StrangeSights

• A graphic designer has produced an alphabet using topographical features from Victoria which he identified using Google Earth. Rhett Dashwood reportedly took six months to create the alphabet which uses Melbourne’s world famous MCG for the ‘O’ and a footbridge across the city’s Yarra River for the ‘J’.

• A Chinese hairdresser has found a good use for her customers’ cut-off hair - making a model of the Tian’anmen Gate Tower in Tian’anmen Square. Huang Xin reportedly took five months to make the model - which stands 60 centimetres high - out of 11 kilograms of hair. She apparently used women’s hair because it’s softer.

• Solar power is so passe. A racing car launched in the UK, which has been made from vegetables, is reportedly powered by chocolate. The car, named ecoF3, has a steering wheel made of carrots, a body made of potatoes and a soybean seat. Its biodiesel engine is apparently capable of running on chocolate and vegetable oil. The Formula 3 racing car has been developed by the WorldFirst team from Warwick University and they hope it will be racing soon.

• Amid the much ado about Twitter, actor Hugh Jackman announced on his site last week that he would donate $100,000 to someone’s favorite non-profit organisation, saying that he had to convince him of the cause in 140 characters or less. Naturally the announcement has drawn a deluge of responses. You can have your say here: http://twitter.com/RealHughJackman

• Sand that is yellow and not white. Being bitten by a mosquito when no-one said they would bite. Too many Spanish people in Spain. Such are some of the complaints of British tourists found in a compilation released by Thomas Cook and the Association of British Travel Agents. Others surround a beach that was found to be “too sandy”, a tourist upset to find fish in the sea - “The children were startled” - and a British guest who complained about an Australian hotel where the soup was too think and strong (he was supping from the gravy boat).

• It makes for an interesting place to stay. A Costa Rican hotel has turned the fuselage of a 727 into luxury hotel lodgings. Apparently there’s already a 747 jumbo hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, and a home in Malibu in the US made from a 747 fuselage.

• It’s the end of an era in Melbourne as the Footscray Trugo Club has reportedly closed its doors for the last time. Trugo, described as a cross between croquet and lawn bowls, was invented by railway workers during the 1920s. Players use a mallet to hit a rubber ring down a green between goal posts. The club, which has been running for 78 years, has closed down because of a lack of players. The club was reportedly the second-oldest in the state.

• No water available for a baptism? Why not use a softdrink? Such was reportedly the case at a Norwegian church which was forced to use lemon-flavoured cola instead of water for an infant baptism after its taps were temporarily turned off because of freezing temperatures. The priest, Paal Dale, said the cola had gone flat.

• Sophie Tucker is the Robinson Crusoe of the dog world, having spent four months as a castaway on a tropical island in North Queensland after being washed overboard during a trip with her family last November. The four-year-old blue heeler apparently swam five nautical miles to Keswick Island, near Mackay, after falling in the water and apparently survived by eating wild baby goats and hunting koalas.