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Brazilian Lucas Jatobá gave us the video Goodbye Barcelona! earlier this year. Since then, he’s been in Sydney, Australia. On his 30th birthday, he gave 30 gifts to random stangers and made of video of the experience. The music is “To Build a Home” by Cinematic Orchestra. At Jatobá’s site, you’ll find a list of the gifts, and links to more pictures and the funny “making of” video. Link -Thanks, Lucas!
How many humans does it take to pull a platypus from a sewer pipe? About 27 were there when the creature was pulled from a pipe at the Penrith Sewage Treatment Plant in Sydney, Australia.
After Sydney Water staff gently flushed the pipe, it took four National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers to corral the juvenile male in a net before he was whisked away to a vet for a check-up.
Sightings of platypus in Western Sydney are rare, said the NPWS area manager, Jonathan Sanders.
A spokeswoman for the NSW Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service said there were no records of a platypus rescue in Sydney in the past four years.
But cleaner waterways might be helping the animals to make a comeback, Mr Sanders said.
“It could be that we’re getting a re-colonisation of old habitats.”
Link -via Arbroath, where you can see a video report.
(Image credit: Kate Geraghty)
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There’s a spot above a rocky cliff at Sydney Harbour called The Gap. Since the 19th Century, countless people have ended their lives there. But Don Ritchie, who has lived at that location for fifty years, has made his life’s work to stand watch and invite people to choose life. According to the official count, he’s saved one hundred and sixty lives:
In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. “Why don’t you come and have a cup of tea?” the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation.[...]
In his younger years, he would occasionally climb the fence to hold people back while Moya called the police. He would help rescue crews haul up the bodies of those who couldn’t be saved. And he would invite the rescuers back to his house afterward for a comforting drink.
It all nearly cost him his life once. A chilling picture captured decades ago by a local news photographer shows Ritchie struggling with a woman, inches from the edge. The woman is seen trying to launch herself over the side — with Ritchie the only thing between her and the abyss. Had she been successful, he would have gone over, too.
These days, he keeps a safer distance. The council installed security cameras this year and the invention of mobile phones means someone often calls for help before he crosses the street.
But he remains available to lend an ear, though he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they’d like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.
Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: AP/Jeremy Piper
Photo: Shisberg [Flickr]
Residents of Sydney, Australia woke up today to find themselves in the middle of a bizarre dust storm that made the city look like it was on planet Mars! Dust storms are nothing new in Australia, but this one is the worst in decades … but is it linked to climate change?
From Reuters:
Weather scientists are reluctant to directly link climate change with extreme weather events such as storms and droughts, saying these fluctuate according to atmospheric conditions, but green groups link the two in their calls for action to fight climate change.
Dust storms in Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent with a vast desert-like outback interior, are not uncommon. Central and eastern Australia is a major global source of atmospheric dust, say weather experts. But dust storms are usually restricted to the inland of Australia. Occasionally, during widespread drought they can affect coastal areas. Australia is battling one of its worst droughts and weather officials say an El Nino is slowly developing in the Pacific which will mean drier conditions for Australia’s eastern states.
Before the Sydney dust storm, one of the most spectacular storms swept across Melbourne in February 1983, late in the severe El Nino drought of 1982/83. The extended dry period of the 1930s and 1940s generated many severe dust storms, culminating in the summer of 1944/45 when on several occasions dust in Adelaide was so thick that street lighting had to be turned on. Satellite images showed a 2002 dust storm, about 1,500 km (930 miles) long by 400 km (250 miles) wide and 2.5 km (1.5 miles) high, stretching across New South Wales and Queensland states.
Link | More photos of the Sydney Dust Storm at Flickr
Keith Loutit’s work has been presented on Neatorama in the past in “A Lilliputian World” and in “A Little Mardi-Gras” and each time it blew people away. Using his impressive skill with tilt-shift photography and filming he pumps out videos and pictures that present the illusion of miniatures brought to life. In this video Keith got to film a rescue training session with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service.
More of Keith’s stuff here – Link
