Voice to Parliament explainer, how to rewild your nature strip, and bird crazy | Flodesk

Three Neat Things

ISSUE 029 | February 2023

I just read a heart-warming story about search and rescue dogs that have been deployed to assist in Turkey and Syria after the recent earthquakes. Dogs from Mexico, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Libya, Poland, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA have been sent over to help - the dogs are trained to sniff out humans and alert their handlers by barking and scratching at the ground where the smell is strongest.

A famous search and rescue dog called Frida, a yellow Labrador Retriever from Mexico, saved 12 lives and found 40 bodies during her career, before passing away after reaching old age. Dogs really are the best kind of people!

Click here if you have any spare money to donate to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, or you can also donate to the Red Cross appeal.

This year, all Australians will be asked if there should be constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

If you're looking for some education about what this all means, From the Heart has a great resource. It's a mini course where you'll discover what is meant by Indigenous Constitutional Recognition through a Voice, what a Voice to Parliament is/is not, and why a Referendum is required to make it happen. It will take about 15 minutes to go through, and is well worth it - I learnt a lot.

In Melbourne, more than a third of all public green space is nature strips (including roundabouts, medians and other green bits of the street). These small patches combine to make up 7% of all land use across the city - imagine what we can do with that!

This quick article tells you what the benefits are of planting on nature strips in Australia, and what to plant (and to avoid). The pic above is my uncle in Woodend, who has a massive edible garden on his nature strip and lets anyone help themselves - what a good neighbour!

The older I get, the more I like birds. I feel like I'm not alone, so you might like this book too.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a frustrated housewife sets out to see more bird species than anyone in history - and ends up risking her life again and again in the wildest places on earth.

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Station Street
Riddells Creek, VIC 3431, Australia