With minimal food and water, the 26-year-old drank from puddles, sheltered in a cave and used the sun for navigation
Carolina Wilga spent 11 freezing nights lost in the Western Australian outback, convinced she would never be found.
By “sheer luck” the confused and disoriented German backpacker came across a road, where she flagged down a woman in a passing car on Friday afternoon.
Continue reading...Committee due to make decision on inscription of the Murujuga Cultural Landscape overnight
The Australian government has secured the backing of at least eight members of the 21-country World Heritage committee as it lobbies to quell concerns about the impacts of industrial emissions on Indigenous rock art at Murujuga and have the Western Australia site inscribed on the World Heritage list.
The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, has been in Paris for the meeting since Wednesday, alongside a delegation from the WA state government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, which has led the nomination.
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Continue reading...The 26-year-old has not been seen or heard from since visiting a general store in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region
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Police searching for German backpacker Carolina Wilga, who is missing in a remote part of Western Australia, have found an abandoned van believed to have mechanical issues.
The 26-year-old has not been seen or heard from since she visited a general store in the small town of Beacon, in WA’s north-east Wheatbelt region, on 29 June.
Continue reading...Invasive shot-hole borer only found in Perth in Australia, but as WA moves from eradication to management of pest, risk of spread is ‘heightened’
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The chief scientist of the Botanic Gardens of Sydney is warning of an imminent and deadly risk to the city’s trees posed by an invasive beetle that has led to the removal of thousands of trees in Perth.
The tiny polyphagous shot-hole borer, which is native to south-east Asia, is a “fungus farmer” that burrows into trees and can spread a fungus that kills the host tree.
Continue reading...Philip Urquhart tells the inquest into the 16-year-old’s fatal self-harming that the state justice department failed in its duty of care
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Everything must be done to ensure no more children die in youth detention, a coroner has told an inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager, including closing down the controversial prison unit where he fatally self-harmed.
Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive inside a cell in Unit 18, a youth wing of the high-security adult facility Casuarina prison in Perth, in the early hours of 12 October 2023.
Continue reading...The 16-year-old was subject to ‘institutional abuse’ by WA justice department staff, coroner in Perth hears
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An Indigenous teenager who fatally self-harmed in detention was subjected to “cruel and inhumane” treatment, a lawyer for his family said after the inquest into his death resumed.
Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive inside a cell in Unit 18, a youth wing of the high-security Casuarina prison facility for adults in Perth, in the early hours of 12 October 2023.
Continue reading...Heinous and ‘racially motivated’ attack on Indigenous teenager left mother and community traumatised, court hears
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The murder of an Indigenous teenager who was chased into bushland and beaten with a metal pole during a heinous racist attack has shattered lives and left a community living in fear, his heartbroken mother has said.
Cassius Turvey, a Noongar Yamatji boy, died in hospital 10 days after he was deliberately struck on the head in Perth’s eastern suburbs on 13 October 2022.
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Continue reading...Researchers say contamination found at Montebello Islands is part of fallout from 1950s British tests and will persist for thousands of years
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Samples of marine sediment taken from the location of three 1950s British government nuclear bomb tests off the coast of Western Australia have revealed plutonium levels up to 4,500 times higher than the rest of the coastline.
Sixty six samples were taken from the shallow waters at the Montebello Islands, and scientists are now working to understand how marine life may be being affected by the sediment.
Continue reading...The environment minister says the report on the Murujuga petroglyphs has been ‘clearly influenced’ by environment campaigners
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Australia’s environment minister, Murray Watt, has lobbied national Unesco ambassadors in a bid to overturn a recommendation that ancient rock art in Western Australia’s north-west should not receive world heritage listing unless nearby industrial facilities shut down.
Delegations from the Australian government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, a body established to represent five traditional Indigenous language groups, plan to attend a Unesco meeting in Paris next month to argue for an immediate world heritage listing for the Murujuga cultural landscape.
Continue reading...Forty-year extension of North West Shelf gas project granted by environment minister Murray Watt will result in huge greenhouse gas emissions, putting the already degraded Indigenous rock art at risk
We don’t know all the evidence that the new environment minister, Murray Watt, had before him when he decided to approve a 40-year life extension to one of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel developments so that it could run until 2070.
But we do know this. The decision largely turned on whether the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) development on the Pilbara’s Burrup Hub can coexist for decades into the future with an incredible collection of ancient Murujuga rock art, some of it nearly 50,000 years old and unlike anything else on the planet.
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Continue reading...Seven Regions Nuclear Free alliance launches campaign representing groups who oppose the Coalition’s proposed nuclear reactors in their communities across Queensland, NSW, SA, Victoria and WA
Trade unions, conservationists, First Nations groups, church congregations and community organisations have launched a coordinated campaign against opposition leader Peter Dutton’s plan for nuclear reactors across Australia.
The Coalition has pledged, if elected, to build seven nuclear reactors to replace retiring or retired coal sites naming Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales, Port Augusta in South Australia, Loy Yang in Victoria, and Muja in Western Australia.
Continue reading...The PM addressed a crowd of 500 people in Perth, spruiking new policies on housing and tax deductions, celebrating WA and invoking Donald Trump. Here’s what you may have missed
Labor’s election campaign launch in Perth was headlined by a $10bn housing pledge, a vow to help first home buyers and a new $1,000 “automatic” tax deduction for all workers.
It also featured a former prime minister, gags about rugby league and more than a few digs at Peter Dutton alongside Labor’s claims that he is copying Donald Trump’s political playbook.
Continue reading...Senator channels US president during election campaign event, but says Coalition’s government efficiency unit ‘not an ode to Donald Tump’
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has rejected comparisons to Donald Trump after announcing she wanted to “make Australia great again” at a campaign rally in Perth.
The outspoken Northern Territory senator joined Peter Dutton in the seat of Tangney in Perth’s inner suburbs as the Coalition looks to win back Labor’s “red wall” in the western state.
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Continue reading...Weather bureau predicts high-pressure system will bring above-average temperatures across south-east Australia
A cyclone is likely to form off the northern coast of Western Australia this weekend, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has warned, as south-east Australia prepares for unseasonably warm weather.
The bureau on Saturday morning issued a warning that a tropical low in the Timor Sea north-west of Darwin was moving south-west and was expected to intensify into a cyclone later in the day.
Continue reading...Jack Brearley says his co-accused delivered fatal blows to 15-year-old but his version is challenged under cross-examination
A man accused of murder who blamed his co-accused for the death of Indigenous teenager Cassius Turvey has had his version of events challenged while giving evidence in his defence.
During testimony on Thursday at the West Australian supreme court, Jack Brearley, 24, told a jury that prosecutors had it wrong and he did not strike the 15-year-old in the head with a metal pole in Perth’s eastern suburbs on 13 October 2022.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Cost blow-out has experts worried people will use ‘huge’ volumes of pesticides to protect themselves from ‘tiny killers’
Australian households will spend $1.03bn every year to suppress fire ants and cover related medical and veterinary costs, with about 570,800 people needing medical attention and 30 likely deaths from the invasive pest’s stings, new modelling shows.
The Australia Institute research breaks down the impact of red imported fire ants (Rifa) by electorate, with the seats of Durack and O’Connor in Western Australia, Mayo in South Australia and Blair in Queensland the hardest hit if the ants become endemic.
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Blair: $1.7m in medical costs, $1.5m in vet costs and $5.1m in household pesticide costs.
Dickson: $1.4m in medical costs, $1.2m in vet costs and $4m in household pesticide costs.
Ryan: $1.5m in medical costs, $1.3m in vet costs and $3.4m in household pesticide costs.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch spoke to 33 Aboriginal parents who between them have had 114 children removed and placed in out-of-home care
Warning: this story contains distressing descriptions of violence
Briana* was just starting to get a handle on the unpredictability of feeding, bottles and all that comes with a newborn when she received an email informing her she had lost custody of her three-month-old son.
Days later, child protection authorities took her child. With him, they took many of the milestones the 36-year-old first-time mother was looking forward to. “I’m going to miss those first words, the first rollover, everything,” she says.
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Continue reading...Zempilas admitted he would continue to write unpaid for his former employer Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media and appear on Channel 7’s Sunrise program
Basil Zempilas’ punt for leadership has sailed straight through the goalposts, in a gameplay by Western Australia’s Liberals that surprised nobody.
As the nation waited for the federal budget to drop, Zempilas took centre stage on the steps of the state parliament to announce his unopposed appointment as opposition leader.
Continue reading...Scientists say widespread damage to both world heritage-listed reefs is ‘heartbreaking’ as WA reef accumulates highest amount of heat stress on record
Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – have been hit simultaneously by coral bleaching that reef experts have called “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”.
Teams of scientists on both coasts have been monitoring and tracking the heat stress and bleaching extending across thousands of kilometres of marine habitat, which is likely to have been driven by global heating.
Continue reading...The blockage – thought to be the state’s biggest ever – was discovered at a wastewater facility during routine maintenance
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The biggest ever fatberg found in Western Australia has been pulled from a sewer, weighing in at 30,000kg.
Fatbergs are made up of material that cannot dissolve in water – such as oil, grease and wet wipes flushed down sinks and toilets – which then pile up and stick together.
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