses a big risk to the thousands of local and foreign tourists who flock to camping sites their each year, a researcher said on Monday. The Fraser Island dingoes have developed a tolerance for each other that is uncharacteristic of their breed.
Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton said on Thursday it was forming a joint venture with Japanese steelmaker JFE steel that will underpin iron ore sales worth ,7-billion over the next 11 years. The joint venture partners will work together to develop and commercialise part of BHP Billiton’s Yandi mine in northwestern Australia.
A former Anglican bishop who seduced a schoolgirl 50 years ago on Wednesday became the first churchman in Australia ever to be defrocked. Donald Shearman (77) had sex with the girl regularly when he was a boarding house master and she a boarder in his care between 1954 and 1956.
Australian scientists are using the collective intelligence found in insect swarms to develop the next generation of hi-tech military hardware. The goal is to develop swarms of small, expendable unmanned vehicles that can carry out missions in ground, sea and aerial environments too dangerous for humans.
The Roman Catholic Church said on Friday that an Australian community centre did not commit fraud or gain financially from a weeping-statue hoax that drew worshippers from around the world. Thousands flocked to the Vietnamese Community Church after several religious statues were reported to be weeping tears and bleeding.
One of Australia’s largest agricultural competitions was engulfed in scandal on Tuesday after farmers were caught injecting fluids into their animal’s udders to make them look bigger. Security patrolling the Brisbane show ground on Sunday had caught four people injecting Jersey and Holstein dairy cows.
A bomb threat that forced a United Airlines 747 jet to make an emergency return to Sydney International airport was a hoax, police said late on Tuesday. Police superintendent Peter O’Brien said passengers and crew aboard the flight had been cleared of writing the hoax note, which triggered a full-scale security alert.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=119367">Bomb note grounds Aussie flight</a>
A United Airlines flight from Australia to Los Angeles returned to Sydney International airport late on Tuesday afternoon after staff on board found a note carrying a bomb threat, Australia’s transport minister said. Roads leading to the airport also reportedly were closed off during the emergency.
Two Australian men, charged with chewing up and spitting out live mice in a pub competition, appeared in court on Thursday. The men face animal cruelty charges and could face fines of up to Aus,000 or two years in prison if they are convicted. The men were competing for a holiday valued at Aus.
An elderly Australian on Sunday backed up Lindy Chamberlain’s claim that a dingo took her baby when she was camping 24 years ago at what was then called Ayers Rock. Frank Cole (78) told the Herald Sun newspaper that he shot the dingo that took Azaria and that it still had the infant’s body in its mouth when it died.
Only marriages between men and women will be recognised in Australia under draft legislation that has the support of both the ruling Liberal-National coalition and the opposition Labour Party. The draft legislation mirrors that proposed by United States President George Bush.
Derbies between the ACT Brumbies and NSW Waratahs are often emotional affairs but Saturday’s Super 12 all-Aussie showdown has taken on extra niggle with verbal sparring this week. The Brumbies take special delight in putting one over big brother and their clash at the Sydney Football Stadium has all the signs of a sparky encounter.
Astronomers using the Anglo-Australian telescope in outback Australia announced on Thursday the discovery of more than 40 previously unknown ”dwarf” galaxies in a constellation ”on Earth’s doorstep”. The team of 12 scientists from five countries found the objects hidden in the nearby Fornax cluster of galaxies.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will become the largest protected marine region in the world when a ban on fishing over a third of its area is enforced later this year. The government intends to implement the ban midyear, despite the protests of commercial fishers who have battled the proposal for four years.
A shower of rain won’t put a damper on Sydney’s back-out-of-the-closet annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras parade. Neither will it scupper an attempt at a world record for the most people in one place dancing to the Village People’s disco classic <i>YMCA</i>, chief organiser Michael Woodhouse said on Saturday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=32294">Gay ‘culture wars’ gather pace</a>
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/ 18 January 2004
Thousands of people had to be evacuated from parts of Australia’s eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland at the weekend after days of torrential rain turned drought into floods, officials said on Sunday. The New South Wales state government on Sunday declared three districts natural disaster zones.
The only pub in Australia’s hottest Outback town has shut down after its temporary manager quit. The Iron Clad hotel has been serving icy cold beer in Marble Bar, a town of 300 people where the temperature often rises above 40 degrees Celsius, for 111 years.
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/ 23 September 2003
The owners of the so-called "ship of death" stranded at sea with more than 50 000 Australian sheep said the animals’ health was improving on Tuesday, as fears mounted the crisis would permanently damage Australia’s Aus$1-billion livestock export industry.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=20858">Who wants 57 000 sheep?</a>
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/ 15 September 2003
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe will not be invited to attend this year’s Commonwealth summit in Nigeria, despite efforts by some African countries, led by South African President Thabo Mbeki, to convince the Commonwealth to relax its sanctions on Zimbabwe.
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/ 3 September 2003
Two unusual cases of HIV transmission within two Australian families are reported in the latest issue of Aids.
The rising number of HIV infections in Australia requires urgent government action, a leading Australian HIV/Aids community organisation said.
Australian scientists were on Monday studying a giant squid which washed up on a Tasmanian beach at the weekend and could be a new species of the deep sea Leviathan.
Charges have been laid against a couple who are alleged to have held a teenage girl captive in the bedroom of their suburban home for two years.
Australia have continued their policy of resting senior players, announcing on Monday that captain Ricky Ponting would be given a break from the triangular one-day series against Sri Lanka and South Africa. Ponting, who made just 13 runs during Australia’s loss to Sri Lanka in Sydney on Sunday, will be replaced by batsman Brad Hodge when the two teams next meet in Adelaide on Thursday.