Wycliffe Well is a tiny speck off the Stuart Highway in the middle of the Northern Territory, about 130km south of Tennant Creek. The former roadhouse was named after the site of a water well sunk in 1875 for workers on the Overland Telegraph Line.
Let’s extend an olive branch to Australia’s most often misunderstood reptiles and correct misconceptions about them.
The idea behind ‘pet years’ is to have a simple way to compare the life stages of our pets to human life spans. The standard understanding is that one pet year equals seven human years. However, the reality is much more complex. After all, most one-year-old pets can make babies – but seven-year-old humans cannot.
I’m often asked about the space probes that are leaving the solar system, never to return. There are five of them: Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 – all launched in the 1970s – and New Horizons, which began its journey to Pluto and beyond in 2006.
It can take a long time for a crow to forgive your transgressions – perhaps as long as 17 years! And it’s a similar story for the Australian magpie. Luckily, they take bribes!
An annual festival now celebrates the story of Frederick Fisher’s ghost.
Famed for whale sharks, Ningaloo is also a safe nursery for lactating humpback whales and their newborn calves.
Once in a while, our planet reminds us of its awesome power by releasing a little of the magma that permeates its mantle in a volcanic eruption.
The way ahead is blocked by an imposing jumble of jet-black boulders precariously stacked on each other. Beneath this is an eerie underworld of secret chambers where giant pythons and carnivorous ghost bats lurk.
As I was coming up the rickety steps of the Zanci Homestead dugout in Mungo National Park several years ago, something slapped me in the face and squeaked. My head snapped up to see, 10cm from my face, a welcome swallow defending its nest site. I was definitely not welcome!