Central Ranges Taipan, Oxyuranus temporalis

The Australian (March 9, 2007):

The still unnamed species was discovered during an expedition to a remote region about 200km northwest of Uluru in September last year.

Dr Mark Hutchinson, reptile and amphibian curator at the South Australian Museum, caught the immature female taipan while it was crossing a dirt track.

He said the reptile was about one metre long but, because it was one of the most venomous snakes in the world, he did not inspect the creature on site.

Dr Hutchinson was part of a research group from the South Australian and West Australian museums that was in isolated outback region to make the first scientific inventory of the area’s animal and plant species.

Dr Hutchinson said he bagged the snake and sent it, along with others captured from the trip, to the Western Australian Museum in Perth for closer inspection.

It was not until two weeks later that the new species was studied.

“It was a bit of a surprise,” Dr Hutchinson said.

“In fact I found it really hard to believe at first.

“This isn’t the 19th century – you usually don’t find a new species that big out in the open, well not in Australia.”

The two known species of taipan are not found in sandy desert habitats, with the closest family members to the new discovery recorded some 800km away.

The inland taipan was the last taipan reported in the region – and that was seen more than 125 years ago.

Dr Hutchinson said the discovery demonstrated the incredible diversity of the Australian outback.

He said he expected other undiscovered species to be out there as well.

He said further tests were now underway and a paper would soon be published outlining the new discovery.

WA Museum herpetologist Paul Doughty said the reptile was named the Central Ranges Taipan, or Oxyuranus temporalis, and was likely to be extremely venomous. “But we won’t know just how venomous until more of them are caught and the venom tested,” Dr Doughty said.

Science Network Western Australia

It was awarded a place in the Top Ten New Species of 2007 by by the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at Arizona State University.

In Australia, in 1950, a Jesuit priest, a Roman Catholic lawyer, and a Jewish businessman formed a society which would award an annual prize intended to stimulate the production of “significant works of art with religious content.” They named their society and prize after the visionary English poet William Blake.

The Blake Prize For Religious Art was increased to $15,000 in 2005.

56 annual competitions later, the state of the contemporary arts is such that an artist named Priscilla Bracks submitted a lenticular image, titled Bearded Orientals: Making the Empire Cross, in which a picture of Jesus morphs into an image of Osama bin Laden.

Another artist, Luke Sullivan, submitted a statue of the Virgin Mary wearing a blue burqa, titled The Fourth Secret of Fatima.

Though these particular entries did not win, they were both included in the selection exhibited at the National Art School in Sydney, provoking some not-undeserved indignation on the part of the Australian public, and condemnation by both Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.

Ms. Bracks was sufficiently intimidated by all the negative reaction that she posted on her web-site a rather disingenuous statement proposing the implausible thesis that her “artwork” is open to all sorts of interpretations (beyond mere blasphemy), and was really intended by herself as a kind of protest against publicizing crime and violence. Right.

Obviously this sort of thing ought to have been excluded from any serious art exhibition, not because it was offensive, but because it was puerile and amounted only to a crude and simplistic expression of a particularly muddle-headed version of the tritest and most banal kind of pseudo-intellectual political posturing.

Reuters

TheAdvertiser

Priscilla Bracks in an earlier, and more complacent, photo

The Sydney Morning Herald has a story demonstrating just how far contemporary urban bourgeois phobia toward firearms can proceed.

In Roseville, doubtless a fashionable neighborhood of Sydney, residents are in a panic over the prospective opening of a sporting goods store.

Up in arms would accurately describe the incensed reaction of Roseville residents to news that a gunshop is to open in their midst.

Last night hundreds were expected to pack a community hall to protest against the approval granted by Ku-ring-gai Council, apparently without notification to those who may have an opinion about such an enterprise.

Andrew Peter, a gun enthusiast and coffee shop owner from Bondi Junction, made an application last month to turn an old printing shop into a sporting goods and firearms store. One of the main reasons for his decision was the estimated 1300 firearm owners who live in the area.

The shop is opposite a community hall that runs a preschool centre. It is also near a bus interchange used by schoolchildren, and some neighbouring businesses say the approval, although legal, is inappropriate.

Lisa Warrand is one of dozens of parents who fear the worst: the potential for an armed hold-up and shootout, or merely having to explain to children who walk past every day why a shop sells guns.

“Roseville has five churches and no pubs. People buy in this area because they want a more family-focused area,” she said yesterday. “We teach children about how bad guns are and yet we are being put into a position where we have to explain why there is a man in the car park carrying a gun bought across the road.”

Sally Cochrane runs the Zest hairdressing salon a few doors away. She concedes that the chances of a hold-up are slim but says it is a risk that should rule out the shop from the neighbourhood. “Children and guns don’t mix. It’s as simple as that, and if there is a robbery then it could be disastrous. I accept that this man has a right to open his shop and to sell guns, but not here.”

BBC:

Author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal when he started signing books during an unannounced visit to a shop in Australia, according to local media.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said staff at the Alice Springs book store did not initially realise the writer was autographing his own novels.

Bookshop manager Bev Ellis said: “When you see someone writing in one of your books you get a bit toey [nervous].

“We immediately ran to the books and lo and behold, there was the signature.”

Ms Ellis later approached the author at a nearby supermarket and said he was “very nice, charming”.

“Well, if we knew you were coming we would have baked you a cake,” she told the writer.

The prolific author… signed six books including his most recent novel, Lisey’s Story.

Most of the books will be given to local charities, though one was purchased by a customer who was in the store with King.

Ms Ellis added that it was common for authors to visit the shop, check if their books are on the shelves and sign some copies.

“If they’re not on the shelves, they’ll ask about them. It’s embarrassing if we haven’t got their work,” she said.

King’s representative in Australia told the media he was unaware the author was in the country.

Heh! Even holier-than-thou tree-hugging enviromental whackjobs retain mankind’s natural sporting instincts.

They enjoy hunting down the wily and elusive cane toad (Bufo marinus), and are just as proud as any Safari Club-member when they bag a record-book specimen. (Personally, though, I think deer, antelope, and sheep all look much better mounted in one’s trophy room.)

AP reports:

An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a “monster” toad the size of a small dog.

With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.

“It’s huge, to put it mildly,” he said. “The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male … I would hate to meet his big sister.”

Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia’s northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia’s delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called “Toad Buster” project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.

“We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process” that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

“It turns out to be sensational fertilizer,” he added.

Did you catch the line about “Australia’s delicate ecosystems”?

Australia has about seven out of ten of the top-ranking venomous critters on the planet. Its plants generally come equipped with an array of spikes and thorns a Sonoran cactus might envy. Even the cuddly platypus can poison you with a spur on its hind foot. “Delicate?” I’d hate to run into whatever lives in the ecosystem these people would describe as robust.

Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax)

Reuters:

Britain’s top female paraglider has cheated death after being attacked by a pair of “screeching” wild eagles while competition flying in Australia.

Nicky Moss, 38, watched terrified as two huge birds began tearing into her parachute canopy, one becoming tangled in her lines and clawing at her head 2,500 meters (8,200ft) in the air.

“I heard screeching behind me and a eagle flew down and attacked me, swooping down and bouncing into the side of my wing with its claws,” Moss told Reuters on Friday.

“Then another one appeared and together they launched a sustained attack on my glider, tearing at the wing.”

The encounter happened on Monday while Moss — a member of the British paragliding team — was preparing for world titles this month at Manilla in northern New South Wales state.

One of the giant wedge-tailed eagles became wrapped in the canopy lines and slid down toward Moss, lashing at her face with its talons as her paraglider plummeted toward the ground.

“It swooped in and hit me on the back of the head, then got tangled in the glider which collapsed it. So I had a very, very large bird wrapped up screeching beside me as I screamed back,” Moss said.

She said she thought about dumping her parachute-style canopy and using the reserve.

“But then I would have been descending on my reserve as the birds continued shredding it, which I wasn’t happy about,” she said.

Wedge-tailed eagles are Australia’s largest predatory birds and have a wing-span of more than two meters.

Hat tip to Karen Myers.

Australian Grand Mufti Taj El-Din Hilaly thus recently described his adopted country.

Speaking in Arabic on Egyptian television Sheik al-Hilali said, according to a Seven Network translation, that white Australians arrived in the country shackled as convicts.

“We (Muslims) came as free people. We bought our own tickets. We are entitled to Australia more than they are,” he said.

The mufti was on the Egyptian chat show explaining the controversy last year over his comments likening immodestly-dressed women to uncovered meat.

But according to the translation, he said the controversy was a white conspiracy aimed at terrorising Australian Muslims…

But while the convict jibes might be forgiven by some, as they are when levelled by English cricket fans, the sheik’s comments are expected to cause outrage in some quarters – especially the claim that white Australians “are the biggest liars”.

The mufti told Egytpian television that outrage over his controversial meat sermon was “a calculated conspiracy”, that started with him, “in order to bring the Islamic community to its knees”.

He also said “Australian law guarantees freedoms up to a crazy level”, when reportedly referring to anti-Muslim courts and the harsh sentencing of a Muslim gang rapist in Sydney.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that if Australia fails to knuckle under, the PNG regime will accept less aid from Australia (!).

PAPUA New Guinea is threatening to dramatically reduce the money it receives from Canberra, suspend all official visits by Australians or impose onerous travel restrictions, and recall its high commissioner.

Whether it does so, the Herald understands, depends on what response it receives to a strongly worded aide-memoire delivered to the deputy secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, David Ritchie, yesterday afternoon.

The diplomatic note demands an explanation for the bans Australia put on visits by PNG’s Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, and its Defence Minister, Mathew Gubag, as well as its decision to cancel the next ministerial forum between the two countries. The letter also expresses disappointment at the “unilateral” actions taken by Australia.

The bans were announced by the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, a fortnight ago, after the escape of the Australian fugitive and Solomon Islands attorney-general designate Julian Moti on a PNG military aircraft.

The aide-memoire gives the Australian Government a week to respond. If no satisfactory response is forthcoming, PNG will retaliate, instituting a range of measures that promise to create havoc for Australia’s $300 million annual aid program to PNG.

The most serious step being contemplated is the suspension of significant elements of Australian aid deemed not essential to PNG, the Herald understands.

Holy mackerel! Do you suppose if tensions increase, Papua New Guinea will escalate and proceed to devastate its adversary by actually sending money back to Australia?

————

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

The Herald Sun reports that the spiritual leader of Australia’s Muslims, Imam of the Lakemba mosque in southwest Sydney and Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric, Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, in a Ramadan sermon, argued that Western mores justified rape by Muslims.

Sheik Alhilali reportedly likened women who wore make-up and dressed immodestly to meat that attracted cats.

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?” the sheik reportedly said.

The Royal Australian Navy suffered one of its worse losses in WWII on 19 November 1941, when the light cruiser HMAS Sydney II with all 645 men on board went down in action against the German auxiliary cruiser/raider Kormoran off the west coast of Australia. The Komoran was also sunk in the same action.

In August of 2005, the Australian Government approved a $1.3 million grant to fund a search for the sunken cruiser.

Reuters reports the latest strange plot twist in the search.

Australian defense officials said a navy team had this month exhumed the remains of an unknown sailor buried in an unmarked grave on Christmas Island, remains long thought to be those of a Sydney crewman.

Islanders have said the unmarked grave contained the remains of a man dressed in a blue boilersuit which washed up in a navy liferaft in February 1942.

A complete skeleton of what appeared to be a relatively young Caucasian male has been recovered along with other items and been sent for analysis.

“The most interesting find to date has been what appears to be a bullet wound in the skull and a small caliber round that is currently undergoing detailed analysis,” team leader Captain Jim Parsons said in a statement.

“This round appears to be from a low-velocity weapon, possibly a handgun,” he said.

The Telegraph reports:

A British tourist has shocked Australians by twice getting lost in the Outback in the same place, in the same circumstances, in a bungle which nearly cost him his life.

Martin Lake, 50, “the bumbling Brit”, first went missing last week when he strayed from a well-worn path at a historical telegraph station on the outskirts of Alice Springs.

Wearing only shorts and a T-shirt and carrying three litres of water, he spent three days lost in the wilderness, despite being only a few miles from the edge of town.

He made a desperate call to police on his mobile phone, starting a huge search involving officers on foot, three helicopters, Aboriginal trackers and rangers.

When Mr Lake was found in the desert on Sept 5 he was badly dehydrated and so burnt from the 86F (30C) heat that he looked like “a freshly-cooked lobster”.

Police said he was less than three miles from the town and almost within shouting distance of outlying houses.

He was flown to hospital, but not content with having survived one near-death experience, he returned to the area on Friday, apparently to recover belongings. Again he struck out into the desert and became disorientated in a landscape of baking red rock and parched scrub that looks very much the same in every direction.

He made another panicked call to police but was unable to tell them where he was. After a while his phone went dead.

He had, for a second time, broken the cardinal rules of Outback survival — he had no hat or sunscreen, not enough water and had failed to tell anyone where he was going.

“He told me he was somewhere north of Alice Springs and that’s about it,” said Sgt Graeme Farquharson, the search co-ordinator. “He didn’t have a clue where he was.”

Mr Lake, a divorcee and former trainee policeman, from Birkenhead, Merseyside, was found by a helicopter crew on Tuesday after spending another four nights in the bush. Again, he was only three miles from Alice Springs.

On April 25, 1915, soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Australia: 18.500 wounded and missing – 7,594 killed.
New Zealand : 5,150 wounded and missing – 2,431 killed.

Lest we forget.

George Lambert, Anzac the Landing, 1915