Program: Seagull mess and puppy express

If you head along to a game of AFL, you’ll see plenty of players running around the field.

But there’s also a few people who aren’t on any footy team but need to be just as fast as the players. They wear bright yellow shirts and socks and carry a whistle in their hand.

This is Greta Miller, and she’s throwing the ball in from the boundary. That’s one of Greta’s jobs as a boundary umpire.

Boundary umpires are like referees who make calls on whether a ball is out of bounds, keep track of the number of players on the field, and return the ball to the centre after a team scores a goal. That means they do a lot of running.

Greta made history recently, alongside Melissa Sambrooks and Kaitlin Barr, as the first ever female boundary umpires to officiate a men’s AFL game. Greta started umpiring local football games when she was 12 years old, looking for a bit of pocket money. She kept going though, moving into the AFL Women’s competition, and now the men’s.

Greta said she was so nervous she couldn’t sleep the night before. Once the game started, she couldn’t stop smiling as she umpired, running 16 kilometres during the game. Greta hopes that one day it’s just normal for female umpires to come through the AFL.

If you’ve ever been to Parliament House in Canberra, you might have heard our political leaders and decision makers making a bit of noise. Well, they’re nowhere near as loud as the hundreds of seagulls that have chosen to nest outside on parliament’s forecourt. 

Parliament House is a long way from people enjoying hot chips at the beach, but there’s still a decent seagull population in Canberra. When visitors and staff carry food around, the seagulls notice and do what they do best – beg for a snack.

The seagulls have also made quite a scene… with their poo.

A team of cleaners now hoses the mess away every morning, and others are working hard to cover plants in the hopes the gulls will fly away and make their home somewhere else. It does make you wonder though, if the seagulls just want to get into politics.

For now, the feathered fiends are still there, and Parliament House staff are thinking of more ways to move them on.

Here’s a question for you… which superhero are you most like?

These days superhero movies release in cinemas all the time, featuring strong characters who love to save the day. But a recent report has found the world of caped crusaders is lacking diversity, both on screen and in comics. There are some female superheroes around, but far fewer than men. There also hasn’t been many Australian superheroes, and the Indigenous superheroes have been designed by non-Indigenous people.

That’s why some First Nations comic creators are making a change. Molly Hunt has made a comic book called Dreamwalker. It tells the story of Mungala, a Gooniyandi warrior, as she journeys from north-west Western Australia through time and space on a search for her child and a fight to protect her people.

Molly says she wishes she could have read a comic book when she was younger that featured a hero that looked like her. Now, she’s excited to share this comic, which talks about the importance of gaining strength and power from ancestors. Well done, Molly!

In the Queensland town of Boonah, some very excited passengers wait each morning for a bus to come and pick them up. You can tell they’re keen to board because they’re happily wagging their tails!

Every morning more than 12 dogs jump on a bus…

These pooches aren’t being whisked away for a pampering, they’re headed for an adventure park, for a day of playing and learning.

The person behind this doggy dream is Jo. Every week, 63 dogs use her bus, and every dog knows where they need to sit. Jo says she wants dogs to have fun playing together each day, and for them to grow in confidence. Jo also has a great team working with her to care for the dogs, including people living with disability.

Sage is hearing-impaired and works as a trainee groomer, which she says is her dream job. Amber has an acquired brain injury which limits her ability to move; however, she can manage small dogs like chihuahuas. Amber says that coming to work helps her calm down and feel relaxed. 

At the end of each day these very good boys and girls pause their play to jump back on the bus and head home: tired, but excited for tomorrow.

In a South Australian coastal town, there lives a man named Rod who has something very peculiar in his home freezer. It’s a jar with something inside of it… it’s whale poo…

Rod spends a lot of time walking the white sandy beach of Fowlers Bay looking for whale poo, which – in case you were wondering – looks like lumps of clay. After he first found the whale waste, he connected with a Sydney-based scientist named Aashi, who is studying southern right whales.

Aashi has been getting Rod’s whale poo samples through the post, and from observing it she’s worked out that whale calves have been chowing down on krill and crab larvae, as well as their mother’s milk. She’s also been able to study whale gut bacteria to learn how healthy the whales are, and what sort of environment they call home.

Climate change has become a challenge for these whales, as the krill they eat are impacted by changing water temperatures. But the super teamwork of Aashi and Rod is helping scientists learn how to manage the whales better and what areas of the coast need protection.

To think all that research started with whale poo, it’s a ‘number two’ knowledge breakthrough!