ABC Listen.
Hello there.
My name's Emily and you're listening to Newstime.
Hello.
Hello, Emily.
And hello to Newstime listener legend, Walter.
Hi, Emily.
I'm...
Walter, I'm a six-year-old.
I live in Canberra, Ngunnawal country.
What I like about Newstime is because I'm in kindergarten and I like learning.
Great stuff, Walter.
You've made it halfway through your first year of school.
Make sure you tell your teacher about Newstime and all your friends too so you can learn together.
On today's episode, we'll have a round of golf with a junior player taking on the world.
We'll visit a bakery to sample a pie that's been named Australia's best, even though it's not a traditional flavour.
And then we'll hear from a group of people who've connected through song in our wow of the week.
Bakeries and music.
Oh, I can't wait.
How about we get going?
Let's make some noise.
Story number five.
Early last week, some rather mysterious objects washed up on beaches in North Queensland.
They were six large silver spheres and they looked like oversized Christmas baubles.
I think it's something like a balloon and it might have come from a party but it float away.
I think it rolled into the ocean off a boat from a dock.
A boy from the ocean?
Maybe a ball filled with elephant dung?
There were concerns the spheres could have contained dangerous chemicals, so police roped off a large area to keep beachgoers safe while they investigated.
With the help of the Queensland Fire Department, they removed them safely from the beach.
Then the mystery was solved.
The spheres are what's known as space balls.
Interesting.
Wow.
That's crazy.
The Australian Space Agency said that the space walls were likely from a rocket that had been launched from another country into space.
Somehow, they'd come apart from the rocket while in orbit and re-entered the atmosphere.
Then they fell into the ocean and drifted to shore.
One space expert says they're pressurised balls of fuel and are fairly common forms of space debris, also known as space junk.
I think they should ask astronaut Catherine Benelpeg.
She knows a lot about space.
According to the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which is a document that lists the rules about space junk, the country that launched the rocket owns the space balls.
Australia now needs to find out who that is.
Asking the president or prime minister of every single country.
That would take a long time.
The Australian Space Agency said that more space junk might turn up.
It's a good reminder that if you see something unusual, you should never touch or move it.
I would remember where I saw it and then tell the museum in place so they can make the area safe and bring it to the museum.
Tell an adult.
Telling a grown-up is a very responsible thing to do.
And what do you think?
How can rocket makers reduce the amount of space junk arriving on Earth?
Not sending thousands of rockets into space.
Make sure all your rocket parts are attached tightly.
That gives me an idea for a slogan.
It's out of this world to keep space balls out of this world.
Story number four.
Have you ever played golf?
Yes, with pop.
You have long sticks with little things on the end and a white ball.
It's very little and you have to...
Hit the ball into a little hole and you have to count how many hits it takes you.
If you're very good at golf, it only takes one.
And there's a little ball that stands on a tee.
Not the tee that you drink.
Golf's a sport played by lots of grown-ups.
But on the Gold Coast, there's one eight-year-old named Rhianna who loves playing too.
Once the last school bell has rung for the day, she races to her local golf course to have a swing.
And as they say, practice makes perfect.
So every time I hit a ball, it just, every, like, every single week, it's gone further.
It's only been a year since Rihanna played her first golf tournament and later this month she's jumping on a plane to the United States of America to compete in the US Kids Golf World Championship.
Practice, practice, practice.
That's incredible.
She's only eight years old.
Rihanna is one of many girls learning sport from a young age.
In Australia, women are taking up golf nearly twice as fast as men.
Because women are playing more sports that used to be mainly for men and it's really fun.
Rhianna has been well supported by her local golf club, but this isn't always the case for junior players.
Some clubs don't allow children to play golf on their courses.
That's rude.
I think that's kind of fair because if you have kids running around picking up balls, one of them might get hit in the head by a golf stick.
Ouch!
The thing is, kids like Rhianna need a place to learn golf.
And golf courses are usually the best spot for that.
Have a tea-rific tournament, Rhianna.
I'm pretty sure plenty of girls will want to follow in your footsteps.
In my job as a journalist, I'm often travelling around different towns.
When I get peckish, there's no better place to stop by than the local bakery for a hot pie with sauce.
Yum-oh!
Do you like pies?
No, I don't like meat pies.
Hmm, what flavours do they have?
Well, that's the thing.
These days, there are so many pies to choose from.
There's plain meat pies, steak and mushroom pies, steak and cheese pies, steak and pepper pies, chicken and leek pies, potato pies, cheese and bacon pies, lamb and rosemary pies, vegetable pies, butter chicken pies, and that's not even getting to the sweet dessert pies.
Sorry, I just really love pies.
And with so much variety, it can take me a while to pick just one.
Today, I went with the Moroccan lamb pie.
Yummy food.
Every year, the Baking Association of Australia holds a huge competition to find Australia's best pie.
They search the nation for the best flavours inside the nicest golden pastry.
Mmm.
And this year's winner was a pie from a bakery in suburban Melbourne.
And it was a flavour you may not have tried.
Want to guess what it was?
Well, if it's the best pie, it would have to be something like peach and apple with whipped cream.
Sounds yum, but the pie wasn't sweet.
I know, meat.
Some type of meat.
You're going to have to be a little bit more specific.
Maybe carrot flavoured?
OK, I'll tell you.
Australia's best pie was...
A Malaysian-style prawn curry pie.
Lots of different cultures have curry, so it was probably yummy to lots of people.
Ryan is the inventor of this pie and he moved to Australia 14 years ago from Cambodia and he'd never tasted a meat pie in his life.
He and his brother became bakers, and they've been inventing new pie flavours ever since, including many inspired by their Cambodian heritage.
Who knew pies would be a way of bringing culture together?
Everyone's cultures have a place in the world and we should celebrate them all.
Well said.
It took them three months to get the recipe for their Malaysian prawn pie just right.
How about you?
What pie would you invent?
Chocolate.
I want a lollipie.
A lollipie?
I hope you'll brush your teeth after that meal.
Story number two.
Many of you have been on school holidays recently.
So, have any of you played video games?
Sometimes I play Mario Kart at my friends' houses.
At school, I play a video game called Three Times Three Garden and it helps you practise your times tables.
Video games can be fun and sometimes they can be helpful for learning new things.
A Wonkanguru man named Arthur Archie has created his own video game named Cheeky Boy, which is fun and helps people learn First Nations culture.
An Indigenous video game because it's interesting and it teaches them a different language.
Yep.
Cheeky Boy is based on a traditional story about a child who is so naughty he's sent away from his home.
He then gets transformed into a dingo and becomes lost after chasing a possum.
Arthur believes by putting this story in a video game, people around the world can learn it for the first time.
Meanwhile, Wiradjuri game developer Ben Armstrong has created a video game called Buru and the Old People.
Buru is a white ibis.
They're aka bin chickens.
And they like eating food scraps off the ground.
Ben wanted to use the white ibis alongside other animals so people would enjoy the game.
Then, as they play, they'd encounter an Indigenous story.
First Nations Australians have been telling stories for thousands and thousands of years, and video games are a relatively new way of doing that.
Kids love devices, so it's a good way to get them to learn by playing video games.
Cheeky Boys creator Arthur is also excited that First Nations people are getting into video game development, but he'd like to see the government provide money so traditional stories can be told through video games.
Because they get to play a fun game while learning First Nations traditional stories.
Exactly.
Talk about taking things to the next level.
Okay, Newstime Gamers, let's put down our controllers because it's time for our... Wow of the Week.
This story made me go wow because the lady who made all the music put in a lot of effort.
This story made me go wow because they don't need a conductor to stay on the beat and they have to listen really hard to know when to start and stop.
Recently, in the southern highlands of New South Wales, a very joyful noise was created by a choir of children.
MUSIC PLAYS
There's a bunch of beagles singing.
They're singing an old nursery rhyme, but this choir is doing things very differently.
There's no conductor and the children aren't reading sheets of music and words that have been printed with black ink.
There's a bunch of people singing who are blind and their music is Braille.
That's right.
This is the National Braille Music Camp Choir.
It's a community funded program where every member is either blind or visually impaired.
The choir got
Together for a week of playing music and singing together and to do that they needed to read sheet music in braille it isn't words it's just dots it's all dots which is braille when you feel them
They can tell this word and that is this word.
That's right.
Each choir member runs their fingers along handmade braille sheet music.
The dots on the page have unique meanings to represent musical elements like pitches, rhythms and expressions so that each choir member knows how to sing.
This sheet music has been handmade for many years by Roma, who's now 92 years old, but started the camp 40 years ago.
She said that she once made 500 sheets in a day.
Roma is amazing.
She loves music and she wants blind people to be able to have music, so she puts in a lot of effort.
14-year-old Morgan travelled from Tamworth to the camp and says it's especially nice to spend time with others living with blindness.
I love getting to socialise with people who are like me and understand sometimes what I have to go through and what I'm dealing with, and I love the music aspect, because obviously everyone here loves music.
That's awesome, Morgan.
And well done, Roma, for creating a space for joyful singing for 40 years.
Alrighty, I hope you've been listening very carefully because it's time for today's quiz.
Question one.
What name was given to the mysterious spheres that appeared on beaches in North Queensland?
In which country did this year's winner of Australia's best pie competition grow up?
Question four.
A white ibis.
Question five.
Braille.
Don't forget, I always love hearing from you.
So if you'd like to be a Newstime listener legend like Walter, ask your grown-ups to head to the Newstime page on the ABC Kids Listen website.
Thanks, Emily.
You're welcome.
Now, how far away is that bakery with that award-winning pie?
Newstime is an ABC Kids Listen podcast.
For other awesome podcasts to play, music to move to and stories and soundtracks for sleep, head to the Kids tab on the ABC Listen app.
It's free from your app store.
Ears up, Curly Crew.
There's a new batch of bite-sized chunks of your favourite ethics podcast, Short and Curly.
Is it fair if siblings get the same thing at different ages?
Do adult-only areas discriminate against children?
What is the meaning of life?
Yikes, what a question.
Here are answers to all these and more on short and curly bites.
Search for short and curly on the Kids tab of ABC Listen.
