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Hello there.
My name's Emily and you're listening to Newstime.
Hi, Emily.
Hello, Emily.
And hello to Newstime listener legend, Emerald.
Hi, my name's Emerald.
I live in Brisbane and I'm saying hi from the Yugga Untourable land.
My message is even though kids are little, they can do a lot.
And I really like Newstime, so that's why I want to be on it.
Bye.
Thanks Emerald.
Well, it's a wiggly, squirmy episode of Newstime today.
We'll hear about a creative environmentalist using fly, larvae or maggots to make a positive difference.
Plus, we'll go island hopping to spot a special stick insect with a very surprising nickname.
And I'd say you should pack your sunscreen for our intergalactic wow of the week, but where we're going well, that wouldn't really help very much.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Story number five.
Shane and Charlie live in South Australia's Riverland and they have a veranda full of well, something you wouldn't normally see on a veranda.
Maggots?
Lots and lots and lots and lots of maggots?
Yep.
Shane and Charlie have buckets full of fly larvae, or maggots.
The couple collect food scraps and waste from local businesses, cafes and hotels, and then they feed the leftovers to the maggots.
They get lots of food from the local businesses, so the maggots are growing gangbusters.
There are hundreds and thousands of them filling the buckets at Shane and Charlie's place.
They could make maggot repellent out of them.
They could like crush it up into a powder and use it something with that.
Those are some interesting ideas.
Shane and Charlie instead sell their maggots to local farmers who feed the larvae to their livestock.
Chickens in particular love the tasty treat, apparently.
And lizards will munch away on them too.
Pretty weird that animals want to eat that sort of stuff.
My dogs definitely don't want to eat it.
Good way to make money.
The system is a win-win.
Local businesses send their food waste to Shane and Charlie instead of putting it in the bin to just end up in landfill.
And then the food waste is fed to flies and larvae, and those creepy crawlies themselves become food for farm animals.
What a clever little system.
It's kind of like recycling but not with, like, human stuff.
At the moment, Shane and Charlie just have a few buckets of flies dotted around the place where they live.
But they have plans to make their operation bigger and share their environmentally friendly idea with more people.
Story number four.
There's a sporty mystery in regional New South Wales.
For about 30 years, people in the town of Cova have been playing a game called squally ball.
That's a combination of squash and volleyball.
And about a four hour drive away, people in the town of Parks have been playing volley squash.
Well, pretty much the same game.
It seems pretty cool and I wonder how it Do you like?
Bounce it off the wall trying to hit it over the volley net.
Yeah, the game is like volleyball, where you hit a ball over the net from one team to another, but it's played on a squash court.
A squash court has walls, so that means the volleyball might bounce around from one wall to another before it goes over the net.
You need to have very quick reflexes.
A ball might hurtle at you from any angle.
It's fast-paced and unique to these two regional towns.
You would feel pretty unique and special for having this game that people made up from your town that hasn't been known very much over the other towns.
I think you would feel proud that you made a game that your whole town plays.
The game has been popular in these two towns for years, but no one is sure who invented it.
Even though the inventor is a mystery.
Hundreds of people hire squash courts for a game of volley squash every single week, from school kids all the way up to retirees.
Despite the game's popularity, it hasn't really spread beyond these two regional towns.
So what do you think?
Should Squally Ball spread to more parts of Australia?
I think it's better that it's kept local.
I think it's better that it's kept local too.
I think it's better that it's kept local, so they shouldn't play any games when tourists are around, because then they could take the idea.
That's an interesting thought.
Well, when Squallyball eventually hits the mainstream, I'll be ready with my laces done up and my eyes on the ball.
Story number three.
Have you ever been ten-pin bowling and seen gutter bumpers?
They're kind of like a thing that bumps up the ball when they fall out of line.
I know that if you throw a ball into them, it'll bounce off it.
They're used by little kids.
My little brother usually uses it.
I sometimes use it, but not that much.
Yeah, they're guards that stop a bowling ball from slipping off the path and into the gutter.
You can have them on or off while you play.
You just need to ask the people that work there.
A little while ago a group of people with disabilities went to their local bowling alley in Adelaide for a game and the staff members put the gutter bumpers up without asking.
It took the group by surprise.
Very offended because the people thought they weren't. good enough to not have the gutter bumpers.
Like, you can't just put something on just because of what they look like.
Yeah, you're right.
The staff at the bowling alley made a choice for the people with disabilities without asking them what they actually wanted.
Michelle Ryan runs a dance company and she was with the group of bowlers when it happened.
Michelle says that you need to allow people to fail to actually grow.
The bumper guards were stopping the bowlers from failing and stopping them from growing.
Like if you make mistakes, it's like learning from that.
You need to kind of keep on making those mistakes to see how you can improve.
But then the next time you do it, you'll be slightly better.
And then the next time you'll be better and better and better.
Uh-huh.
The moment inspired Michelle to create a show for dancers with disability and to perform the show at a bowling alley.
The dance was designed to be inclusive and made so that different dancers could bring their style of movement to the routine.
To make them joyful and feel happier.
I'm sure audiences were bowled over by their performances.
Story number two.
Lord Howe Island is off the coast of New South Wales.
It used to be home to a peculiar bug called the Lord Howe Island stick insect.
The insect is a little bit odd looking.
It's got a thick black body and spindly legs.
The bug's body has inspired some nicknames.
It's often called a tree lobster or a walking sausage.
That looks like a grass upper butt painted.
The walking sausage used to be found all over Lord Howe Island, but they went extinct.
There weren't any in the wild.
Or so we thought.
Jutting out of the ocean right near the island is a rocky mass called Ball's Pyramid.
It looks like a mini volcano.
It's pointy and charcoal grey with not a lot of greenery.
And recently some officers from the New South Wales government found some walking lobsters hiding there, the actual nickname Lobster coming in handy, because how do they get across there from the water?
Are they a walking crab now?
It was pretty lucky that the officers spotted the insects.
Their black bodies blended in well with the dark rocks of Ball's Pyramid.
Because it's all black and would probably blend in with a lot of the rocks and everything around it.
Yeah.
Despite the bugs' impressive camouflage, the officers found nine of them walking around.
They took seven of them from the island so they can be bred and then returned to their natural habitat in greater numbers.
Melbourne Zoo has been breeding walking sausages for years with great success.
And even though they're one of the rarest insects in the world, the zookeepers are hopeful that this new discovery might help save the species.
It might mean that one morning I'll find a walking sausage crawling on my face.
That wouldn't be very pleasant for you, I don't think.
But it'd be great news for the species.
Good luck, tree lobsters.
Hopefully you'll be hiding in trees on Lord Howe Island again soon.
And now it's time for... Cloud the Week.
This story made me go, wow, because I figured out there's a new planet that I didn't know of.
Astronomers gazing deep into the universe beyond our solar system have spotted something no one's ever seen before.
I reckon it really looks like the sun.
It looks like an ice man.
I think it's like a new sun in a different solar system.
Hmm, not quite.
It's a distant planet, 35 light years away, and a bit bigger than planet Earth.
But that's where the similarities stop. because this planet is made entirely of hot molten lava.
And beneath the surface layer of molten lava.
Scientists predict that there's more lava, that the planet is just swirling lava all the way from the crust to the core.
Very dangerous.
I think it would be like crispy.
I think it'd be dangerous to send a rocket mission, because then next thing, you know, Dangerous indeed.
The planet is probably 1900 degrees Celsius at its surface, covered in rolling waves of magma like a volcanic ocean.
And if you were considering a tropical holiday there, think again, because this planet would constantly smell strongly of rotten eggs.
I would hate to live there because I'd probably die and I'd hate the smell.
Dr Harrison Nichols is an astrophysicist studying the lava planet, and he doesn't think anything lives there.
The combination of extreme heat and extreme stink means that it's unlikely that there are little lava aliens hiding among the magma.
I think there would be creatures.
They've given the lava planet a not-so-catchy name, L9859D.
I reckon we could do better.
What would you name it?
The Orby Orb Eye.
The Burning Bright Bernie.
Burning Bright Bernie?
I like it.
But still, not enough to visit.
Alrighty, news sleuths, it's quiz time.
Buzzers at the ready.
Question one.
What does Shane and Charlie feed their fly larvae?
Food waste from local businesses.
Question two.
Can you name one of the nicknames for the Lord Howe Island stick insect?
Hmm.
They're tree lobsters or walking sausages.
Question three.
What do the dancers with disability say you need to be able to do to learn and grow?
Um... Fail.
Question four.
Which two sports have been combined to create squally ball?
Squash and volleyball.
Question five.
What would it smell like on the lava planet?
Rotten egg.
How'd you go?
If you'd like to be a Newstime listener legend, ask your grown-ups to head to the Newstime page on the ABC Kids Listen website.
Bye, Emily.
Thanks, Emily.
You're welcome.
Well, I'm off to visit the town of Parks in New South Wales.
I reckon I'd be great at squally ball.
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