A Heaven Hole In The Sky

The weather in the region of Wonthaggi, Gippsland Victoria, Australia is quite bright. But suddenly, some local residents saw the strange sightings in the sky. They look strange giant cloud holes.

The cloud phenomenon is even more attractive when the giant hole decorated with patches of rainbow in it. Inevitably, a strange phenomenon that immediately raises the admiration and puzzled people in social media.

The phenomenon is known as a rare cloud Fallstreak Hole, or cloud hole. Social media users were flocking to claim the phenomenon as 'the rapture' cloud.

Strange phenomenon like that, according to experts quoted by Science Magazine, is caused by a phenomenon called 'seeding'. This happens, when aircraft fly through clouds cause freezing of ice particles in the air.

While the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said the strange phenomenon of the cloud is formed, when the water temperature in the clouds below freezing.

"But the water has not frozen due to lack of ice core particle," explains Michael Efron.

Related phenomena rainbow colors in the middle of the strange cloud hole, Efron explained, flecks of color that is often referred to as the game of colors that can also be found in natural objects such as sea shells, soap bubbles and butterfly wings.

"This type of cloud iridescence that occurred at a high level with the clouds of spring. This means, the water droplets is a collection of light," he explained.

Australian Bureau of Meteorology records show the strange cloud phenomenon is so rare, so it is normal that the peoples was amazed.

Weird cloud phenomenon previously occurred in early October in the Perth area. Meanwhile, in May, also a strange cloud phenomena that formed in northern California, sparking debate UFO conspiracy.  

 

Topless Hairdressers Phenomenon

It's neither hair nor there at Brisbane City topless hairdressers

Topless hairdressing opened at The Grosvenor in February.

TOPLESS hairdressers have set up shop in Brisbane's CBD, with customers travelling from as far as Townsville to get their locks lopped.

Barber Babes operate out of The Grosvenor on George and involve a topless female barber cutting their hair wearing only hot pants or underwear.

The scantily-clad barbers also offer scalp massages, brow waxing, blow dries and a shave with a cut-throat razor.

Owner operator Jasmine Robson said all her stylists are fully qualified.

"One of the gorgeous barbers was even apprentice of the year when she trained," she said.

"Some of the barbers are available for lap dances but not whilst you are getting your Barber Babes service. They are serious about their art and don't take it lightly."

Ms Robson said most men generally don't enjoy getting their hair cut so the service aimed to make the experience more pleasurable.

"We found that a lot of exotic dancers are qualified hairdressers and don't do what they love as the wages are quite abysmal," she said.

Since Barber Babes opened in February, Ms Robson said the response has been excellent with some men coming in every couple of days for a shave.

Clients include a lot of fly in fly out miners from Brisbane, local businessmen, musicians, barristers, women and university professors.

"We have one client who flies in especially from Townsville to get his hair cut,'' Ms Robson said.

"We've had a few strange looks and baffled inquiries but definitely no complaints."

But Melinda Liszewski from Collective Shout, which campaigns against the objectification of women, said she wasn't surprised to hear the service is popular.

"What we're seeing is the crossover of the sex industry into other more mainstream areas," she said.

"It's reinforcing the idea that women exist for mens sexual arousal and titilation."

How To Force A Kiss to A Girl

A Singaporean navy officer currently training in an Australia academy was found guilty of forcing a kiss out of a fellow female cadet.

However, Benedict Ang Yong Chuean, a trainee at the Australian Defence Force Academy, was cleared on Friday of a second charge of undoing her bra and touching her breast while she slept, according to a report on The Canberra Times.

The Australian news outlet reported that Ang, 22, had entered the female cadet's room in the wee hours of May 6 last year.

He proceeded to lay down on a bed next to the 18-year-old cadet after a night out in town where she had 18 drinks.

Ang, who had five drinks on the same night, was said to have then rubbed her back, before holding her by the jaw and repeatedly trying to kiss her.

The female cadet said she used her teeth to force him to stop before falling back asleep, while Ang said that the kiss was consensual.

He also said that he stopped kissing her after she said: "I can't do this, you're like my bro."

The prosecution team claimed that Ang had an "unrequited love" for the cadet he reportedly refers to as "sis", and also told the court that he admitted to fellow cadets that he "f**ked up" and pleaded with them not to make a report for fear of ruining his career.

Ang maintained his innocence throughout the trial, and refuted the latter suggestion, saying that he was fearful of the ADFA's rules on non-fraternisation instead.

The Straits Times reported that Ang is a Singapore Armed Forces scholar who is studying at the ADFA to study for a degree awarded by the University of New South Wales.

Ang will be sentenced in late May, and is currently out on bail.

Dog Helps Owner Who Trapped Under Car for Four Days

Dog Helps Save Owner Herbert Schutz, 76-Year-Old Trapped Under Car For Four Days

Boydy, an Australian kelpie, truly is a loyal companion.

After his owner, 76-year-old Herbert Schutz, became trapped under his vehicle in Australia, the dog stayed by his side for four days until help arrived, local news sources report.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Schutz crashed his car Thursday on his Rylstone property after hitting a tree. He was pinned beneath the vehicle until Monday night. Two neighbors began a search for the elderly man when his daughter became concerned that she hadn't heard from him.

"Even when we found him, the dog ran straight to his side and cuddled up to him. He didn't want to leave him even then," neighbor Eric Merritt told The Newcastle Herald.

Though Schutz was lucid when the two men found him around 6 p.m. Monday, he was taken to a local hospital in serious condition. He suffered from a fractured skull, two broken hips and a dislocated shoulder, the Herald reports.

As the Telegraph notes, Schutz "was adamant his dog had saved his life."

"He said his dog lay on him and kept him warm a lot of the time," Merritt told the publication.

Man's best friend has often gone above and beyond to help save people in times of crisis. In October, a Japanese Akita jumped into freezing water in Scotland to keep his owner from drowning. Earlier, in 2011, a 79-year-old Minnesota woman said her dog chased away predators during the night she fell outside her home, and she credited her survival to the pup.

Naked Preteen in Magazine Controversy

Nude girl art row flares in Australia

A photograph of a nude six-year-old girl on the cover of a high-brow Australian art magazine today sparked an uproar after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called it disgusting, infuriating liberal art critics.

This month's taxpayer-funded Art Monthly Australia magazine placed the photograph of the young dark-haired girl on the cover, sitting and with one nipple showing, to protest censorship of a recent photo exhibition featuring similarly naked children.

"I can't stand this stuff," said Rudd, a staunch Christian whose centre-left Labor government won a sweeping victory over conservatives last year, in part on a vow to reinvigorate Australia's small but influential arts community.

"We're talking about the innocence of little children here. A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way," Rudd added, as officials said they would review the magazine's funding.

Magazine editor Maurice O'Riordan said he hoped the July edition of the monthly magazine would restore "dignity to the debate" about artistic depictions of children and anyone else.

The magazine cover followed confiscation by police in May of photographs of a young girl taken by artist Bill Henson and briefly on display in a Sydney art gallery.

The cover photo, which had been on public exhibition in Australia for some time, was taken in 2003 by Melbourne photographer Polixeni Papapetrou and depicted her own daughter, Olympia Nelson, now aged 11.

The Australian Childhood Foundation said parents had no ethical right to consent to nude photographs being taken of their children, as it could have a psychological impact in later years.

But Nelson and her father, art critic and professor Robert Nelson, defended the photo in a press conference outside their home in the southern city of Melbourne.

"I love the photo so much. I think that the picture my mum took of me had nothing to do with being abused, and I think nudity can be a part of art," Olympia Nelson said.

Rudd last week met with the leaders of Australia's six states and said he would forge a national child protection system following a spate of shocking cases of child neglect and abuse.

His government also criticised Australia's "binge drinking" culture and sharply lifted taxes on so-called "alcopops" blending alcoholic drinks like vodka or rum with soft drinks and juices, making them popular with young adults, especially women.

"We're sick of being unjustly targeted by a small minority group of wowsers," Australian Hotels Association chief executive Sally Fielke said, using an Australian term for an excessively puritanical person.

Fielke represents mainly the $25bn local alcohol industry, but her thoughts echoed those of many social commentators and liberals.

Martyn Jolly, the head of photography and media arts at the elite Australian National University, said of the latest art controversy that the Henson photographs had been reviewed and approved by government censors.

"We aren't going to let politicians who are always wanting to jump on populous bandwagons dictate what we can and can't show," Jolly said.

The Reasons Why You Should Never Use Tiger Airways

Student takes on Tiger Airways, and wins

Student turned away from Tiger Airways flight
Was told the flight had been overbooked
Complaint on Facebook attracted 50,000 likes

HELL hath no fury like an Australian university student scorned by a budget airline.

Nathaniel Martin took to Facebook to vent his frustrations after Tiger Airways bumped him from his flight from Hobart to Melbourne on Sunday, telling him it had been overbooked. Little did he expect his Facebook post to attract over 50,000 likes and grab the airline's attention.

"I went to board the plane and was informed that you had oversold my flight, and that I would have to be 'offloaded' and could not board the plane," Mr Martin's Facebook post to the airline read.

"The reason given was that 'I was the last to check in', even though I had booked the ticket a month in advance and was 15 minutes early to check in.

"The federal police officer of 20 years experience helping my family said it was the 'worst case of customer service he had ever seen' and the flight attendant told me to 'get them for every cent'."

With an 8am class in Melbourne the next morning, Mr Martin was forced to pay another $296 to get on a Jetstar flight later that night, leaving him nearly $500 out of pocket in total. For a university student earning $9000 a year, it was a substantial financial blow.

Luckily his parents came back to the airport and chipped in half of the fare.

"I am now two hours late, exhausted, $500 out of pocket and with no cash to get home from the airport for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING caused by YOUR INCOMPETENCE.

"Not only do I want a full refund of the $495.45, a full apology to me and my family for the unbelievable inconvenience you have caused and an assurance that you will never deliberately oversell a flight again. I am never flying with your airline ever again and will tell every living soul what you have done to me tonight."

The next day, after his Facebook post attracted 50,000 likes, he received a call from Tiger Airways who agreed to refund him the full fare and apologised.

After they had reached the agreement, Mr Martin deleted his original Facebook post.

"Tiger Airways have agreed to refund me the full fare of what happened last night including the other flight I had to pay for to get to Melbourne," he said in a Facebook post to Tiger Airways.

"They have been very good to me in responding to this quickly and rectifying their error."

Tiger Airways told news.com.au Mr Martin’s situation was a rare one.

"Overbooking of flights is common practice in the air travel industry here in Australia and world over – it’s a practice put in place by airlines (and other travel and tourism industries) to compensate for an average no show rate," a Tiger Airways spokesperson said.

"While issues in relation to this are extremely rare, we are very sorry to have inconvenienced one of our passengers recently. On review of the situation, we dealt directly with the passenger and resolved his specific situation.

"This is an isolated situation however Tiger does have policies and provisions in place to reaccommodate anyone who is affected by overbooking on the very rare occasion that it  occurs, including free of charge transfer to next available flight."

The Best of World War 2

Buff and Hal, dumbstruck after 72 years

Diggers reunite after 72 years
They were school friends in the 1930s that lost track of one another during WWII. Now at the age of 90, they've reunited thanks to a newspaper ad.

On March 3, 1941, two former high school mates travelled together to the Sydney Showground to enlist in the Second World War.

Harry ''Hal'' Wolters and Cecil ''Buff'' Creswick were told they needed written parental consent because they were under 21. They went to the nearby Captain Cook Hotel, spent two shillings and sixpence on a beer and forged each other's parents' signatures.

On April 1 they travelled again to Sydney and became separated, with neither knowing whether the other had been killed, injured or even survived the war.

On the 72nd anniversary of their separation, Mr Wolters, now 90, thought it might be nice to know how Mr Creswick, also 90, was doing.

On the Easter weekend he placed a small advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald's RSVP column. ''I just wanted to know if he [Mr Creswick] was still going,'' Mr Wolters said.

Mr Wolters has thought about his mate from Penrith High often over the intervening years.
World War II veteran Buff Creswick.

World War II veteran Buff Creswick.

''We parted in 1941 and we haven't been in contact since,'' he said.

Last week Mr Wolters was working, as he often does, in his shed when the phone rang.

''The voice said: 'It's Buff Creswick here.' I said, 'Holy, bloody hell.' I was just about dumbstruck.''

On Friday, Mr Creswick flew from Sydney to his old school mate's property at Kempsey, north of Port Macquarie.

The two nonagenarians , embraced, complimented each other on being alive and then, briefly, Mr Wolters was overwhelmed.

Then began the formidable task of catching up. Mrs Wolters had baked scones and sausage rolls and there were a few cold beers in the fridge.

As they chatted on the verandah, they discovered they almost got involved in the same unusual branch of the war effort. Mr Creswick, in the 2nd Infantry Battalion, was sent to Syria and Beirut but was among troops brought back to defend Australia.

He was then sent to the Kokoda Track fighting the Japanese in conditions he described as horrific. ''We started out with a strength of 697 fighting men and finished up left with 87. I was one of the lucky ones,'' he said.

But what finally took him away from the fighting was that he became severely ill after contracting malaria.

He was regarded as a useful experiment subject to help in the fight against malaria at the Medical Research Unit in Cairns.

Mr Wolters ended up at the same place, albeit at a different time. He also was enlisted as a guinea pig, but one they wanted to deliberately infect with the disease. He described his involvement in the war as ''five years of being buggerised around''.

''We were ready to go to the Middle East but when the Japanese came into the war they panicked and sent us to Western Australia. I got sick of the inactivity and one day they called for volunteers to partake in experiments to see what they could do about finding a cure for malaria.''

Mr Creswick said: ''I put my arm into a box of mosquitoes and they had to bite the buggery out of you.''

Mr Wolters said: ''I got mine through a blood transfusion. They put a tube into another man and then they put a tube into me and a nurse turned a little handle and the blood came out of the other bloke into me.

''It wasn't him [Creswick] because I would have been able to recognise him in those days.''

As they sat looking out at the property, they sipped the beer just as they did at the Captain Cook Hotel.

''We've got spare rooms and beds here,'' said Mr Wolters.

They are planning the next reunion. There's more to discuss.

The World's Best Father - Teach Son How To Sex

Brisbane dad charged over son's holiday sex

A Brisbane man has faced court after allowing his 13-year-old son to visit a prostitute during a family holiday to Thailand.

The 45-year-old father, who cannot be named, appeared before Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday on two charges related to child sex tourism offences.

The offences allegedly took place on the Thai resort island of Ko Samui in September last year.

The charges, which carry penalties of up to 20 years in jail, relate to Commonwealth laws designed to stop Australian pedophiles preying on foreign children.

This is believed to be the first time the laws have been used in such a way, the Courier-Mail reports.

The charges allege that the father caused a child under the age of 16 to engage in sexual intercourse outside Australia and that he procured a child to engage in sexual activity outside his place of residence.

He was also charged with assaulting his son on Brisbane's bayside in February last year.

How To Give Super Glue To Eyes

Super glue poured into man's eyes in dispute with housemate in Sebastopol

SUPER glue was poured into a man's eyes and an ear during an Easter Sunday argument with his housemate.

Police said the man, 64 and a woman, 58, became involved in a heated argument at a Sebastopol house on Sunday evening.

The woman allegedly tried to strangle the man before pouring super glue in his eyes and one ear, Sen-Sgt Paul Kinna said today.

Sgt Kinna said the woman is also accused of trying to set fire to the man and striking him with her prosthetic leg.

The man was taken to Ballarat Base Hospital, before being transferred to Melbourne's Eye and Ear Hospital in a stable condition.

The woman has been charged with three offences, including one count of reckless conduct endangering life.

Church For Sale

Moonee Ponds converted church sells for $2.4 million 

A converted church in Melbourne’s Moonee Ponds has sold for $2.4 million.

Located at 1 Hudson Street Moonee Ponds, the sale was secured by John Morello from Jellis Craig Kensington. The architecturally transformed Moonee Ponds church had an incredible 12,500 internet hits and 325 inspections.

So in anticipation of a huge auction day crowd, the agency organised a coffee cart with complimentary drinks.

There were more than 300 spectators and three bidders, with the offering sold just after auction.

Its listing was reported by Property Observer last month.

Designed by owner and architect duo Dominic and Marie Bagnato, the property has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a gym and a basement wine cellar.

The Gothic-style timber church was originally built by Tadgell Brothers following the general consensus at an 1890 resident’s meeting that the area needed a church for religious purposes and Sunday school.

The church was officially opened by then Lord Bishop of Melbourne Dr Goe.

The church acted as a venue for sports meetings, working bees and other social activities.

The church was part of the St Thomas parish, before leaving temporarily in 1915 and permanently in 1960.

In 1904, an extension to the church was built at the rear and in 1918 a vicarage was built nearby. A church hall was built in 1927.

The current vendors bought the church itself in 2007.

The Top Reasons You Should Never Go To Sydney - The Most Racist City in Australia

Tourists subjected to racist rant on Sydney bus 

Footage has emerged of a man hurling racist abuse at Asian tourists on a Sydney bus.

The incident comes just months after ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez was taunted in a similar situation.

The latest abuse was filmed on a 470 bus at Town Hall en route from Circular Quay to Lilyfield on Saturday.

It shows a Caucasian man screaming and swearing at tourists, who are believed to be Korean.

The man asks them why they came to Australia and yells about the Japanese bombing of Australia in World War II.

One of the passengers, a 30-year-old office worker of Chinese descent, decided to start filming the incident.

The woman, who wanted only to be known as Heidi, said she did not know what else to do.

She tried to intervene while it was happening, along with another male passenger, but says fellow passengers offered no help or support.

Transport authorities in Sydney are investigating and co-operating with police.

They say they will provide police with CCTV footage of the incident.

The Naked Reasons Why You Should Never Go To Australia - No Porn Inside

Australian Customs Officials Will Search Your Laptop For Porn

The Australian Sex Party—which is a trade group, not a fun Friday night—has risen up against new Australian customs rules that allow officials to search your personal electronics for pornography. Even Crocodile DunDD? Outrage!

When heading Down Under, travelers are required to fill out Incoming Passenger Cards that list what they're bringing into the country. For the last several months, those cards have included a "Pornography" category. If you don't check the box but have mature content on your laptop or phone, you're breaking the law. If you do check it, officials are going to go through your stash.

While measures to prevent illegal pornography from crossing borders make total sense, Australian customs officials are looking for any and all R18+ and N18+ material—even of the homemade variety. As ASP president Fiona Patten points out:

    "If you and your partner have filmed or photographed yourselves making love in an exotic destination or even taking a bath, you will have to answer 'Yes' to the question or you will be breaking the law."

The policy has been in place since last fall, and the fact that it's only just now gaining notoriety indicates that it hasn't created too much awkwardness. It's a terrible breach of privacy, though, and one that will hopefully be corrected now that the backlash is finally building.

But for now? Best to think twice about heading to the outback with a hard drive full of boobs.

Miss World's Nude Contest

The (naked) girls next door

Strippers (and sex workers) tend not to play to stereotype.

In April this year I had the pleasure of being on a panel at a feminist conference with Elena Jeffreys, the President of Scarlet Alliance, the Australian Sex Workers Association.

Elena is a compelling and articulate advocate for sex workers and their rights. She spoke passionately about the damage that some sections of the feminist movement were doing to sex workers’ struggle to ensure their voices were being taken seriously by politicians and policy makers. She made it very clear that sex workers were sick of being labelled as universal victims of patriarchy by feminist activists who had little appreciation of the diversity of the people who work in her industry and the discrimination they face.

She received rousing applause from hundreds of feminists of all generations. The idea that any woman who chooses to trade her body for sex - or dance naked for that matter - is a dupe of the patriarchy is now a middle class norm. And indeed class is the real elephant in the corner of much debate about porn, sex work and ‘raunch culture’.

Nice girls don pretty short tutus and show off their toned legs twirling in pink tights. Trashy girls swing around poles and bare their butts. Decent girls marry merchant bankers and give them good looking babies in exchange for houses in upmarket suburbs. Bad girls put a cash value on their bodies.

Best Undressed is a documentary that explores these nascent political issues in an understated and affectionate manner. It follows the young women competing for the title of Miss Nude Australia. Thankfully, the filmmakers resist the urge to truck in pro and con feminist ‘experts’ to put the girls under a microscope. As this documentary shows, the girls are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.

An early interview features two of them chatting and giggling when one explains she’s interested in forensic science. She pauses a beat, looks her interviewer in the eye and says: “Strippers can read”.

Pageant organiser John Monaghan briefs the girls on the judging criteria. He doesn't guild the lilly. “We are not judging for the biggest breasts, the longest legs nor are we judging for the tightest ass”. Apparently a natural look and healthy hair are also important. The bottom line, as he aptly puts it, is a $20,000 prize. For most of the contestants, that's a deposit on a house.

The girls are under no illusions about what they need to do to win. You start off with a carefully costumed dance sequence, teasingly remove your gear and end by giving the punters a few flashes of what they really came to see. In between the choreographed disrobing they give spectacular displays of gymnastics involving poles and hoops. It's top drawer athletics.

Some of them started very young. The delightfully frank Miss Nude Sydney, Trinity, takes the doco crew back to her small suburban home and shows them the verandah pole she began swinging around as a small child. Her mother confirms that the family always joked she'd be a pole dancer. While honest about her concerns for her daughter, she is loving and supportive.

Trinity is an incredible gymnast and delightfully straightforward about her exhibitionism. Funny, free-spirited and clearly tough-minded, she is excited about going to Adelaide for the contest. She's never been there. Suzie Q, Miss Nude NSW, is the most compelling of all the interviewees. She gives her interviews sans makeup and looks like the girl next door who's training for the state swimming carnival. Fit body, broad shoulders, sweet face and no bullshit. Of her colleagues she says: "[They] are just regular women...it doesnt mean they're not intelligent. It doesn't mean they don't have other options in their lives. The majority of them choose to do it ... it doesn't mean you can grab their ass, it doesn't mean they're going to have sex with you".

Miss Nude Tasmania is pragmatic about her talents : "Anyone can take their clothes off. But can you do it with a bit of style - a bit of class". She is sick to death of guys "who want to speak down to exotic dancers." She loves dancing but worries that her father will blame himself for getting a divorce if he knew she was a stripper. She tells a moving story about being asked to perform a dance for a dying 18-year-old boy in an intensive care unit. "I don't know if you've ever seen a mother who knows she's going to lose her son. I don't know if he'd ever seen a naked girl ... I took my glove off and I gave it to him ... I did the show and I lost it. It gutted me".

She got a message from the family thanking her.

I won't tell you who won the contest. Watch and see for yourself. For my money - and I'd definitely put dollar bills in the garter belts of all these girls - it's one of the best modestly budgeted documentaries SBS has to put air this year. Perhaps I'm biased - the girls remind me a lot of my grandmother. She worked as a barmaid in a very rough dockyard pub and there's something in these girls that reminds me of her - a knowingness about men, an ability to keep crowd control and a strong cheeky earthy sense of self.

Jurassic Park Australia

Palmer buys 100 'dinosaurs' from China

Clive Palmer has ordered more than 100 mechanical dinosaurs from China, slowly turning his dream of a jurassic park at his Coolum resort into a reality.

The billionaire has confirmed the order, with his latest dinosaur, a 20-metre long and 3.5-metre high Deinosuchus, due to arrive by the end of next month.

The early relative of the crocodile will be the third of a planned 165 dinosaurs to be added to the dinosaur park, which is scheduled to open later this year on the grounds of the Palmer Coolum Resort.

Mr Palmer said the next shipment would include a 1200 kilogram brachiosaurus and a 7 metre tall mamenchisaurus - both tall plant-eating reptiles.
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The animals, which will be displayed in the woodlands around the resort, will sway their tails, heave their chests and blink.

The park was started with a life-size T-rex which Mr Palmer dubbed Jeff, widely seen as a dig at Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney.

"The Deinosuchus, whose name translates as 'terrible crocodile', was one of the biggest prehistoric crocodiles that ever lived," the statement announcing the latest addition said.

"Apart from its sheer size, the Deinosuchus is very similar to today's crocodiles, illustrating how little evolution has taken place in the species over millions of years."

Mr Palmer made an application to the Sunshine Coast Council last year to turn part of the Coolum resort's golf course into a dinosaur park.

The move was labelled "tacky" by one councillor.

Exotic Digital Nomads

Exotic life for Aussie 'digital nomads'

For many people it’s the ultimate dream – ditching cubicle life for the freedom of the open road, without worrying about running out of money.

For a growing number of tech-savvy entrepreneurs, or ‘digital nomads’, making a decent living wherever there’s Wi-Fi has become a happy reality.

We speak to three enterprising types who have managed to create a work/life balance with a difference.

James Clark, website builder

Clark, who still calls Melbourne home when asked, describes himself as a “location independent entrepreneur”.

First bitten by the travel bug when he moved to the UK on a two-year working visa in 1999, Clark found his wanderlust impossible to shake. Luckily, it was around the time the internet started showing great promise.

“That’s when I kind of realised that I really loved the internet and I loved to travel and decided to put the two of them together,” says the now 41-year-old, speaking via Skype from Singapore.

After his UK visa expired, Clark moved to Dublin and vowed to set up a business that would let him continue his globetrotting life. Working temp jobs, he learnt web design at night.

In 2001, he began making travel websites and by 2003, his business, Urban Nomad, had become a full-time proposition.

For many years he lived half the year in St Kilda and spent the rest travelling, but has had no fixed address since 2010.

His main venture is based in Australia and offers web design, e-marketing and search engine optimisation. Clark says his work comes via word-of-mouth or his website, Nomadic Notes, which he created to boost his profile and document his adventures. That’s also led to perks such as a press trip to Jordan.

Clark gets some interesting reactions to his lifestyle.

“I went home once and I ran into a friend and they’re like ‘I heard you’ve become a bum’,” he says.

“It’s a business. I’m pretty sure I work more hours than half my friends.”

TIPS

    Do easier work in cafes, but save new projects for a quieter space such as your hotel room.
    Meet up with other digital nomads through forums such as the Dynamite Circle.

Jodi Ettenberg, food blogger

Canadian-born Ettenberg, 33, originally planned to take a year of leave from her job as a lawyer in New York to travel.

But somehow one year morphed into five, as her travel blog Legal Nomads gained a following and spun off into freelance writing and photography, a self-published book, speaking engagements and social media consulting.

“For the first two years I was working off my savings. I was on a blogger site and not on WordPress,” says Ettenberg.

Now her website gets about 150,000 page views a month.

She’s travelled to destinations including South America, Russia and Mongolia and is now spending four months eating and working in Ho Chi Minh City.

“There’s a fallacy that because I’m posting photos of soup all the time I must not be working at all,” she says. “I’m building a business that I’m really invested in and I’m really proud of.”

Ettenberg says she rarely gets lonely as she hangs out with other digital nomads, arranges meet-ups on the way and regularly returns home.

“I didn’t set out to be a digital nomad. I just kind of followed each rabbit hole,” she says.

“It’s not like I quit my job because I was disenchanted with the corporate world, but now I've left it, I've loved building something new.”

TIPS
Develop a routine to avoid sensory overload.
Use Evernote, WhatsApp, Skype and Boingo.

Colin Burns, web developer

Surviving on your nomadic wits as a single person is one thing, but what about doing it with two kids in tow?

Ask Burns and his wife Tracy, who left Brisbane with Noah, now 7, and Hayley, 5, in January 2010.

Burns had sold a web design business to another company, which he then worked for – but quickly realised he hated being an employee. The day after quitting he won $25,000 in web design contracts.

“That was kind of the catalyst. We realised we really didn’t have to be in Australia to do this kind of work,” says Burns, who wanted to spend more time with his young children.

“We just figured raising kids was difficult anyway, whether we were at home or travelling.”

Giving themselves six weeks to take off, the young family was hit for six when Tracy was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Three months later she was OK and they were away.

“That first year we did a fair bit of travel, backpacker-style travel,” says Burns.

Tracy home-schools the children while her husband does the back-end work for Australian websites.

Much of their time has been spent in Asia, where life is cheap and Wi-Fi is plentiful.

“You pretty much know that most places in Asia have Wi-Fi. Unless you’re on a tiny deserted island in Thailand you’re going to be fine,” says Burns.

In July, Burns and his family will ditch the backpacks indefinitely, as the children start school in Queenstown, New Zealand.

“We’re at that point now where I’ve had enough and the kids have had enough and Tracy’s had enough,” says Burns. “You can have too much of a good thing.”

Burns plans to continue his business from Queenstown and is also involved in a soon-to-be-launched New Zealand start-up Scrattch.com that aims to be a Pinterest for content.

Tips
Do something about which you’re passionate.
Set up your business for at least a year before taking it on the road.

The World's Most Romantic Island

A heart shaped makepeace island off Australias Sunshine Coast.

Sex With Pig

Charges laid over alleged sex with pig named Michael Jackson

A pig, similar to this one, was the subject of an alleged sex attack.

A MAN charged with having sex with a pet pig called Michael Jackson on a Northern Territory island has appeared in a Darwin court.

The 35-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sat in the dock at Darwin Magistrates Court charged with having sexual intercourse with an animal and indecent behaviour in public in November last year.

The NT News understands Michael Jackson had to be shot following the incident at Alyangula, on Groote Eylandt.

The court was told the man's mental health was a live issue, with his defence counsel asking for the charges to be dismissed.

But the case was adjourned until later this month for hearing.

Couple With Hundreds of Children

Couple helps children in need

WITH more than 1550 children in the Logan area in foster care, foster carers are calling out for more residents to take up the challenge and change a young person’s life.

Crestmead carers Janice and Bernie Cormick are among the 550 carers in the Logan area and have been foster carers for more than 25 years.

The couple decided to open up their home because they had room enough to share.

They have lost count of all the children who have lived with them, but said there would have been hundreds.

“When we first started out we had as many as eight children, sometimes 10, because carers were so scarce,” Mrs Cormick said.

Some children stayed for as little as two days, others are still living with the Cormicks more than 15 years later.

Mrs Cormick said being a carer was very rewarding, but not without its challenges.

“A lot of the little children have no social skills, no empathy and things like that,” she said.

“A lot of it can be neglect from parents or parents have been unable to provide for them.

“There are challenges but what happens is you have very good training. There is a buddy system, there are support groups.”

The Cormicks, both in their 70s, currently foster four boys aged 9,11,12 and 14 as well as having two of their long-term charges aged 20 and 21 who still live with them.

“Luckily, there’s no age limit, it goes on your health,” Mrs Cormick said.

“We just need more carers. We desperately need more indigenous carers because of cultural reasons, so the indigenous child doesn’t miss out on their culture.

“And we desperately need respite carers as well to give others a break.”

Mrs Cormick encouraged residents to consider becoming a foster carer.

“Anybody can do it. It’s just the understanding of children and being able to support them,” she said.

The Most Delayed Airport in Australia

Airline passenger take mid-flight bets as Brisbane Airport delays become commonplace

BRISBANE airport is so bad at on-time arrivals that passengers have started taking bets on how late they will be.

Businessman Stephen Morris, from Hendra, said most of his flights into Brisbane in recent months had been forced to circle the sky as they awaited a landing slot.

"Usually it is around the Gold Coast when the pilot announces the plane is going into a holding pattern," he said.

"We (passengers) then start taking bets on how long it will be."

Mr Morris warned that business travellers who returned from trips to Melbourne and Sydney "have no nice words to say about (landing in) Brisbane".

"In my experience, flights are always delayed up to 40 minutes to an hour returning to Brisbane, while a previous flight I was on was diverted to the Gold Coast to pick up fuel, which turned a trip from Sydney to Brisbane into a three-hour trip."

Mr Morris, who regularly flies twice a week, said the problem had reached such a level that he wrote a letter to the CEO and managing director of the Brisbane Airport Corporation, Julieanne Alroe, to make her understand his frustration.

"It is socially disruptive, a huge waste of resources, and has become a reputation issue for Brisbane," he said.

More than 2.5 million passengers have been caught up in flight delays at Brisbane Airport in the past year but the airport's owners claim it can handle hundreds of extra aircraft every day.

The Courier-Mail has learnt more than 500,000 passengers on Qantas flights alone have been inconvenienced by delays in being able to land, as the airport gains an interstate reputation for hold-ups.

The figures come as tension builds among passengers fed up with delays and the impasse over the much-needed parallel runway, the long-term solution to the gridlock that would damage the state's economy.

The Secret How To Avoid Traffic Fines

Mario Hili reported car stolen 21 times in 13 years to avoid traffic fines

A RETIREE avoided paying thousands of dollars in traffic camera fines by falsely reporting his car stolen 21 times in 13 years, a court heard.

Mario Hili, 64, did not lose one demerit point for his offending, which included speeding and going through red traffic lights as he also reported his car stolen at the time, the Geelong Advertiser reported.

Hili, a retired electrician, of North Geelong, pleaded guilty in Geelong Magistrates Court yesterday to seven counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception and three counts of making a false document.

Police Prosecutor Leading Sen-Constable Siobhan Daly said the defendant reported his car stolen to police on January 20, 2012.

"Police discovered it was the 21st time since 2000 that Hili had reported his car stolen," Sen-Constable Daly told the court, the Geelong Advertiser reported.

"Each time he would find it himself at various locations around Geelong and each report coincided with him having received a traffic infringement notice through the mail."

She said that on this occasion police fingerprinted Hili's car and found only his prints on the vehicle.

The prosecutor said that in August 2000, Hili reported his car had been stolen the previous December, which coincided with the date a traffic fine had been issued.

Sen-Constable Daly said similar incidents happened in December 2002, May 2003, July 2011 and November 2011.

Shane Balkin, for Hili, said his client had made some poor decisions.

"It was some sort of twisting of our system," Mr Balkin said.

"He got away with it the first time and the thing kept rolling along."

Mr Balkin asked the court to consider a financial penalty.

Magistrate Stephen Myall said Hili had taken advantage of a technique which enabled him to avoid his obligations.

Mr Myall said Hili had not only escaped paying the fines but also avoided losing any demerit points as a result of his prolonged and planned offending.

He took into account Hili's age, lack of priors and plea of guilty, before convicting and fining him $2500.

No order was made in regard to Hili's licence.