Would you get paid to act as a third passenger in a vehicle so the car could drive into a congestion-restricted area? How about signing up to pack people into crowded subway cars? Dress up as a zebra and walk the streets, preventing cars from running red lights?
Stuck in your cubicle? Dreading work tomorrow? Wish you could go out, have fun, spend money, not work and still get paid? Then you (and every other person in this world) want to trade places with Andrew Smith. His job is Chief Funster for New South Wales in Australia. As in his job is to have fun. Seriously.
Concrete pipes never looked so inviting. At the Prahran Hotel, a pub in Australia, stacks of pre-cast concrete tubes have been turned into cozy, wood-paneled booths for sharing a pint or two. From the outside, they look like kegs (get it?) or portholes—in any case, nothing remotely as dystopian as the phrase "concrete pipes" might evoke.
How’s this for a freaking view? The Pole House in Fairhaven, Australia towers 131 feet over a wooded hill. From this vantage point on solid ground it looks like some kind of crazy domestic hovercraft, but once you’re inside it’s all horizon all the time through the unobstructed floor-to-ceiling windows.
     |
It will come as no shock to anyone to hear that the world’s coral reefs are in a state of decline. A company in Austrailia called Catlin Seaview Survey is going around the world documenting coral reefs with a 360-degree panoramic SVII camera highlighting what reefs look like now compared to what they will look like in a few years.
What does this have to do with Google Maps Street View? Well, Catlin Seaview Survey is going to take its camera underwater along the coast in Australia from Manly to Bronte. From there they will team up with Google so we can all have a look under the water in Australia. They hope to use the images for scientific research as well as educating us about the beautiful underwater world that lives along their coastline.
What an amazing building this turned out to be, the new Abedian School of Architecture at Bond University in Queensland, Australia. Designed by London’s CRAB studio—led by Gavin Robotham and Sir Peter Cook, whose work you might know from Archigram—the 27,000 square-foot structure has just been completed and now faces the hard test of everyday use.
| |
It’s been almost ten years since the first and only time I ever talked to Architecture in Helsinki. I was writing for the college newspaper and trying too hard to look cool. But they didn’t have to try at all. "Why are you guys so fun?" I asked. "We’re from Australia," they replied.
| |
There’s a great, bloody shark war going on in Western Australia right now. After six deaths in two years—making Western Australia the deadliest place on earth for shark attacks—the state has ratcheted up its side of the war by deciding to kill sharks. Lots of ’em. Any shark within one kilometer of the beach will be trapped and shot according to their controversial cull strategy. Remember, humans can be a vengeful species.
| |
We’re going to Australia, everybody. You, me, your mother, my neighbor, your dog, the guy on the subway, the girl in the book store, everybody. Why? Because they’ve built the closest thing to a real life Jurassic Park there. Called Palmersaurus Dinosaur Park, it’s home to 160 animatronic dinosaurs that move, blink, roar and just look freaking awesome looking like dinosaurs.
| |
Oopsie. About a million liters of radioactive acid sludge accidentally poured out of a tank at the Ranger uranium mine in northern Australia. As if the spill itself weren’t bad enough, the mine is also located in the Kakadu National Park, where most of Crocodile Dundee was filmed. That place is a national treasure.
| |
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
