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Category: Interesting Stories/Info

Here We Have Some Interesting Stories For Those Who Love To Hear A Story AND Some Interesting INFO Posts As Well For Those With An Enquiring Mind.

Published on

ABC Alice Springs  By Emma Haskin 26 Nov 2021

Watarrka/Kings Canyon National Park, 300 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs, has been transformed into a watery wonderland thanks to a very wet start to November.  

The Bureau of Meteorology has recorded 218.2 millimetres in Alice Springs, making November one of the wettest on record.

Reg Ramsden has been a tour operator in the region for 30 years and said the region has had sporadic rain over the past three weeks.

Chris Hakanson for Remote Tours

"It's been amazing. It's like a big cleansing. Everything is starting to green up," he said.

"It's been a while since we've seen a major flow like that and you have to be lucky to see it — you've got to be in the right spot at the right time."

Not many tourists 

Mr Ramsden said thanks to COVID-19 there were very few tourists to witness the waterfalls.

"It's unique to see it as it doesn't happen all the time," he said.

"People should get out here. People from Alice Springs should get out to the Western Macdonnell [Ranges] and check out those waterholes as they've all flowed majorly."

Mr Ramsden specialised in school group tours and his business has been badly affected by the global pandemic and subsequent border closures.…

Published on

ABC Rural / By Kim Honan

As a forager for more than 40 years, wild food researcher Peter Hardwick is no stranger to finding all sorts of uncultivated native foods in the bush.

Discovery Of Australian Native Raspberry

But it was his discovery of a thornless native raspberry seedling next to a car park five years ago, on Bundjalung Country in north-east NSW, that has the potential to be a game changer for the native food industry. 

“I grabbed a couple of suckers and took them home and one or two struck, and from that I’ve managed to propagate it, and I’ve grown it on and seen how it performs and here we are with a very nice specimen," he said.

"It's quite productive; it's juicy and it’s tasty. Having no thorns makes it approachable."

While native raspberries are a popular indigenous fruit, they have thorny stems and producers find them challenging to harvest.

"Usually these plants are very, very thorny ... They're recurved, and you’re lucky to get out of wild harvesting raspberries without a scratch," he said.

"So, to find a thornless one is fantastic because it means we can put this into backyards, schools, council parks and that sort of thing."…

Published on Leave a comment on Ben Struggled With Lockdown Loneliness. When Two Lorikeets Started Visiting, Their Friendship Went Viral. ABC

Rainbow lorikeets visiting his window have helped Ben Newmarch through a tough and lonely time.

When two lorikeets started visiting, their friendship went viral. The first time that Sydneysider Ben Newmarch posted a video on TikTok, it instantly went viral. "It's been difficult living alone in lockdown and not seeing people," Ben wrote in the video.

Ben The Sydneysider Finds Cheer With His Lorikeets

The first time that Sydneysider Ben Newmarch posted a video on TikTok, it instantly went viral.

"It's been difficult living alone in lockdown and not seeing people," Ben wrote in the video.

"Then this happened."

In the video, Ben showed an unexpected friendship he made in 2021: two rainbow lorikeets, he called Peter and Jane, who have been rocking up to his window pretty much every day.

It's racked up almost 6 million views, and now Ben's adventures with Peter and Jane - feeding out of his palm, hanging out with him while he's wearing a dressing gown in the kitchen - has a dedicated following of more than 60,000 strangers on the internet.

It all started in summer, Ben told Hack, when he was about to leave the house one day.…

Published on

King Of The Kids, Jack The Donkey Is Guarding Baby Goats

ABC Rural / By Jennifer Nichols

A donkey has become king of the kids after watching the birth of twin goats on a Queensland farm.

Donkeys can be territorial and some farmers capitalise on their protective nature to help keep predators such as wild dogs at bay.

At Greens Creek near Gympie, a "soon-to-be donkey dad" called Jack has been getting some early parenting practice.

Jack The Donkey Likes To Protect Little Kid Goats

Owner Courtney Bowers said it started when Jack stood in when one of her goats was giving birth to twins.

"He's watching these kid goats and he's gone nose-to-nose with them while mum's still cleaning them up," Ms Bowers said.

"He decided to take on that nanny role."

The next day the donkey carefully watched his feet as he followed the kids around the farm.

Aware that donkeys could also prove a threat to livestock they took a disliking to, Ms Bowers said the initial interactions with the other farm animals were closely monitored.

Initially, he chased two mother goats away from their babies but Ms Bowers safely reunited the kids with their mothers.…

Published on

ABC By Lucy Robinson Sep 2021

Strangers have banded together to attend a three-year-old's birthday party in a regional Queensland city after all her friends had to cancel. Her mother says she was amazed by the community's response.

Tiarna Davis's heart was ready to break when she realised she might have to tell her three-year-old that no-one was coming to her birthday party.

But the kindness of a group of strangers ensured Arabella didn't have to celebrate alone.

"Over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, everyone that I had actually invited to the party had slowly begun pulling out," Ms Davis said.

"Come Sunday morning everyone that was invited had actually pulled out.

"I was just ready to burst into tears."

The Toowoomba mum put out a call on a Facebook group asking people to consider attending the party with their children.

Arabellas Birthday Party- Tiarna Tried Her Best

The response amazed her.

"My phone just would not stop going off," she said.

"Anyone that said they would come I was sending my address to — my backyard was pretty much full.

"There were so many kids here.

"She was just running around playing with them, bouncing between children.…

Published on

ABC Rural /  By Keely Johnson

No-one was around to pick the hundreds of thousands of strawberries on Anthony Sarks's pick-your-own farm, but instead of wasting the fruit he decided to make 25,000 jars of jam.

Peak Harvest Time Is In August And September

Normally, the operation at Blackmans Point on the Mid North Coast would be filled with tourists picking strawberries by the bucket, but the statewide lockdown meant not even locals could pay a visit.

"The Sydney lockdown started the eve of the school holidays in July, which knocked us," he said.

"Then the regional lockdown started on the eve of our big strawberry flush, which is in August/September.

"That's normally when we get a big bunch of tourists and visitors to pick the strawberries."

'Let's take a punt'

But this year that didn't happen and the 140,000 strawberry plants on Mr Sarks's farm were left bulging with fruit that could not be picked.

"If we didn't do something it'd be down in the back paddock," he said.

"As a farmer who puts a lot of time and effort into growing it, it'd break your heart to have to dump it.

"I know there are other strawberry growers that have had to do that because of lockdown."…

Published on

ABC Rural By Anthea Moodie and Kallee Buchanan Aug 2021

It is not made by any other bee and is better for you, and now scientists know how native stingless bees make healthy honey. 

  • Scientists discovered the rare healthy sugar unique to native stingless bee honey in 2020
  • The bees make it in their gut after consuming nectar high in sucrose 

Researchers at the University of Queensland in collaboration with Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services have uncovered the secret of trehalulose — a sugar that is only produced by the tiny insect and does not spike blood glucose levels when eaten. 

Nectar sugars are largely glucose, fructose, and table sugar (sucrose), not trehalulose, so the question became "were the bees finding it or making it?"

"We fed stingless bees some sugar solutions to try and find out the origin of trehalulose," UQ organic chemist and research leader Dr Natasha Hungerford said.

"Then we took two different solutions and fed them to a small colony of bees that were confined for a short amount of time, 24 hours, and we fed them sucrose or table sugar.

"We found that when we analysed the honey that they produced in that short amount of time [they had] transformed the sucrose into trehalulose.…

Published on Leave a comment on How Do Sleep And Weightloss Relate? A Wise Strategy We Should Put Into Practice!

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE I FOUND ON THE NET THIS WEEK MAKES A LOT OF SENSE AND MOST OF IT GOES HAND IN HAND WITH WHAT I HAVE RESEARCHED AT DIFFERENT TIMES. I THINK THIS WILL BENEFIT MANY OF YOU WHO HAVE NOT BEEN GETTING RESULTS WITH VARIOUS PROGRAMS AND SUCH BECAUSE THIS COULD BE THE MISSING ELEMENT IN YOUR ROUTINE. PLUS SOME OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN GOING TO GYMS HAVE NOT HEARD THAT STRENUOUS EXERCISE THAT MAKES YOU PRETTY MUCH EXHAUSTED CAUSES THE ADRENAL GLAND TO MAKE TOO MUCH CORTISONE (a stress hormone) THAT IS ANOTHER HIDDEN CAUSE FOR KEEPING ON THE WEIGHT - EVEN GAINING EXTRA, BELIEVE IT OR NOT - SO NOT ALL GYM INSTRUCTORS ARE WISE, PLUS SOME OF THE EQUIPMENT IS DAMAGING TO YOUR BODY IN CERTAIN WAYS ACCORDING TO RESEARCHERS. PLEASE BE CAREFUL.

Sleep And Weight Loss Connection: How Sleeping Well Can Actually Help You Feel Less Hungry, And Lose Weight

By Kirti Pandey

We must stop treating sleep hours as a waste or an optional exercise. Adequate sleep is the key to everything our body does.

Several studies show that sleep deprivation (regularly less than 7 hours of sleep a night) is a risk factor for obesity.…

Published on Leave a comment on Some Positive Traits To Have – Be Sure To Read This!

By Brad Aronson

I Found These In An Article Called 'How to be Happy: Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Happier'......This Will Also Help You With Parenting, Providing A Healthy Environment For Your Kids. These Positive Traits We Can Develop Make Us More Cheerful And Raise Stronger Kids.

Wow - I Can Learn These Positive Traits
(A Step At A Time)

See the positive

Researchers have found that we’re happier when we see the positive. This doesn’t mean we live in a dream world where we don’t see problems. It means we notice the positive. The good news is that we can train our brains. over time, to more often see the positive.

Here are some ways we can be Positive

Perform at least one act of kindness daily.
As you start performing acts of kindness, you’ll notice more and more opportunities to be kind. A study from Michael StegerOpens in a new window showed that kind acts increase happiness, and performing kind acts starts shifting our mindset to a more positive outlook.

As far as acts of kindness go, think small. A “thank you note” in your spouse’s lunch, an email to one of your kid’s amazing teachers, etc.…

Published on Leave a comment on Bees Are Popular Again: Beehives Choppered Into Victoria For Almond Pollination

ABC Rural  By Kellie Hollingworth and Hugh Hogan

Beekeepers are going to great lengths to ensure that the almond pollination season in north-west Victoria is a blooming success this year.

More than 277,000 hives are being transported to the region from across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

John Caseys 1200 beehives Into Victoria

It's the largest movement of livestock in Australia. 

But Tumut beekeeper John Casey needed help from above to rescue 1,200 hives that were stuck north of Condobolin because the road was too wet to access them.

In a rare move, the hives were moved by helicopter at a cost of $1,600 per hour, before being loaded onto trucks and transported to Boundary Bend.

"I've never seen it done," he said.

"It would be cheaper than doing a diff or gearbox on a truck. I think anyway.

Tumut beekeeper John Casey needed a helicopter to rescue 1,200 hives that were stuck on wet ground at Trundle.

"We're going to keep getting rain. It's supposed to rain more next month, but we need to get them out for the almond pollination," he said.

Bees go to work

Merbein almond grower Neale Bennett said the hives would be based at his property for six weeks before they were loaded back onto trucks for the trip home.…