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ABC Listen. Hello, my friends.
It's Ruby here and you're listening to News Time.
Hi, Ruby. Hello, Ruby.
We are in for a weird and wonderful episode of News Time today.
We're going to hear about bananas stuck to walls and scientists who are studying farts.
What do you think? Are you ready?
Let's hear it. Story number five.
It's time for a News Time excursion and we are off to an art gallery.
What kind of things do you see?
I see a banana with duct tape.
Banana. A banana which is whole to a wall with duct tape.
Very sus. Ha, yes, that is an artwork called Comedian and it's by an artist, Maurizio Catalan.
The artwork is quite simple.
It's a banana stuck to a wall with a piece of silver duct tape.
That's all there is to it.
Most artists, they do, like, really weird things.
Some artists don't make, like, pictures.
They can't make sculptures and that could be like a sculpture.
Well, it'd be suspicious because it's just a banana on a wall for, like, no reason, literally.
The artwork has people around the world pretty confused.
Is it really art? Maurizio first made a version of this artwork five years ago and now it's back.
While it was on display, another artist came to the museum, took the banana off the wall and ate it.
The banana was then replaced, and this time it went on sale and it sold for, wait for it, $9 .5 million.
That's very expensive and very crazy with just a banana and duct tape.
Any normal person can make an artwork like that.
Well, sticking a banana to your own wall would cost, like, $2.
So what did this buyer actually get for their $9 million?
Well, they got a certificate of authenticity, which says that if they sticky -tape a banana to their own wall at home, that counts as art.
And not just a piece of fruit stuck to a wall.
I'm just speechless.
I think it's just a scam.
You might be wondering exactly what's come of this big -budget banana.
Well, the buyer took it off the wall, peeled it and ate it.
That's a pretty expensive snack.
This story is about farts.
They're hilarious. They're like this stinky thing and they come from a bomb.
Yes, that is all very true.
Scientists at the CSIRO, that's Australia's National Science Agency, have put a call out to big kids and grown -ups of the country.
They want the community to keep track of their flatulence.
I think it's actually really funny, because why would you keep track of your thoughts?
Well, they're stinky, so I wouldn't do it.
I kind of know reason why scientists want to know that.
Farting is a perfectly healthy thing to do.
But some people have reported they fart a bit more than they'd like to.
So the CSIRO are asking Aussies aged 14 or older to chart their farts and keep track of how many farts they let loose over three days.
Scientists aren't just interested in the number of farts.
They also want to measure loudness, length and stench.
That's stinkiness levels.
I would actually like to track my farts because it would be good to see how much I fart a day because farts are actually...
..they're funny but they're also really cool.
I think it would have been very weird if I had to track my farts.
Like, I just imagine the loosest outlaw room and scientists are very annoyed.
If enough people share information about their farts, scientists will get a better understanding of how often Aussies do them.
They'll learn about whether things like age or gender or where you live affects how flatulent you are.
It'll also help us understand whether Aussies have healthy guts and tummies and whether we're getting enough fibre in our diets.
That's the stuff that keeps your digestive health on track.
So, it's farting for a good cause.
Story number three.
The Para Matildas are Australia's national football team for women and girls with cerebral palsy or acquired brain injury.
Those are kinds of disabilities.
They have a Matildas team which plays in the Paralympics.
That's about right.
They're a pretty awesome team and we've talked about them on News Time before.
But recently, Australia's Para Matildas made history.
They won the IFCPF Women's World Cup.
Wow! That's very cool.
A couple of years ago, the Para Matildas made it to the final of the World Cup, but they lost that game.
They came second. This time, they were up against a team from the United States of America.
The US scored first and then second too.
The Para Tilies were in trouble, but they managed to claw themselves back from the brink and take out a win.
They might just have a lot of practice and have a lot of confidence, and they might also just have a good plan before they're going.
Well done for keeping on going and never giving up.
The Para Matildas are the first Australian football team ever to win a World Cup.
The Matildas, our women's national soccer team, and the socceroos, the men's national soccer team, they've both done really well in World Cup competitions in the past.
The Matildas even made it to the semis.
But the Para Matildas are the first team to go all the way to the top and win their final.
Thank you for being the first winner in Australia.
Congratulations. Congratulations, Para Matildas.
We can't wait to see what you achieve next.
Story number two. If we want to understand what the world was like before humans were around, there are lots of clues we can look to.
Under the right conditions, animals and plants from ancient times are captured as fossils, and they stay that way for millennia, waiting to be discovered.
A fossil is basically creatures which are being fossilised by being covered in sediment, then ash, and then that flesh slowly being decomposted over years.
Fossils help us connect with Earth's history and ask questions about what life was like then and what it's like today.
Museums Victoria has way more fossils than they can fit on display.
So when they're not behind glass, they're safely kept in a storage area underground.
But recently, disaster struck.
One of their storage facilities flooded and dozens of fossils got washed away down Melbourne's streets.
If you were just walking down the street and you just saw a fossil, that's not a thing you would see every single day.
It turns out a water pipe burst and the water was flowing so fast that it pushed open the doors and carried some artefacts out onto the street.
It would be really cool if you found a fossil lying on the street.
If you were really lucky, it would slip and then land on a fossil.
And then you could pick it up and say, ''Mine now.'' Thankfully, some of these fossils have already been found by members of the public, but Museums Victoria is asking for people in Melbourne to be on the lookout for any lost pieces and if they find them to hand them in.
If I found one, I would be kind of annoyed that I didn't get to keep it.
Grab all these fossils and sell them for millions of bucks.
It would be really cool if you just see a whole intact dinosaur skeleton, like a T -Rex skeleton, because they are worth, like, 101 ,000 dollars.
But you'll probably just get back since you're probably a kind person if you find that.
The team isn't completely sure what's missing yet.
There's kind of too much to count, but they say it could have been much worse and that the damage isn't too bad.
Who would have thought that after millions of years, you might find a dinosaur remain hiding on the streets of Melbourne?
And now, my friends, it is time for...
The Week! This story made me go, wow, because I, like, the most I've seen is probably, like, 100 sheep being sheared.
Nicky Lyons is a sheep shearer in Bowning near Yass in southwest New South Wales.
They get wolf and sheeps.
They shear sheep by using cutters.
A sheep -haired dresser.
Yeah, I've never thought about it like that.
Nicky loves shearing sheep.
She started 20 years ago when she was a teenager and since then she's travelled around the country to different farms, exploring the land and shearing hundreds of sheep in the process.
Recently, Nicky decided to attempt a world record.
She wanted to shear more merino lambs in a day than any woman had sheared before.
How many do you think Nicky managed in eight hours?
I think she sheared about 200, 219.
Believe it or not, she managed almost double that number.
Nicky sheared 395 sheep in eight hours.
That's about one sheep every one and a half minutes with no breaks.
Imagine that. That's a lot.
She'll be shearing sheep and she'll just get, like, coded in wool.
It was a massive undertaking and it earned Nicky the world record.
In order to achieve her goal, she worked on her fitness and stamina for more than a year.
She worked with a mindset coach, too, to get herself mentally fit as well as a personal trainer for her body and a nutritionist to help her eat the right foods to fuel her work.
Nicky says it was a mental challenge just as much as it was a physical one.
You need more innovation to, like, work all day.
Nicky's hoping her world record brings more attention to sheep and wool in Australia and hopefully inspires more people to wear merino wool, the soft wool shown from her fantastic flock.
Good on you, Nicky.
And that's it, my friends.
Five stories counted down.
Thank you so much for your help.
Thank you. Thanks, Ruby.
You're very welcome.
I will catch you next week with five more stories.
Bye. See you, Ruby.
See you later. Or, as they say in Lithuanian, visogado.
