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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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An Australian mother-of-three made international news headlines this week after she became the target of an original prank thought up by her ex boyfriend for dumping her.

When it comes to getting back at your ex-partner after being dumped, it just doesn’t get more original than advertising a Chewbacca roar contest and encouraging total strangers to call your ex’s number and leave their impression of the furry Star Wars character as voice messages. That’s exactly what one Cairns man did earlier this week, after being dumped. He put up portraits with the fake Chewbacca roar contest featuring his ex’s phone number and promising a $100 prize to the best Chewbacca.

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An 84-year-old retired farmer from Melbourne, Australia, has been trying to get his own daughter evicted from his apartment for eight years, but despite spending a small fortune on legal fees, he has been unsuccessful.

Peter Grundy, a retired wheat farmer from the Australian state of Victoria, has been trying to sell his apartment so he can move into a retirement home. He isn’t entitled to a pension, so in order to secure his place there he needs to pay up front, but in order to do that he has to sell the apartment. The only problem is Peter has been trying to do just that for the last eight years, only his 49-year-old daughter, Katrina, has been doing everything in her power to stop him. Despite his best efforts to get her evicted from his property, including taking her to court, Katrina hasn’t budged and legal experts say the pensioner has exhausted all legal options.

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The small Australian hamlet of Mullumbimby is one of the last places on Earth you would expect to find a men’s choir singing their hearts out about the Motherland and the Red Army in Russian like they knew the language, but then again that’s what makes Dustyesky so special.

Mullumbimby, a small, subtropical town near Byron Bay in Australia’s northern New South Wales, was mostly known for its timber industry, but thanks to the success of the 28 men making up hit choir Dustyesky it’s also become known for its Russian songs. None of the members of the group actually speak Russian, but they bonded over their love of vodka and Russian folk songs, and they got so good at singing that they even managed to impress the Russians. The group now bill themselves the ‘leading genuine fake Russian choir in southern hemisphere’.

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Prickles, a bare-faced merino sheep that ran away from a Tasmanian farm during the 2013 bush-fires, recently returned home, probably after deciding that it was finally time for a sheer.

According to farmer Alice Gray, Prickles was only a lamb when she ran away, seven years ago. The bush fires that ravaged the area back then destroyed a large chunk of her family’s massive property, and the young sheep got stuck in a 200-acre bush block at the back, unable to return after they rebuilt about 50km of fencing. They had spotted her a few times, and even recorded footage of her with surveillance cameras installed to monitor deer activity, so they knew she was alive, but they didn’t expect her to ever return on the farm. They were wrong.

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This Thursday, the NT News, a local newspaper in Australia’s Northern Territory, printed an extra eight blank pages for readers to use in a pinch, as a way to mock the pointless toilet paper hoarding caused by the spread of the coronavirus.

“Run out of loo paper? The NT News cares,” the front page of the special edition newspaper read. “That’s why we’ve printed an eight-page special liftout inside, complete with handy cut lines, for you to use in an emergency. Get your limited edition one-ply toilet newspaper sheets.”

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