The Australia Letter is a weekly e-newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by electronic mail.This week’s problem is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter in Melbourne.
At The New York Instances, we name it “counterprogramming”: tales that will present a breath of contemporary air for readers exhausted by tales of hardship, peril and acrimony.
These tales come from Australia and New Zealand a bit extra usually than you may anticipate. The international locations, like wherever else, have their very own challenges, and we cowl these too. However one of many nice pleasures of masking this area, as my departing colleague Yan Zhuang wrote final week, is the capability to jot down about pleasure, magnificence and marvel.
Listed here are tales from the bureau that you just may need missed from the final 12 months.
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In March, tens of hundreds of vacationers descended on the tiny Western Australian town of Exmouth for a uncommon whole photo voltaic eclipse, one in every of only a few locations the place the spectacle was seen from land.
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Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, celebrated and commemorated the life of John Joseph, a Black American gold miner who was buried in 1858 and who helped forge Australian democracy.
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In central Australia, a customer discovered how Indigenous custodians and conservationists are working to protect an ancient land and its animal denizens.
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For the primary time in dwelling reminiscence, kiwi — New Zealand’s nationwide fowl — hatched eggs in the wild within the space round Wellington, because of a multiyear conservation effort.
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Melbourne, house to hundreds and hundreds of city bats, put in custom-designed showers to assist these foxy-faced creatures quiet down on dangerously sizzling days.
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Early within the yr, a Japanese vacationer who goes by Uni set off on an unbelievable journey, traveling more than 2,000 miles across Australia on a baby’s scooter. “I believed it could be a very good problem,” he instructed us. (He made it to his destination by June.)
The Australia Letter is taking its annual summer time break. We’ll be again in January. Within the meantime, benefit from the holidays — and don’t hesitate to send us your own examples of antipodean wonder.
Listed here are the week’s tales.
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