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Hello friends, it's Ruby here and you're listening to an episode of Newstime.
Hi Ruby.
Hello.
On this episode of Newstime, we're going to descend from great heights to save an endangered tree.
We'll also hear about an archery world champion who shoots arrows with her feet.
And in our wow of the week, we'll collide with something truly out of this world.
OK, boosters ready.
How about we get this countdown underway?
Blast off!
Story number five.
The summer holidays are getting closer.
That means kids around Australia will be hiding from the heat indoors and firing up their video game consoles.
Yeah, I play video games.
I play Roblox.
I sometimes play on my Nintendo, Silksong and Mario Kart, some other games.
In the Riverina region of New South Wales, a bunch of kids have been playing video games, including Mario Kart, during school hours.
I feel like when they got back to actual school work, they would just be like I want to play video games.
Well, there's a good reason for their gaming.
These kids have taken part in an esports competition called the Riverina Fuse Cup.
I have no idea what that is.
It's like team and they like have two teams and they have a competition on computers with video games and they see who wins the game.
That's it.
Lots of eSports comps have been held in Australia's big cities, but it's not very common to see them in regional areas.
80 kids from eight schools got together for this one, including Fergus from Yanko Agricultural High School.
He qualified for the quarterfinals.
It feels good to prove to people in the city that, yeah, the bush kids can play.
It's not always the city kids are the best.
Sometimes there are good hidden gems from the country.
The Fuse Cup isn't just about having fun.
It's also designed to help kids be safe online and know how to best navigate the online world.
Sometimes don't go into chat because they can cyber bully you and you can get hacked easily.
Don't friend people you don't know.
They could be hackers, scammers.
You should only go on trusted websites and you shouldn't talk to anybody, because you really don't know who they are.
They could be your friend or they could just be some random person on the other side of the world.
Very good advice.
And if you're not sure about how to keep safe when you're playing video games, make sure you speak to a grown-up that you trust.
Story number four.
In the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern there's a car park that fills up pretty quickly with 55 cars every day.
Soon though, this car park is going to be moved underground because the site above is being transformed.
Have a guess what might be built there.
Be a water park or like maybe a video game place.
Maybe different shops like a food shop or hospital.
Apartments.
I'm pretty sure cheaper, new affordable apartments.
You're very close.
This car park will soon be the place of a new Wyanga Aboriginal aged care facility, which will give 50 local Indigenous elders a home.
That's good for them.
It's smart.
And I feel like a lot of people would use that thing because in some places Aboriginal elders aren't welcome there.
Wayanga Aboriginal Aged Care has cared for the local community with culturally safe home care for about 30 years.
They're based in a building next door to the car park.
There's a lot of need for aged care right now, and so the local council awarded the Wyanga car park, which is worth about 20 million, to the aged care facility for just 1.
That means Wyanga can continue their work supporting local elders.
They need to be taken care of because they know a lot of knowledge that some other people might not know and they might want to share it with some of the younger Aboriginal kids.
The local mayor says this area has been home to Aboriginal people for a very long time and they'll be able to live around their friends and family and be cared for properly.
Well, we could knock down more car parks like what they're doing, even though car parks are very convenient.
With more than a thousand people in hospital beds across the country waiting for a place in aged care, it's good for us to think about which places in our communities could be transformed for them.
Story number three.
A few weeks ago, a man named Stan, who works for the Threatened Species Conservancy, was walking through the bush when he spotted something he knew was an endangered species on the side of a cliff far below him.
Maybe some sort of bird since there are lots of birds.
Maybe a...
A snake or it could have been a bear.
There aren't any bears in Australia, my friend.
Maybe it's like the stick bug.
Think bigger.
A dinosaur.
A kind of eucalyptus tree of some kind.
Oh, you're very close.
It was a tree, but this one was an endangered tree called the jilliga ash.
Dan spied at 90 metres below him and he knew that he could help grow more if he could just retrieve the gum nuts from its branches.
The question was...
How was he going to get down to it?
Maybe he got like a helicopter to come pick him up and drop him off down.
He called for a taxi driven by a koala.
Maybe he like got to the closest part of the cliff, to the tree, and then just like slid down a tree like a rope or something.
You're not too far off.
Stan had some horticulturalist friends who were keen abseilers.
And when they got the call up, they roped up and moved down to the tree.
We're going on a tree hunt.
We're going to catch a big one.
They used a pole pruner to collect gum nuts from four trees.
And they'll be used to create seedlings, saving the gilliga ash from extinction.
These trees are very special.
They grow 25 metres tall and they can live for up to 400 years.
Here's hoping these seedlings will grow and thrive for many, many years to come.
Story number two.
Over in India there's an 18 year old named Sheetal Devi.
Due to a rare congenital disorder, sheetal was born without arms.
That meant growing up she'd use her feet for everything eating writing, even climbing trees.
It also meant that she spent a lot of time sitting on the sidelines and watching her friends play sport.
She was happy to cheer them on, but she wanted to find a way to compete herself.
She probably felt happy, like, yay, I'm watching these people.
She probably also felt disappointed at the same time.
A few years ago, Sheetal discovered some videos of Matt Stutzman, a legendary athlete with no arms who competes in archery.
They're using their feet to operate like a bow and arrow?
Yes.
Sheetal was amazed to see Matt compete using his feet to pick up an arrow and notching it with his mouth, and then holding the bow with his foot Straight away.
She knew she wanted to do the same thing.
Get them on the phone so they can tell me how to do it.
Sheetal, got training and rose quickly through the sport, taking home a bronze medal at the 2024 Paralympics.
Earlier this month, Sheetal made history at the World Para Archery Championships in South Korea when she became the first armless woman in history to win a world championship title.
She will look back on the moment when she didn't get to play in the events, but now she gets to win the events.
I think she probably felt very accomplished because she dreamed of doing this thing her whole life and now she's finally got to do it.
And now she can inspire other people to do it so they don't feel left out.
Yep, Sheetal's message to aspiring athletes is pretty simple.
Believe in yourself, even if no one else does.
Great stuff.
Okay, my friends, we have now officially worked our way through the countdown and it's time for the bullseye.
It's our... Wow of the Week.
This story made me go, wow.
Because that thing comes from a long, long way away and I didn't really think that would be possible.
I guess now it is.
In South Australia.
A man named Andrew was heading down the Augusta Highway in his self-driving electric car when he heard a very loud bang.
It gave him a real fright thinking the car might have crashed.
Soon Andrew realised he had a huge broken section of windscreen with white smoke coming out of it.
I think maybe the winds were really harsh and a tree branch fell down.
The storms have been quite wild lately and the hail has been bigger than a cricket ball.
I feel like it's probably hail.
It wasn't stormy.
And here's another clue.
The object that hit the windscreen had slightly melted it.
A piece of the sun.
Maybe space junk, like it came in and got really hot.
You're very warm now.
Although it's not actually been confirmed yet, scientists think this object that hit Andrew's windscreen could have been a meteorite.
It's amazing.
I mean, I feel like he would be very sad and hopefully he has car insurance, but he'd be quite proud of himself.
If the object was a meteorite, this could potentially be the first case in the world of a meteorite hitting a moving vehicle without finding the meteorite somewhere along the stretch of highway.
It'll be hard to prove that that is what hit Andrew's car.
Maybe someone might just, like, be walking around that highway.
They got out of the car and they might see it.
Well, maybe, like, a speed camera caught him because they always see things clearly.
Now Andrew's car is in the hands of scientists.
They're checking the windscreen for any tiny bits of space rock that might have been lodged in there.
They're also going to investigate whether the object could have been falling space junk or a piece of an old satellite, or even something that's fallen out of a plane.
It could take weeks or months to work out what happened.
But to rest assured, we'll keep you posted here on Newstime.
And rest double assured, the reason this has made the news is because it is so incredibly rare.
So keep calm and drive on.
There's no need for meteorite insurance in our lifetime.
And with that smashing story, I am going to rock and roll out of here.
Thanks, Ruby.
Thank you.
You are so welcome.
Let's do it all again next week.
Bye, Ruby.
Bye.
See you later.
Or as they say in Sinhala, one of the official languages of Sri Lanka, Ayubuan.
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