“It’s pretty bizarre. I guess ferris wheels are stronger than they look.”
Plane crashes into NSW ferris wheel
www.abc.net.au/news | October 03, 2011
The pilot of a light plane that crashed into a ferris wheel at a fair on the New South Wales mid-north coast says he simply did not see it.
Four people, including two children, had to be rescued after the plane crashed into the wheel at the Old Bar Festival about 10:00am (AEST) on Saturday.
All four walked away unscathed.
Local pilot Paul Cox was flying with his son-in-law when he failed his first landing attempt on the airstrip next to the festival.
When he turned the plane around, he crashed into the ferris wheel.
Two children had to be rescued from a basket at the top of the ferris wheel and Mr Cox and his son-in-law were rescued after dangling from the top of the wheel inside their plane for more than an hour.
The devastating Christchurch earthquakes have resulted in a few chuckles, like the man who auctioned off the boulder that demolished his home. This gallery web site documents the improvised outhouses of urban and suburban Christchurch. It makes one wonder what they would do if faced with a similar disaster that among other things disrupted your sewer service.
The sheer variety of facilities is amazing.Check the site for more.
Good luck Christchurchians, hang in there, we haven’t forgotten you.
Wow, the extent of the flooding is mind boggling. The video doesn’t show sharks or crocs or snakes in the street but it does show the faces and voices of the people living through this disaster. Latest reports say flooding may continue for another 7 to 10 days. Hang in there Australia.
Sharks spotted at butcher shop
www.couriermail.com.au | From: AAP | January 14, 2011 2:03PM
BUTCHER Steven Bateman spotted two bull sharks swimming near his Goodna shop yesterday – one of several reports of a sharks in Goodna’s main street.
The Queensland Times reported the shark sightings, 30km from the coast, with Ipswich local councillor Paul Tully confirming it was a bizarre but true story out of Queensland’s flood disaster.
“It would have swum several kilometres in from the river, across Evan Marginson Park and the motorway,” Cr Tully said.
“It’s definitely a first for Goodna, to have a shark in the main street.
I know vandalism is bad, destructive and childish but this story makes me smile. In the face of a natural disaster someone was still spirited enough to have some fun and create a giant Gympie Penis.
Significant damage was reported yesterday from the Gympie Pines golf course. Image Craig Warhurst
Vandals strike during floods
www.gympietimes.com.au | Arthur Gorrie | 14th January 2011
WHILE most Gympie Region people chipped in cheerfully to help each other this week, a wave of deliberate damage showed the other side of human nature.
Furious Gympie Pines golf course owner Mike Towler yesterday offered a $1000 reward to anyone who can help catch the person responsible for seriously damaging one of the course’s greens.
The flooding in Australia has been catastrophic. Here’s an example of how bad the flooding is. We’ve all seen a McDonalds so this is a good benchmark for the extent of the tragedy. Hang in there Aussies, it’s got to dry up one day.
I wonder if the local weatherman warned people of the falling drunken parrots?
Red-collared lorikeets range from The Kimberly coast to the western margins of the Gulf of Carpentaria (Credit: Mitch Reardon)
Drunken parrots falling from sky
By: John Pickrell/Melissa Leong with AAP | June-4-2010 | www.australiangeographic.com.au
Parrots intoxicated by a mystery substance are dropping out of the sky near Darwin.
SEEMINGLY DRUNKEN AND HUNGOVER parrots are dropping out of the sky in the Northern Territory and experts are at a loss to explain why.
The red-collared lorikeets lose coordination and pass out after eating a mystery food, Lisa Hansen, of the Ark Animal Hospital at Palmerston, near Darwin said on Thursday. Red-collared lorikeets are an NT subspecies of the rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus rubritorquis).
“It happens every year around this season, they lose all balance and we find them fallen out of trees and the sky,” she says. “Unless someone intervenes, they can’t fly and will get picked up by predators.”
Racing fans “limited” to 24 beers a day
Tue Oct 6, 2009 | Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Ossian Shine | Reuters
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Adult fans at one of Australia’s most popular motor sport races, the Bathurst 1000, will be limited to one “slab” of beer a day — or 24 375 ml cans — as police focus on reducing alcohol-related crime.
The 24-can rule would also be placed on mixed drinks for the V8 car race starting Thursday which draws thousands to the rural town of Bathurst in eastern New South Wales state, the NSW police said Tuesday.
But more restrained spectators would be able to slake their thirst, if not their craving for alcohol, with up to 36 cans of low or mid-strength beer.
Adelaide cops baffled by cucumber thefts
news.smh.com.au | August 12, 2009
A spate of cucumber thefts has Adelaide police in a pickle.
More than $10,000 worth of cucumbers have been stolen in 11 separate robberies in the past three months.
Thieves have targeted market gardens north of Adelaide, with police saying the latest robbery – of 50 bags of cucumbers – was reported from a glasshouse at Virginia at the weekend.
“The issue with the cucumber is how do you and I tell who owns a different cucumber?,” SA Police Chief Inspector Kym Zander told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
“We’re having difficulty establishing where they (the cucumbers) are going.”
Squeeze: This poor fox got stuck in an East Malvern backyard and had to be freed with a shovel - very carefully and from a distance.
Man frees trapped fox in East Malvern
www.news.com.au | Megan McNaught | March 26, 2009 12:00am
ANTHONY Distasio thought it was a joke when a jogger knocked on his door at 6.30am and told him a fox was stuck in his fence.
“I had to ask whether it was April Fools Day,” the East Malvern man said.
Then he put two and two together. His children’s pet rabbits were loose in the back yard, so a fox could well be on the prowl.
The fox appeared to have been trapped for several hours, because it had gnawed the top off several fence pickets.
“It had got itself well and truly stuck and it wasn’t happy about it,” Mr Distasio said.
“It was very snarly and was biting at anyone that went near it.”
Mr Distasio said he knew foxes were vermin, but he didn’t want to sign its death warrant. He grabbed a shovel and, from a safe distance, prised it off the fence.
“It kept trying to bite us, but once we got the panel off it took off,” he said.
“Hopefully, after that experience it won’t want to come back, but we will be locking our rabbits up from now on.”
RSPCA chief Dr Hugh Wirth said foxes were more common in suburban areas than most people realised. “Research has shown that there are five foxes every square kilometre in Melbourne,” he said.
“They are more common here than in London.”
Mr Wirth said foxes in urban areas had a ready food supply, thanks to dog owners who left meaty bites outside.
They also eat small pets and native animals such as possums, as well as ducks and geese.
“Until people start disposing of their rubbish better and addressing the way they feed their pets, this problem with foxes is only going to get worse,” he said.
“It should be up to councils to provide pest control, but they won’t take responsibility.”
I wonder what the streets were named that they finally resorted to AAAA road?
AAAA rating for silly street names in Howard Springs, Darwin
By Alyssa Betts | Northern Territory News | February 10, 2009 12:01am
A NORTHERN TERRITORY council appears to have run out of steam when cooking up road names.
Keep a keen eye out and drivers might spot the AAAA Rd out in Howard Springs.
And then there’s the IIII Rd and the EEEE Rd in Berry Springs while Road namers in Humpty Doo christened one track No Name Rd.
AAAA Rd is sometimes also known as Chicken Lane, and No Name Rd is occasionally swapped for Wafflers’ Way.
Litchfield Shire president Mary Walshe said while the names might seem unusual, there were no plans to whip up anything even more outlandish.
She said it was best not to make street names too interesting because people stole the signs.
“People start pinching too many of them if you start getting inventive,” she said.
The roads are ungazetted, and are unofficial identifiers the council and locals started using when Litchfield was still a wild and woolly place.
“It was well before development and subdivisions – this is going back to the early ’70s – and people used tracks along railway easements or power easements because there wasn’t any other access to their land,” Ms Walshe said.
She said the names were given to these tracks so that they were distinguishable on administration maps and so ambulances on emergency call outs knew where to go.
The Litchfield Shire Council spends about $10,000 a year on replacing stolen street signs.
“Instead of nicking them, (it’d be better) if people just took photos,” Ms Walshe said.
Oh those fun loving Australians. This story reminds me of the opening scene in the heartbreaking and lovely book, Plays Well With With Others and to a lesser extent Chuck Palahniuk‘s, Survivor. (not his best work IMHO). The scenario presented by Allan Gurganus is a very plausible explanation of how so many dildoes could end up in such an unexpected place.
actual photo from Dildo Blvd.
Stiff response to sex toy mystery
NICK CALACOURAS | www.ntnews.com.au | February 8th, 2009
RESIDENTS in the rural area have renamed their street “Dildo Boulevard” after 30 sex toys were found lying in front of a house on Friday morning.
Robert Johns and Laurelle Bates discovered the mysterious toys as they left for work in the morning.
“It’s a real mystery. We have no idea where they came from,” Ms Bates said.
