Queensland and much of northern Australia are overrun with cane toads - an invasion so vast that most people have forgotten how it all began.
Back in 1935, someone had the bright idea to import these warty warriors from Hawaii to deal with beetles chewing through the sugar cane. The toads were meant to be heroes. Instead, they became villains.
Three thousand of them were released into the cane fields of North Queensland, hailed as a scientific solution to a farming problem. But the experts failed to predict one small detail: the beetles they were meant to eat lived on top of the sugar cane, and the toads couldn’t climb.
Read more: Cane Toads: The Gift That Keeps on Hopping - An Analogy
Some time ago, a young boy visiting Redhead’s house asked to use the “dunny.”
The word made me smile, but it also reminded me of something more serious: toilets are about dignity. In light of the current debacle over trans rights to use female only bathrooms, it is a subject that should be brought out of the closet and considered in ALL of its implications.
Throughout history, access to safe, clean sanitation has shaped public health, social inclusion, and personal freedom.
Women and girls, in particular, have long suffered when facilities are inadequate - forced to “hold it” in fear of unclean or unsafe restrooms, putting themselves at real risk of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and long-term health problems.
From Roman latrines to Victorian innovations and modern schools, the story of toilets is a story of human progress - and one worth telling. So off we go....
Read more: How Toilets Shaped Our Health, Habits, and Humanity - Is it Time to Give a Crap Again?
Have you ever wondered how and why the Youth of today are holding rallies , their loud voices proclaiming all sorts of alarming predictions for the future. Using people to speak with fire and brimstone about the end of the world.
Pretending that young kindergarten children have important things to say about what they think the future holds. Even using "old white men " who should know better to say the end is nigh! People who are easily conned into believing things that all the Scientists are telling us is untrue.
I had finished my books from the library , and was reading an old Agatha Christie novel, "Passenger to Frankfurt" published in 1970 when I came upon a very interesting paragraph. It was a conversation with some ex Military gentlemen voicing concerns about the future.
Read more: Wouldn't it Be Nice? Let Our Children Be Children
Over the last few weeks I have noticed that people are losing their sense of humor. So I decided to write something to remind people that if you can't laugh, you may as well fook off and be done with it.
That is the problem with moslems. They never developed a sense of humor. Like the priests of old who were so full of hell and damnation that they forgot to look at the power of the good and the benefits of a belly laugh.
I mean, how could I ever post the joke about the two moslem mothers looking down at their kids and lamenting " Kids! They blow up so fast these days. "
It's like my old Gran used to say, if all you've got is lemons, eat the fookin things because they could be all you get today.
Lemonade? Fook. We would dream of lemonade only we were too weak to squeeze the juice and Father McGee would have whipped us stupid for daring to say such filthy things as " squeezing the juice. "
He was like that.
By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Ratty News Bureau Chief
There’s panic, pandemonium, and political puffery in the air this week as Dusty Gulch finds itself on the front line of yet another national scandal. Prime Minister Mr Magoo has been caught spouting more fibs than a yabby in a mudhole trying to argue when a yabby pump is on the agenda.
Enter Maurice EDuck, Prentis Penjani, and Lord Squawk Squawk, who have “generously” volunteered their latest contraption to tidy things up: the RotoVac 9000, a six-tonne robotic vacuum cleaner allegedly capable of sucking up every trace of Magoo’s misdeeds - and a few unsuspecting locals if they’re not tied down.
Read more: Operation Hoover Truth: Dusty Gulch Declares a State of “High Suction Alert”
Try herding cats sometime. You’ll crouch, whistle, wave treats, and for one delusional moment, think you’re in charge - until one bolts under the couch, another claws the curtains, and the rest nap defiantly.
Welcome to cancel culture, where both left and right try to corral the wild, furry mess of public opinion.
Now there’s a new twist: digital ID systems and creeping censorship promise to fence in the cats - or neuter them entirely.
Is this a master plan to tame free speech, or just another doomed attempt to herd ideological felines?
Read more: Herding Cats: Cancel Culture, Digital IDs, and the Futility of Control
From Network to today, the prophecy is clear: truth has been turned into a commodity, division has been weaponised, and the system won’t save itself.
In 1976, Network warned us - through Howard Beale’s rage - that our institutions were selling a hollow “sizzle,” a scripted reality.
His warning was not fiction.
Today, media, governments, and institutions have turned truth into performance and division into a weapon.
Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. Brush fires are becoming infernos. Pathways to safety are closing before our eyes.
I write as a besieged observer, wondering how this horror show will end.
Read more: When Outrage Becomes Entertainment, It’s Time to Wake Up
I am personally horrified by what has happened since October 2023. This wasn’t just a Middle East tragedy - it was the spark for a global war of ideology and hate.
Hamas has nothing to be proud of - their actions brought only suffering, not liberation. What’s equally heartbreaking is what has happened in my own country since. I’ve watched antisemitism creep in and take root, openly and shamelessly, under the banner of “activism.” It has poisoned conversations, divided communities, and created anger, violence and hatred. This is no longer about Gaza but a global war of identity and division, where HARMONY is being choked out.
The “Pro-Palestine” movement, as it now stands, feels less like a call for justice and more like a weapon - one used to divide and destroy the harmony that once held our nation together. I have deep sympathy for the innocent people of Gaza, trapped in unimaginable hardship, but I can’t ignore that many there have been taught to celebrate the destruction of Jews and of Israel itself. That’s not a movement for freedom - that’s a war of faith and hatred, and it terrifies me.
Read more: From Nova to a Global Nightmare: The Spark That Lit a Fuse
Much of Australia’s early slang comes from the convict culture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Australia was established as a penal colony, with convicts from Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe bringing their own slang terms with them.
The working-class origins of many early settlers meant that language was often informal, and humour and making the best of a bad lot became central to the Australian identity.
Convicts and settlers alike used slang to defy authority and express camaraderie. Words like "larrikin" reflect a rebellious, cheeky attitude that became part of our national character.
Slang became a way to survive and thrive in tough, often harsh conditions, helping people bond and deal with adversity. And boy, it must have been tough back then.
In 1925, a small courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee, became the stage for a battle over ideas. The Scopes Trial - immortalised in the film Inherit the Wind - pitted a young teacher, John Scopes, against the state’s Butler Act, which banned the teaching of evolution in schools.
The trial wasn’t just about science versus religion; it was about who gets to control thought.
Clarence Darrow, defending Scopes, warned that dogmatic gatekeepers -religious or secular - pose the greatest threat to the human right to question and reason.
A century later, that warning feels prophetic.
Today’s battle over free inquiry isn’t fought in courtrooms but across digital platforms and halls of government. Governments in the UK, Canada, and Australia are wielding vague laws and weaponised labels - “racist,” “bigot,” “misinformation” - to silence dissent, all in the name of protection.from Australia’s under-16 social media “delay” to the UK’s arrests for “mean tweets,” we are edging toward a digital Butler Act.
Only bold resistance - by figures like Elon Musk and by ordinary citizens - can halt the quiet march on freedom.
Read more: The New Dogma: How Labels and Laws Are Silencing Free Thought
I spent most of my working life in the Aussie bush. It is a way of life most Australians would struggle to understand.
Picture this. You’re on a cattle station the size of a small European country. The nearest hospital is many hundreds of kilometres away, the roads are red dust tracks, and someone in the family has taken a bad turn. No phone, no ambulance, no chance of a doctor riding up on horseback.
Then - a sound overhead. A single-engine plane rattles in from the horizon, wheels kicking up dust as it lands in a paddock. Out climbs a doctor, medical bag in hand. For us blokes out bush, that wasn’t just a plane. That was hope.
That’s the story of the early Royal Flying Doctor Service - or as most people know it, simply “the Flying Doctor.”
Read more: Wings Over the Outback: The Story of the Flying Doctor
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