Hello my fiends.

Lately I've been doing some research for my second unit for my Uni, which is about my local area.

Also, I've been learning the Russian language on Saturdays.
After that, I go to Gem club where I learn about all kinds of rocks.

And ever last friday of ever month I go to Field Naturalists club, where we go out and learn about Animals and plants.

I have also joined some History groups.

See ya soon.

Hello my friends!

I'am back, and I'll first tell you why I hadn't posted for a while.
You see, I was busy doing a University unit.

But I'll tell you what I'm posting.
I'm posting about a lecture I went to last night.
The lecture was called, WHO KILLED THE MEGA FAUNA?

Now, it was at the Melbourne Museum, in the Discovery Center.
The man that hosted it was the same man that discovered the Gogo fish.
He talked about all of the rich Mega Fauna deposits all around Central Australia and around the Southen part of Australia .

He talked about MOUMOTH CAVE, and how whole caverns were filled with Mega Fauna bones.
He also talked about some of the animals that lived in that time.
One of them was a giant flightless bird that was bigger than the 3 meter tall emu that lived in that time.
The giant flightless bird was actually related to ducks, and was nick-named, THE GIANT DEMON DUCK OF DOOM. To see it's skull click HERE.
He also talked about one of my favourite meat-eaters of that time, THE MARSUPIAL LION.
Click HERE.
He then takled about THYLACOLEO cave.

THYLACOLEO cave is on the Nullarbor Plain.
The cave was found by some amateur cave explorers.
At first when they got the Paleontologist's out at the site, they were reluctant to show them because they had found a complete MARSUPIAL LION skeleton.

To cut a long story short, he said that as soon as we came along, the Mega Fauna started to die out, but one of the ideas was that they were dying out because of us, and also because the ice age was ending.

At the end I asked 2 questions, the first was,
  " Could the Mega Fauna have died out because we humans could have spread a disease amongst them?",
and his reply was,
"That's a very good question, and it is possible, but because we haven't been able to get DNA from the bones, we don't know if that happened or not."
I also asked ,
"Could they have died because the Mega Fauna had adapted too much to the Ice Age and couldn't survive in a warmer climate?"
And his reply was,
"From core samples we have from Antarctica the last Ice Age was quite slow and steady in it's decline so the Mega Fauna could have adapted."
I loved the lecture.

That's all from me for now, I'm signing off now.
See ya.

Once upon a time, there was a sheep dog that had been kidnapped.
The dog had been taken to the lip enlargement lab where they took the fat from your bum and put it inside your lips.

They did their strange operation and gave the dog back to its owner saying that they had found it walking along the road.

The next day the owner of the dog, noticed that the dog had lips.
But he thought that it was nothing, and took the dog out to round up the owners big, fat, smelly sheep.
As the dog went out there to round up the big, fat, smelly sheep, the dog started kissing the sheep into a tight ball in the paddock where they had to be rounded up.

When the owner saw this, he almost fell off his motor bike.

And now, years later, he's in a crazy house, where the dog comes in and kisses him an hour everyday.

Hello.

Today I'm going to do the history of Sorrento.

Sorrento is found 112 click's from Melbourne or 90 mins in a car.

Sorrento's founding father was not Lieutenant-Governor David Collins who established a convict Settlement to stop the French settling there, in 1803, at Sullivan Bay.
But the settlement only lasted 8 months because they couldn't find fresh water so they packed up in May 1804 and moved to Tasmania.

Then in 1872, George Selth Coppin made Sorrento into a real seaside town and he was the Founding Father of Sorrento.

But before the English settled the area, Bunurong people were living there, and had a Mr William Buckley, who was a convict who had gone bush, living with the Wathaurung people who lived close by.
Mr Buckley lived with the Wathaurung people for 32 years, and in that time, he forgot how to speak English.

While Mr Coppin was making Sorrento into a real seaside town, he made the Ocean Amphithearte Compny which was in real estate.
Coppin had a paddle steamer that tourists travelled on and a steam tram that went from the pier to the Back Beach.
All of the historic buildings and churches and the jetty were built under his supervision and seaside holiday homes, hotels, and sea baths were built.
Sorrento became a popular tourist resort because of the many things Coppin had built.

The population of Sorrento today is 1,500 and it's still a popular tourist spot.

Now, I'm going  to show you where Sorrento is on a map online HERE

Biblography-
http://www.heritageaustralia.com.au/search.php?state=VIC&region=68&view=299
http://39coppin.com/History/hist_1803.htm
http://www.carmelofsorrento.com.au/sorrento.html

Hello.
Today I'm going to talk about the first English settlement in Victoria.
But first I'm going to talk about the Gunditjmara people that lived in Portland before the English arrived.

The Gunditjmara people who lived in Portland farmed eels and fish, they created dams and wetlands so they could farm the eels and fish in, they also created channels to link the dams and wetlands together, and they even built stone huts in which they lived.

From the late 1820's to the early 1830's, whaling and sealing was a very popular job 'coz it paid well, but one of the best places to whale and seal was around the south of  Victoria.
There was also a big demand of land for farming and Settling.

So, in 1800 Lieutenant James Grant went to Portland to see what he could see and then he named it, and then in the early 1830's, a few Settler's settled in Portland.
They also had the main whaling industry with them, and they both helped make the whale and seal stations.
Along with the whaling and sealing industry, there was a family called the Henty's who were one of the first families to have grazing land and they were also one of the first families to have sheep and cattle to farm.
The explorer Thomas Mitchell found the Henty settlement with about 200 people living there, even though Victoria wasn't  supposed to be settled.

After the Bush Aliens were wiped out, everyone was partying.

But, there was one small thing everyone forgot, how did the Bush Aliens come back to life in the Middle Ages?

Deep in the forests of Australia, where no one has come out alive, the camp of the female Bush Aliens were doing a lucky dip, if there was "MALE" written on a piece of paper, the females would turn into a Male('coz all the males were fighting that war, and if all the males are gone, some of the females turn into a male), but if it said "FEMALE", then she would stay like that.

The partying stopped at one of the houses in the country town where the Bush Aliens had been wiped out, 'coz there was a panting at the door.
Then, crashing through the windows were Ten Bush Aliens.
The owner of the house used his gun on them, but it didn't work, 'coz the Bush Aliens can Evolve very quickly, so their hides had become as tough as steel.

Everyone tried to hide, but they were all eaten.
At the end of the night, no one was alive in that town.

"On the News tonight, a whole town has been wiped out by the Bush Aliens and all the neighbouring towns have been wiped out.
Police are saying that if they get into the city, it's game over, there will be no one left alive."

To be countinued...

Hello.

Last night I saw a show called TWO IN THE TOP END( if you want to learn more about it, then click the high-lighted words).

It's a really good show about two good mates, Tim Flannery and John Doyle, going around in the top end of Australia.
Last night they went to a town called Normanton (this link will tell you more about the town), and there was this great big, full-scale model of this Croc that was shot in 1957, and it was the size of a small car!
It was shot by a woman called Krys and that's what they called the croc.

They also went along a beach that had been turned to stone, and it looked like a normal beach!
When they got on their hands and knees, they got a big hunk of it out, and the sand turned out not to be sand, but millions of tiny crushed shells and normal shells.
The shells were cemented together by calcium from fresh water and sea water mixing with the sand.

They went to a place called Riversleigh and showed a fossil of a croc's skull that was in a rock. They said that the croc was thousands of years old and that it ate differently to salt water croc's today. The fossil croc would slice hunks of meat off it's prey instead of doing a death roll like they do today.

Hello.

I'm going to explain what a DONKEY VOTE is, and I'm also going to talk about a Tsunami that hit Sydney and also hit NZ in 1868.

But first I'm going to talk about what a DONKEY VOTE is, and no, it's not where a Donkey vote's for equal rights that we humans get.

The DONKEY VOTE  is when the Candidates are put down on the Ballot from say, A to D, without the voter taking time to put them in the order that they really want to vote for them.

Now I'm going to talk about the Tsunami that hit NZ and Sydney in 1868.
In August 1868, an Earthquake that was 9.0, went off on the Peru–Chile border and caused a lot of damage.
After the Earthquake went off, it caused a massive Tsunami that hit NZ.
It caused a lot of damage and death on the Chatham Islands and Banks Peninsula.
When it reached Newcastle it, " Moved ships as heavy as 1000 tons to and fro" now, that's got to be a big Tsunami!
It even caused waves 5 feet high!
It also moved those 1000 tone ships on to sandbanks and wharves!
Imagine that, seeing a 1000 tone ship thrown on to a wharf as if a two year old through it into a toy box or something!
It snapped the ferry ropes in Sydney and made the ferry spin around.
It just shows you what kind of power Mother Nature can have.
And in Wollongong Harbour, the water fell 4 feet, and passers by took advantage and started picking up the Lobsters that had been caught in the open!
Adelaide had huge waves, too.
Talk about a free feed, it just shows that it wasn't that bad after all.   

Hello.

Today I learnt a bit more about the history of Australian voting.

I found out that the old way of electing some one was called SHOW OF HANDS, and that to elect someone in this way, you had to raise your hand.
The down side was, other people would know who you voted for, and might not speak to you anymore if they didn't agree with you.

When the secret ballot came, people didn't know who you were voting for, but the thing is, the candidate that has the most votes sometimes doesn't have more then 50%.

Preferential voting was next, all you did was put down 1 to 4.
The candidate that you didn't like the most, you put 4 next to it, the one you did like the most, you put 1 next to.

And so that's what I learnt about voting today.

Yesterday we had an earthquake up at Hervey bay, in QLD and that was 2.7 on the magnitude scale.
We also had another two this year in September.
One of the others was on the 5th of September and it was up in Howes Valley in NSW, and it was 3.2.
The other one was on the 4th of September and it was up in Pyramid Hill, Vic, and that was 2.2.

See ya tomorrow.