Category — Only in Australia

Orienting a house to take advantage of the weather is always a challenge to architects, especially in an age when architects are driven by clients to include active and passive solar electricity, heating and cooling in the design.

After hearing a neighbour lamenting a wrong decision about the placement of his house, Australian engineer Luke Everingham was inspired by his wife’s remark: ‘How about a house that moves?’ [Read more →]

Campaigns to reverse the damage done by indiscriminate damming of rivers are springing up everywhere, especially in the western USA, where many a project promoted as the wave of the future has led to silting and the ruin of of many a river ecosystem.

But possibly the first such campaign started as long ago as 1973 in Tasmania after an unsuccessful effort to stop the drowning of one of the world’s most beautiful lakes. [Read more →]

Seed banks to preserve vital crops have been set up all over the world — and 40 of them have failed.

The BBC’s One Planet program looks at a new maximum-security vault in the far north of Norway which may have a better chance of survival. Streaming audio and links to the BBC’s radio documentary archive. [RealAudio alert]

The last thylacine died in captivity in a now-defunct Hobart Zoo 70 years ago today. Popularly known as the Tasmanian Tiger, it was the top carnivore in the island’s ecosystem, so it was persecuted to death in less than 150 years of European settlement.

A scavenger rather than an aggressive predator, the shy and elusive thylacine had the undeserved reputation of preying on livestock; its habitat was soon destroyed by logging, damming and farming and a government bounty finished the job. [Read more →]

Each of our editors migrated to Australia by boat so the ‘We are all Boat People’ campaign resonates with us. Read more on their web site and do download their toolkit, which includes a very handy street stencil.

As they say:

We are ordinary Australians who are appalled at the inhumane treatment of refugees by our government. We have decided to get involved and challenge the border panic encouraged by the current rhetoric of fear.

[Read more →]