#oz

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

also The Shovel: NAPLAN results could be gooder. government concedes

The Federal Government admits literacy and numeracy skills should of improved fasterer, following fifteeen years of NAPLAN testing.

Results from this year’s test, released Wednesday, show a 2.04% decline in riting skills. Reading has declined too, with many children now unable to maintain the necessary concentration to read to the end of a

Grammar results has also gone backwards since the knew testing was introduced in 2007.

Encouragingly, numeracy levels have actually improved over the last ten years, up by around a third (11%).


Headline by Matthew Bulman
#LOLs #yoks #fun #ozpol #oz #Australia #straya

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

good news from the Knitting Nannas and Friends (Sydney faction)
"🎉 Congrats @MoveBeyondCoal

“Banks have lost interest in funding Whitehaven’s financially reckless and environmentally ludicrous coal expansion plans in the midst of a climate crisis. NAB and Westpac have finally turned their backs on Whitehaven”
the SMH asks "what went wrong here?" Nothing - it's all turned out pretty good

"Anybody who’s in thermal coal is going to be facing similar challenges in mobilising funding from traditional sources,” Ball said. “It is increasingly difficult being a coal producer to attract external funding,” he said, adding that the miner was instead focus on sourcing loans from the US debt capital markets next year." hahah yeah good onya USA - still up for saving us ;)

#Good-News #coal #nope #oz #straya

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

Bearded flatsedge is back! ABC with a nice pic of Tim and another of Eileen Ramsey

The discovery was made during a routine survey by the Victorian government's forest monitoring program, which examines more than 800 plots across the country to study the environmental impact of fire and floods. "When you do these surveys, you get to know the plants that are there all the time," Professor Entwisle said.
You do. A tad further south, we've named our favourites - eg., Barry and Bruce Banksia, and Karen X the grasstree whose leaves flop to one side :)

#YAY #botany #plants #floods #fire #oz

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

The Chelsea Australian Garden (in Olinda) has opened
https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/projects/melbourne-region/chelsea-australian-garden-at-olinda
a quick vid from above link https://youtu.be/vDMVYRcFbvg

"In 2013, the ‘Australian Garden’, created by Landscape Designer Phillip Johnson, Horticulturalist Wes Fleming and the Trailfinders Team, was the first Australian entry to win Gold and Best in Show at the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show in London.

Ten years later, Phillip Johnson has re-created his award-winning Australian Garden in the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden in Olinda, on Wurundjeri Country.

The new garden is over 20 times the size of the original Chelsea Flower Show build, converting a section of the former Olinda Golf Course into a stunning botanic garden, supporting biodiversity and habitat creation in the area.

The garden features 15,000 plants from over 400 native Australian species, and includes rare and endangered species such as the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis), which is listed as critically endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth).

It showcases sustainable and water-wise design, including an integrated bushfire protection system, solar power and the clever use of recycled and reclaimed materials, such as seating which was lovingly crafted from the Dandenong Ranges storm recovery program.

It also promotes and supports biodiversity through the creation of important native habitats for native plants and animals. This will encourage wildlife such as birds, bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, which are so important for the environment."

#excellent #plants #gardens #horticulture #oz

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

"It was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases and the alcohol.We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine that these things could be done to us"
~Paul Keating, the Redfern Speech, 10 December 1992

#reconciliation #oz

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

Ned's last words and how they went from "Ah, well, i suppose" to "such is life" in the telling.
by Dr Stuart E. Dawson https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1669214/eras181_dawson.pdf

transcript of the Jerilderee letter which Ned dictated to Joe Byrne (not ones for punctuation)
https://www.murrumbidgee.nsw.gov.au/files/transcript_the_jerilderie_letter.pdf

"Approximately 8000 words long, this letter has been described as Ned Kelly’s ‘manifesto’. It passionately articulates his pleas of innocence and desire for justice for both his family and the poor Irish selectors of Victoria’s north-east." (Migration History NSW)

"It was natural to look for anarchistic individual solutions, to regard cattle theft as legitimate, and to protect bushrangers." One of my oldies ran a pub through which bushrangers passed, changing clothes on the way through and out the back door. Her husband wanted her to stop giving his clothes away so she suggested she give him away instead. The custom continued. i guess great-whatever grand papa bought his own clothes from there, or learned to love looking like a bushranger's discarded wardrobe.
On the other side of the fam, a forefather (a copper) was shot by a bushranger. His two sons soon caught the baddie and brought him back to hang.
i think i like the first story better.

#oz #history #Ned #poor-Ned

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

Grand Imperial Vizier, Clover Moore, gets an AO OK!

"..The work to which we have set ourselves is the liberating of the imagination, the harnessing of imagination to humankind's deepest sense of creativity." Bene Gesserit Credo

"Moore became involved in a local resident action group and decided to run for Council in 1980 when she and other members of the group met, after three years of attempts, with the Mayor, Bill Hartup, regarding a local park which Hartup had demanded to have its grass replaced with asphalt (to aid street-sweepers in seeing broken glass), surrounded by barbed wire (to keep out the drunks at night), and to have its lone tree removed (a nuisance)" Wikipedia. dafuck, tis true.

a pretty good line up for awards, i reckon.

#oz #straaya

clarice@diaspora.glasswings.com

"It's time for the story of Aboriginal removal to be told. It's a sad story but it's the real story."
The world's largest sand island off the coast of Queensland, formerly known as Fraser Island, has officially been renamed K'gari.
ABC

"We talk about [K'gari] as a natural landscape, but it's actually a cultural landscape. All the trees and all the landscape that you see is actually a result of 60,000 to 70,000 years of Indigenous occupation and Butchulla land management. Without that, the island would actually look completely different." Ms Royan hoped the historic name change would inspire other traditional owners looking to follow suit. "Like Uluru, this has been a great battle," Ms Royan said. "I would say to everyone that wants to fight for their name and the country, keep fighting. It's been a long time coming for us. Go with your heart."

#good-news #oz #Qld #Australia