Stone tricks and emu chicks

ABC Listen. Warning, there's a story in Newstime today that includes the name of a First Nations person who's died. Hello there, my friends. My name's Ruby and you're listening to Newstime. Hi, Ruby. Hello. On Newstime today, we're going to hear about a world championship that's been rocked. by scandal. We'll meet some mother hens who've taken orphaned emu chicks under their wings. And we'll fall from the sky at a very high speed in our wow of the week.

What do you think? Shall we jump on in? Story number five.

Over the skies of Norway, a strange type of plane has been flying around. I think it looks different because it has a different shape. It might have a different shape to be gliding. It doesn't run by gas. I think it could run as electric. Bingo. This is an electric plane. It means that it doesn't run fuel and it only runs electric. Electricity. That's right. This plane's been built by a US aerospace company to fly goods from place to place. It doesn't need any petrol.

All it needs to do is plug into electricity and charge up, just like an electric car. So that every time they ran out of fuel, they don't have to keep on going down to refill it? Mm-hmm. You don't need to refuel, but you do need to recharge. This plane can fly 400 kilometres on one charge, and it takes about 40 minutes to charge up the battery to full again.

Scientists say these flying electric vehicles could be a way of reducing the carbon footprint of planes. They create 3% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe they might. want to make the air cleaner in the future. There's still a long way to go until electric plane batteries last long enough to fly passengers around. Even the best lithium-ion batteries are very heavy.

which is not ideal given the plane needs to be lightweight when it's electric some companies are experimenting with hybrid planes they're powered by batteries but they carry fuel as a backup so they're lighter than a completely electric plane. With all this creative thinking going on, it does make you wonder what the future of flying might look like. You might drive flying cars.

You might go around by going and flying pies. Flying pies? Some people might call that dream pie in the sky. Story number four.

More than 50 years ago, a Jagera man named Neville Bonner made history. He became Australia's first Aboriginal parliamentarian. That means he was the first Indigenous Australian to sit in the Commonwealth Parliament. I see that Aboriginal man in... country throwing some boomerangs just some looks like he's really focusing on his boomerangs

In the year 1971, the late Neville Bonner famously gave a boomerang-throwing demonstration on the gardens of Canberra's Parliament House. The nation's press this week gather to see him unveil the government's answer to the F-111. for handmade boomerangs. Last month, a bronze statue of Neville Bonner throwing boomerangs was placed in front of Old Parliament House, inspired by that moment in history. The statue took four years to design and make.

And it's been created to show Mr Bonner as both an Indigenous man and a politician. And he's standing on top of a boomerang. Neville Bonner did some incredible things in Parliament. In 1979, he was named Australian... Australian of the Year for his contribution to Indigenous rights. He died 26 years ago, but his family members travelled to Canberra to watch the sculpture being unveiled. So they can remember him. Done a lot for the land.

Because they've passed away, they took care of this land for thousands of years. Since Mr Bonner was elected, 15 more First Nations Australians have served as federal politicians. And there are hopes that this sculpture will remind visitors and school students about the way that Indigenous people... including Neville Bonner, have contributed to Parliament and Australian democracy.

Now we're travelling to a tiny island off the coast of Scotland where more than 2,000 of the world's best stone skimmers gathered for a competition. What is that? My dad taught me how to do that. You have to find a smooth rock and then you have your leg in front of you and the other one at the back. It goes into the water and then it skips across the water. That's right.

stone skimming is when you take a stone and you throw it towards the water in a way that makes it sort of hop across the top that's it It takes the right stone combined with a good throw for a successful skim. I've done it before, but it's also really hard to do. These competitors met for the World Stone Skimming Championships, but... This competition was rocked by scandal. Can you guess what happened? Maybe when they throw it in, maybe something...

came out that is really dangerous. They didn't actually skip it, it just fell into the water. Maybe a monster put a curse on them and then they couldn't throw the rock. Thankfully, there were no monsters casting spells. However, a number of skimmers were disqualified for cheating. How would you cheat? Well, the competition rules say that the stones used for skimming...

have to be natural. But judges found some stones had been ground into a circular shape to help them bounce on the water. And that's cheating, and it would be like... fair because other people have been trying their best like training to do it. The wrongdoers admitted what they'd done and apologised for cheating. Thankfully, the show skipped on.

This year's champion was American Jonathan Jennings, who skimmed his stones, which I can assure you were completely natural, a total distance of 177 metres. Rock and roll, Jonathan.

Or maybe that should be rock and skim. Story number two. Emus are curious creatures. Did you know that when a mother emu lays eggs... the father emu sits on them for 60 days straight. Really? Yep. And when the eggs hatch, the emu chicks usually spend 12 months with their dad, learning things like where to find food and water. and how to avoid predators. Zookeepers at the New South Wales Wildlife Park had a kind of strange situation recently when two emu chicks were orphaned by their father.

It makes me feel very sad and very bad for the emus because they might be eaten by the predators. Being a wildlife park, the zookeepers came up with a solution to help these emu chicks, which they'd named Muffin and Socks after the characters in Bluey. They brought in some mother hens. Chicken! Yes, two chickens named Lucy and Ethel who are a bit older than Muffin and Socks, they showed the emu chicks where to find food and water.

else do you think they might have taught them? How to get food by taking the beak. How to say something. How to bock, bock, bock. The hens kept the emu chicks warm and taught them how to walk and peck and play. Zookeeper Nicole McClain says they're all getting along really well, even though the emus are growing much taller than their feathered friends.

Because those chickens were already healthy, thriving, wanting to run around, the emus were like, oh, I want to also run around. They're none the wiser. They just think that they've got some cool stripy siblings that are out grazing on the grass with them. They deserve a whole... world full of traits for them impeccable work lucy and ethel and now my friends we have winged our way to world of the week this

story made me go wow because she fell out of the sky really fast. Queensland woman Natisha Dingle feels the need. The need for speed. She's been in Austria recently and became the fastest woman in the world at one particular sport. Can you guess which one? Tennis? Circle? I guess racing because it's the fastest. Good guesses, but Natisha has held on to her title of world's fastest female at the World Cup of Speed.

You get these big wing things that, like, have a pointy bit, a twangle at the back, and then you kind of hold it into this bar, and then you dive in the sky. Not quite. That is hang gliding. In speed skydiving... you jump out of a plane and fall through the sky towards Earth. You have to hold your body position because any movement will slow you down. I do not want to do that because I might fall into the seat. Don't worry. It's all A-OK. Natisha has a parachute on her back.

and when she releases it at just the right moment, she can land safely. But until that point, she is free-falling headfirst out of the sky, trying to keep still and get to the fastest speed possible. At this year's World Cup, Natisha managed a speed of 497 kilometres an hour. That's about double the speed of a plane during take-off. Whoa! Maybe? because she put her arms down very well. She was...

Flying through the sky with some rocket? Mm-mm-mm, there were no hidden rockets on Natisha. She is pure skill. She's been skydiving for more than 20 years and she says falling fast feels like freedom. When she's not competing, Natisha works as a skydiving instructor. She hopes that one day speed skydiving will be introduced as an Olympic sport.

And here we are, my friends, safely back on the ground at the end of another adrenaline pumping countdown. Thank you. Thanks, Ruby. You are so welcome. I'll see you all next week. Bye. See you next time. See you later. Or, as they say in Yamp Latok, also known as Torres Strait Creole, Yawo. Newstime is an ABC Kids Listen podcast. For other awesome podcasts to play, music to move to and stories and soundtracks for sleep, download the ABC Kids Listen app. It's free from your app store.