Eat camel, Australians ‘teased’ over our lack of Olympic medals, and keeping an eye out for the ‘bears in space’…
• Australia has a camel problem with a herd estimated to number a million causing environmental havoc in the nation’s centre, inflicting an estimated $15 million damage to year to an area which equates to a third of the continent. One solution posed following the release of a Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre report examining the extent of the problem is to use camel meat for human or pet consumption. Camel meat, mainly in the form of sausages and burgers, is currently only produced by one abattoir in Australia.
• The Australian Sporting Commission has launched a new talent search campaign on the internet featuring an obnoxious “Brit” wearing a hoodie who taunts Aussies about their lack of medals at the Beijing Olympics and invites them to “stand up and be counted” at the London Games in 2012. Understandably there’s been some bemusement both in the UK and at home over the approach taken but David Packwood from the ASC has been quoted as saying - “We’re not having a pop at you Brits. This is our way of getting Australians off thier backsides and thinking, jeez, I might be able to be in London 2012.”
• We’ve sent up monkeys and a dog but now it’s the bears turn. Britain has reportedly sent four teddy bears into the stratosphere as part of an experiment to monitor weather. The teddies were strapped to a weather balloon made by the Cambridge University space flight science club and two - known as MAT and KMS - have been snapped on a camera about 30,000 metres above the earth. Their spacesuits were created by children at two community colleges.