downunder update

Have you ever seen a Labradoodle? I met my first one in October last year and I don’t think I’ve seen a more skittish dog. When the owner told me it was a Labradoodle, I assumed she said Labra poodle. The shaggy black thing had that nervous haunted look around the eye that you associate with a dog about to leap into the middle of a busy freeway. If it had been a horse it would have bolted. Read the rest of this entry »

Some urban legends, like some jokes,don’t survive long, nor do they deserve to. A story will survive, while not literally true but encompassing a higher truth, because it’s a bloody good yarn. Read the rest of this entry »

Mihirung paringmal is an Aboriginal word from the Tjapwuring people of Western Victoria and it means ‘giant bird’.

Giant Demon Duck of Doom

Commonly known as Stirton’s Thunder Bird, this huge flightless bird lived in subtropical open woodlands in the late Miocene. (8 - 6 million years ago). This was the largest of a group of flightless birds found only in Australia.

Their closest relatives may have been waterfowl. This is why Stirton’s Thunder Bird has been nicknamed the ‘Giant Demon Duck of Doom’.

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The Big Things of Australia are a loosely related set of large structures or sculptures which represent much smaller objects that are linked with the local area.

Like the Big Banana, our first Big Thing. It was built in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, a lush place absolutely surrounded by bananas.

The Big Banana went up in 1964, but now there are over one hundred similar big objects around the country. Each one of these Big Things is individual and constructed without reference to any of the others, but together they are collectively known as, strangely enough, The Big Things.

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