Australian company Tarmac Linemarking is trying out a new glow-in-the-dark type of road line that makes every road appear straight out of the classic sci-fi movie TRON.

Tarmac Linemarking recently made news headlines in its home country, with multiple high-profile media outlets covering its latest trial run of photoluminescent line markings on a one-kilometer-long stretch of road in rural Australia. Created in collaboration with two other companies – OmniGrip and Vic Roads – this ingenious product uses the natural science of photoluminescence to absorb light during the day and emit it in low-light conditions, making the road markings very visible.

Read More »

A young Australian woman is allegedly being denied access to a $12 million inheritance because she refuses to fulfill her late father’s condition – getting a steady job.

Clare Brown is entitled to a $12 million fortune, but is famously being denied access to her inheritance because she has yet to fulfill the requirements laid down by her late father in his will. Apparently, she has to get a permanent job and “contribute something to society” in order to gain access to get access to the millions, but she refuses to do so, calling the conditions unrealistic because of her health condition. Meanwhile, she is living on welfare and is “constantly broke”.

Read More »

An Australian couple is seeing their retirement plans threatened by a 130-year-old deed error that makes it impossible to sell their property.

Peter and Cheryl Plowman have been living in the same house on Bega Street, in Candelo, on the New South Wales South Coast for 20 years. A few years back, they purchased the house next to them from their neighbor with the intention of fixing it up and selling it for a profit to fund their retirement. Now, after investing their savings in it, the Plowman’s were shocked to learn that they won’t be able to sell their property to anyone, because the paperwork drafted over a century ago, when the lots were first registered, states that their new house is built on a different lot.

Mr. and Mrs. Plowman live in the fourth house along their street, which would logically make it Lot Four, only in the original deed it is marked Lot Three. When the lot deeds were originally drafted, sometime in the 1800s, the five lots on Bega Street were numbered ‘one, two, four, three, five,’ but the Plowmans had never bothered to check.

Read More »

A team of scientists recently announced that a giant meadow of seagrass covering an area three times the size of Manhattan consists of clones of the same exact plant, making it the world’s largest plant.

Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia, and her team had been studying cool water seagrasses in southern Australia for a while, hoping to understand more about their genetic diversity. They took samples from 10 locations across a giant seagrass meadow in Shark Bay in 2012 and 2019, but when they sequenced DNA from the samples, they were shocked to find that it was the same plant.

Read More »

An Australian man who has given up on finding a human partner claims to have found the next best thing – a humanoid robot named Emma.

Ever since his mother died a decade ago, Geoff Gallagher from Queensland, Australia, had only his dog, Penny, to soothe his loneliness. But then, a couple of years ago, he read an article about robots powered by artificial intelligence and decided to look into them. He found some intriguing commercially-available models, but at $AUD 6,000 ($4,350) each, they weren’t exactly cheap. Still, they looked so lifelike, could move their head and neck, smile, and even talk, so he decided they were worth the shot. He was not disappointed…

Read More »

Red-winged parrots in Western Australia’s Kimberley region are reportedly “flying under the influence” and acting bizarrely after feasting on fermented mangoes.

We may be putting on another layer of clothes in the northern hemisphere, but Down Under it’s the end of the mango season, and red-winged parrots are reportedly taking full advantage of the last available orange fruits, even if they’re a little overripe. The problem is that mangoes are particularly sugar-rich, and can produce relatively high levels of alcohol as they ferment. Humans are unlikely to consume fruits that have reached a certain fermentation point because they have a mushy texture and a taste that is no longer considered pleasant. But to red-winged parrots, a mango is a mango, even if the ethanol level in it is likely to get them drunk.

Read More »

An Australian man who had been on the run for nearly three decades turned himself in recently, after being rendered homeless by the pandemic and struggling to find work.

On the night of August 1, 1992, 13 months into his three-and-a-half-year sentence for growing marijuana, Darko “Dougie” Desic escaped from the Grafton Correctional Centre in New South Wales, using tools, including a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters. Despite an extensive search, authorities were never able to locate Desic, and he remained a fugitive for the next 29 years. So imagine everyone’s surprise when he just turned up at a police station one day to turn himself in after all this time. As it turns out, it was all because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the lockdown in NSW had left Desic homeless and with no way to support himself.

Read More »

You’ve probably heard of crocodile-infested golf course ponds before, but one unique golf course in Australia is home to an even greater threat that makes water hazards truly dangerous – sharks.

The 14th tee at the Carbrook Golf Club in Brisbane is a tricky one, as it’s close to a 21 hectare, 14-meter deep lagoon that happens to be the home of a dozen full-grown bull sharks. They’ve been around since the late 1990s, and even though the species is notorious for its aggressiveness, especially against humans, the bull sharks of Carbrook have become somewhat of a tourist attraction. The club even has a monthly tournament named after its unusual inhabitants, Shark Lake Challenge.

  Read More »

The Bass River Valley of South Gippsland, in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria is home to the world’s largest earthworms, which can grow up to 6.6 feet in length.

The giant Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis) is one of the world’s most elusive and fascinating creatures, able to survive in an environment completely changed by its human inhabitants and rarely showing up above ground. These enormous earthworms can only be found in a 150 square mile area, a habitat once blanketed by dense forests but that has now been completely converted to farmland. Apart from its size, this ability to survive in a landscape in which the native vegetation has been entirely removed is another fascinating trait of the giant Gippsland earthworm.

Read More »

The New South Wales resort town of Nowra was recently invades by thousands of corellas, a subgenus of white cockatoo, which made it look like the set of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Photos and videos of white birds gathered on the streets of Nowra have been doing the rounds online for about a week. The corellas can be seen hanging from lamp posts, converging on people’s lawns, roofs and digging trough their trash in search of food, and making an infernal ruckus. It’s definitely not something you see everyday, but even though media outlets around the world have described the footage as somewhat of a freak occurrence, for the people of Nowra, the events captured on camera recently on Jindalee Crescent street have become quite common. For years, people here have been sharing the town with corellas, and although many of them hate the birds, there’s not a lot they can do about it.

Read More »

An Australian woman recently took to Facebook to share photos of a giant moth she stumbled across in outside of Brisbane.

Pam Taylor posted the first photos of the frighteningly large insect on the Amateur Entomology Australia group, on February 23. The pics showed a huge grey moth clinging to a tree branch. To show just how large the moth really was, the woman also photographed it next to her open palm. Obviously, the photos got a lot of attention from the other amateur entomologists, many of whom recognized the insect as a specimen of Endoxyla Cinereus, or the Giant Wood Moth.

Read More »

An Australian court has ruled that a man who accidentally dropped the keys to a company car and strained his back while bending over to pick them up should receive workers compensation.

Robert Thelan, a works coordinator for SA Power Networks, in South Australia, was on call at home, on September 9, 2019, when he received a text message from work, telling him to go fix a power line. Thelan got dressed for the job, went out to the company-issued Ford Ranger in his driveway, sat down in the driver’s seat, but accidentally dropped the keys to the car on the pavement. While remaining seated, the man reached out to grab the keys and strained his back. Apparently, that’s a work related injury and he needs to be compensated by his employer.

The Australian man was able to drive to the Port Pirie SA Power Networks depot to report his injury, and was taken to the hospital soon after. His injury left him unable to work for an undisclosed period of time, and he incurred substantial medical expenses, but his employer, SA Power Networks, rejected his claim for compensation.

Read More »

A young Australian woman is scared to sleep in her own home after discovering that an intruder had been living in her attic.

Monica Green, a mother-of-three from Rockhampton, Queensland, had noticed weird things around her house for a while, but she never really worried, dismissing them as coincidences or figments of her imagination. But on Monday, after coming home with her kids from a doctor’s appointment, Monica couldn’t ignore the obvious anymore. The backdoor was wide-open, the air-conditioning and the TV were on, and there was a half-eaten plate of chicken nuggets in the kitchen. She immediately called the police, and later learned that whoever had broken into her home, had probably been living there a while.

Read More »

A coal seam approximately 30 meters under Australia’s Mount Wingen has been burning continuously for approximately 6,000 years, earning the place its famous nickname, Burning Mountain.

Underground coal seam fires are not at all uncommon, in fact it’s estimated that about 1,000 coal seams are burning around the world at any one point. Such fires usually occur in coal-rich but less-developed countries, and are usually put out in a matter of days, a month at most. That’s not always the case though, and India’s Jharia coalfield, which has been burning continuously for over 100 years, is a perfect example. But even this century-old fire pales in comparison with the world’s oldest coal fire, an underground coal seem that has been smoldering for about six millennia.

Read More »

There are some long golf courses out there, some covering over 8,000 yards, but they all seem tiny when compared to the world’s longest golf course, which spans a whopping 1,365 kilometers.

Nullabor Links is an 8-hole par-72 golf course that stretches along the Eyre Highway, from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to Ceduna in South Australia. Legend has it that the course was created to give truck drivers something to do on this remote stretch of road, but according to several sources, it was just a wacky idea born over a few bottles of wine between two golf enthusiasts looking for a way to keep tourists along Eyre Highway in the area for longer. Their concept, to create the world’s longest golf course proved a huge hit, one that continues to grow in popularity.

Read More »