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ABC Listen. Hello, my friends.
My name's Ruby, and you're listening to Newstime.
Hello. Good to be here, Ruby.
On Newstime today, I have five fantastic stories.
Possible life on far -flung planets, first day jitters, a community -wide cup cooperation and a funky fossil.
What do you say? Shall we hop in?
Let's get on with the show.
Story number five. After weeks of blissy summer holidays, kids right around the country are heading back to school.
You might even be going to big school for the first time.
How are you feeling about going back to school?
I will be in year four.
I'm excited about doing lots of new activities that we couldn't do last year.
I have a really nice teacher.
We get to have double craft lessons and we're going to have two new students in our class.
That sounds awesome.
Heading to school can be a really exciting time.
But for some kids, it can also be a bit nerve -wracking.
New classmates, new teachers, new subjects, new projects.
There's lots of things happening all at once.
When it was the first day of year one, I felt really nervous.
Some schools have started trying to find ways to make kids feel less nervous about going to school.
At Albury North Public School, they have a student buddy program.
That's where big kids get paired up with some of the younger students to help them get to know the school and find their way around.
There are also smaller green spaces, sort of like mini playgrounds, so kids can play and make friends in a quiet place until they're ready to go out into the main playground.
Do you have any other tips for new students to help them feel ready for school?
Just be strong. Be brave and make friends.
Good advice. And remember, it's normal to feel nervous sometimes.
If you've got the back -to -school jitters, you can tell a grown -up.
You'll be playing with friends at school in no time.
Story number four. You might have a grown -up in your life who loves a certain kind of drink first thing in the morning, a big cup of hot coffee.
Yes, my mum loves coffee.
Yes, they really love it a lot.
Or they must because they drink it every single morning.
Heaps of Aussie adults love coffee.
In fact, millions of cups of coffee are drunk around the country every single day.
Unfortunately, lots of those cups of coffee come in single -use coffee cups.
They are the disposable cups you see at cafes.
They're not very good for the environment.
They don't break down very easily and that means they can sit as rubbish for hundreds of years.
Because so many people are drinking from these cups every day, the problem adds up.
So, some people are trying to use reusable coffee cups.
The ones that you drink from and then wash and then use again.
The thing is, grown -ups forget their reusable coffee cups all the time.
Some cafes in a place called Bermagui in New South Wales, they want to stop coffee cups ending up in landfill.
To help the environment be better.
So a group of Bermagui cafes working together, they say that people have to bring reusable cups.
No single -use cups will be available.
For anybody who forgets, they have special cups that you can borrow for a couple of dollars and then bring back.
They'll get washed and used again.
For health and hygiene.
The cafe owners in Bermagui say the most important thing was that all the cafes were working together so that people didn't just go to a different cafe so that they could have a single -use cup.
I think it's good that they're all working together at the same thing.
Because teamwork makes the dream work.
That's exactly right.
It's a big change, but locals and visitors seem to be making a swap without too much of a hassle.
Single -use coffee cups are still a problem around the world, but the cafes in this little town hope they'll inspire others and make a bigger difference.
There are so many cool mysteries about outer space.
One that scientists keep wondering about is whether there are any living things out there.
like aliens. They'd be green, spotty brown balls because maybe they're brains in their shoulders.
They would have big ears, big eyes and big heads.
A couple of years ago, NASA, which is the American Space Agency, managed to collect some dust from an asteroid in outer space called Bennu and bring it back down to Earth.
They only collected a tiny little bit of Bennu About a handful.
And they shared it with scientists all over the world.
Maybe they found living things inside the space dust.
Scientists over in the United Kingdom found heaps of cool stuff in the dust.
They found nitrogen and carbon and they found something called amino acids.
They're the things that life on Earth uses to grow.
I think that's really amazing.
It is amazing. And they found minerals and salts.
And that means there was probably water on the asteroid.
Some of the things they found had been seen in space before, but other little bits had only ever been seen on Earth.
It means maybe it was asteroids that delivered all these awesome ingredients for life here to planet Earth billions of years ago.
They must have found some mysterious stuff.
One of the scientists named Professor Russell says it's been an exciting thing to study.
It's a good thing he's enjoying studying the dust.
There's enough hidden in there to keep scientists busy for many years to come.
Singing by yourself in the shower is a lot of fun, but singing in a choir, that can be absolutely magical.
I sing my favourite songs sometimes, and sometimes I make up my own songs.
Ooh, I'd love to hear some original songs by our News Time listeners, but maybe another time.
I want to tell you about a choir called the Girwadagula Choir.
Girwadagula means people together in the language of the Gumbhanga people.
The choir meets up every week to sing songs in the language of the traditional owners of the lands they're meeting on.
That's Gumbanga country, which is on the New South Wales mid -north coast.
Everyone's welcome at this choir, whether they're Indigenous or non -Indigenous, and they all sing in language together.
To encourage more people to sing in that language?
Yep. The choir is led by Gimbangir elder Michael Miklo Jarrett, and he says he loves hearing all these voices and the different sounds they make together.
Here's what the choir sounds like.
They've all gotten pretty good at pronouncing the words in language and that's because Miklo gives language lessons to the group at the start of each meet -up.
People are getting more confident with their singing and they say they've created a community.
One of the choir members, named Sue, who's non -Indigenous, says that the choir is a great way to pay respect to local Indigenous culture and immerse herself in it at the same time.
Very good because they're using their language that they don't get to sing a lot.
The Girawadagula Choir employs Indigenous artists and musicians to perform alongside the choir and they play at festivals and ceremonies across the region.
Miklo's hoping his choir will keep the Gumbangir language alive for years and years to come.
And now, the time you've all been waiting for.
Wow of the week. This thought made me go wow because I never knew a shark could vomit.
Millions of years ago, there was a shark swimming through the ancient oceans of Earth.
It stumbled, as much as a shark can stumble, on a patch of sea lilies, and it thought, ha, perfect.
Time to chow down. This shark had a big meal of sea lilies, but they seemed to upset its tummy.
The poor shark vomited up its snack and swam away.
That vomit, though, it sat there for years, millions of years, actually, until recently when someone spotted it all dried up perched at the edge of a cliff in Denmark.
The vomit had turned into a fossil.
It kind of looks like it has little candles poking out of it.
It looks really yucky.
Yeah, it's not very pretty.
After all these years, it just looks like a pile of white bones and bits.
The person who found this vomit was an amateur scientist.
They liked to explore for fun.
and they knew immediately they'd found something special, so they shared the location of the fossil with some experts.
Maybe they could learn what the sharks ate and also what animals were around that time.
They could discover new stuff.
Fossilised vomit is called regurgitolite and it's a great thing to study to learn about what life was like on Earth millions of years ago.
Scientists can learn what animals were eating, where they lived and where the oceans used to be.
For example, now they know that this cliff where the shark regurgitalite was found used to be underwater.
Maybe it was there for a long time and then a wave might have washed over a bit of sand and uncovered it.
The people who live in Denmark, which is the country where this regurgitalite was found, have said this fossil is an object of exceptional natural historic value.
They should maybe preserve it.
Put it in a museum?
That's probably what will happen.
What a funny thing to put in a special spot.
OK, put your fossil brushes away now because we have reached the end of our countdown.
Thank you, Ruby. Thanks, Ruby.
You are so welcome.
I'm away next week, but I will catch you the week after.
Bye. See you later.
or as they say in Scottish Gaelic, Marchen lieve draste.
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