‘I traded the UK for a life in outback Australia’

7 hours ago Share Save Sarah Spina-Matthews BBC News, Cheshire Share Save

Emma Palmer Emma Palmer fell in love with her partner while working in a tiny Australian town

When Emma Palmer told her parents she had fallen in love with an Aussie bloke called Whippy while backpacking through the outback, they initially thought he was an ice-cream salesman. Nathan “Whippy” Griggs is actually a professional whip cracker, entertainer, Guinness World record holder and a local celebrity in Australia’s Northern Territory. After leaving her home village of Tattenhall, near Chester, for an adventure 9,000 miles (14,500km) away, Emma met Nathan in the tiny town of Mataranka, about 260 miles south of the capital Darwin. Six years later, with the couple expecting their first baby, Emma has permanently traded the green hills of Cheshire for the red dirt of the outback. “It’s still a bit bizarre,” she said. “I’m like ‘how did I end up here?'” Although she never expected to settle in a place where the year-round temperature hovers about 30C, and is an hour’s drive away from the nearest supermarket, the 27-year-old said she would not change a thing. “Back home [compared to] what it’s like living out here – it’s just so, so, so different,” Emma explained. “You just can’t even comprehend how different it is and how wonderful it is.”

Emma Palmer Emma and Nathan tour the country with Nathan’s show

Emma and Nathan are now among the 380 permanent residents of Mataranka, which also has a regular flow of tourists because of its natural thermal hot springs (except when they are closed because of crocodile sightings). Initially a tourist, Emma got a job at the local homestead. While working there, she met Nathan the whipcracker. His show involves cracking a stock whip to the tune of popular songs, and performing risky tricks involving fire and daring audience members. While he was a local celebrity – often getting mobbed at the homestead’s bar – Emma saw through his performer persona. She recalled: “I would spot him from a mile away and be like ‘look, it’s Nathan “Whippy” Griggs’ and all the tourists would turn around and be, like, ‘where?’. “I just thought it was really funny.” Nathan added: “She definitely wasn’t fangirling over me…”

What is whipcracking?

Although the practice is traditionally used to manage livestock, Nathan said he had always seen whipcracking as a form of art. “It’s nothing to do with cattle or what most people would expect,” he said. “It revolves around entertainment.” Originally from Western Australia, the 32-year-old said he got into whipcracking aged 14 after he saw someone do it for the first time while travelling through the state’s north with his family. He said: “I saw a bloke crack a whip and he let me have a go and showed me how to crack this stock whip and then after that I went out and bought a whip from a bloke up in Darwin. “I got hooked on the whipcracking and I just focused all my energy into doing that.”

Emma Palmer Nathan performs tricks, including with flaming whips

Before long, Nathan had two Guiness World Records under his belt to “boost his profile”, alongside his growing social media following. One is for cracking the longest whip, which he made himself to be 100.47m (328ft) long, while the other is for the most stock whip cracks in one minute – a whopping 359. “When I focus on something, I have to be the best at it,” Nathan explained.

Emma Palmer Emma and Nathan love their outdoor lifestyle

Australian state to ban iconic fish-shaped soy sauce bottles

The move builds on legislation passed in 2023 that banned supermarket carrier bags, plastic straws, drinks stirrers, cotton buds, and confetti, among other things.

“Each fish-shaped container is used for just seconds, yet remains in the environment for decades or centuries if littered,” Environment Minister and Deputy Premier for South Australia, Susan Close, said earlier this month.

The iconic containers have become a staple in many Asian restaurants and takeaways around the world, shops and businesses in South Australia will be banned from selling or distributing them from Monday.

An Australian state will ban fish-shaped soy sauce containers, as part of a wider ban on single-use plastics.

The South Australia government says it implemented the policy to “reduce pollution, cut carbon emissions and protect marine life”.

Although soy sauce containers are made of a recyclable plastic – polyethylene – their small size means they struggle to be processed by machines properly. This means they often don’t get recycled.

The ban from Monday covers any pre-filled 30ml soy sauce container that has a lid, cap or stopper.

But the fish-shaped soy sauce packets, invented by Teruo Watanabe in Japan in 1954, are perhaps the most recognisable.

They were first made of ceramic or glass before becoming plastic – and quickly became a popular way to squeeze soy sauce onto takeaway sushi.

People will still be able to have soy sauce with their sushi, as large soy sauce bottles and sachets are not affected by the ban.

Australian officials said that, without action, the annual flow of plastic into the ocean would triple by 2040 to 29 million tonnes per year.

A global comparison of plastics waste management placed Australia seventh among 25 nations for its overall efforts to control plastic pollution.

South Australia will become the first place in the world to ban soy sauce fish-shaped containers as part of a wider cutdown on single-use plastic.

From 1 September, the small dispensers often included in takeaway sushi meals will be phased out in the state.

The move is part of an update to previous environmental legislation from September 2023 that banned supermarket carrier bags, plastic straws, cutlery, drinks stirrers, cotton buds, and confetti, among other things.

The latest move will also cover non-compostable fruit and vegetable stickers and prepackaged cups and bowls for takeaway meals.

Fish-shaped sauce containers were invented in Japan in the 1950s and were first made of glass or ceramics before they were plastic.

According to experts, shoyu-tai, or soy sauce snappers, are often too small to be processed by recycling sorting machinery and often end up in landfill instead.

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A ban on single-use plastic plates and cutlery and certain types of polystyrene cups and containers has been in force in England since October 2023.

The government claims the legislation, which also introduced charges for plastic carrier bags, resulted in a drop in sales of 97%.

There have been similar moves in Scotland and Wales.

Drones join battle against eight-toothed beetle threatening forests

13 hours ago Share Save Esme Stallard and Justin Rowlatt Climate and science team Share Save

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

It is smaller than your fingernail, but this hairy beetle is one of the biggest single threats to the UK’s forests. The bark beetle has been the scourge of Europe, killing millions of spruce trees, yet the government thought it could halt its spread to the UK by checking imported wood products at ports. But this was not their entry route of choice – they were being carried on winds straight over the English Channel. Now, UK government scientists have been fighting back, with an unusual arsenal including sniffer dogs, drones and nuclear waste models. They claim the UK has eradicated the beetle from at risk areas in the east and south east. But climate change could make the job even harder in the future.

The spruce bark beetle, or Ips typographus, has been munching its way through the conifer trees of Europe for decades, leaving behind a trail of destruction. The beetles rear and feed their young under the bark of spruce trees in complex webs of interweaving tunnels called galleries. When trees are infested with a few thousand beetles they can cope, using resin to flush the beetles out. But for a stressed tree its natural defences are reduced and the beetles start to multiply. “Their populations can build to a point where they can overcome the tree defences – there are millions, billions of beetles,” explained Dr Max Blake, head of tree health at the UK government’s Forest Research. “There are so many the tree cannot deal with them, particularly when it is dry, they don’t have the resin pressure to flush the galleries.” Since the beetle took hold in Norway over a decade ago it has been able to wipe out 100 million cubic metres of spruce, according to Rothamsted Research.

‘Public enemy number one’

As Sitka spruce is the main tree used for timber in the UK, Dr Blake and his colleagues watched developments on continental Europe with some serious concern. “We have 725,000 hectares of spruce alone, if this beetle was allowed to get hold of that, the destructive potential means a vast amount of that is at risk,” said Andrea Deol at Forest Research. “We valued it – and it’s a partial valuation at £2.9bn per year in Great Britain.” There are more than 1,400 pests and diseases on the government’s plant health risk register, but Ips has been labelled “public enemy number one”. The number of those diseases has been accelerating, according to Nick Phillips at charity The Woodland Trust. “Predominantly, the reason for that is global trade, we’re importing wood products, trees for planting, which does sometimes bring ‘hitchhikers’ in terms of pests and disease,” he said. Forest Research had been working with border control for years to check such products for Ips, but in 2018 made a shocking discovery in a wood in Kent. “We found a breeding population that had been there for a few years,” explained Ms Deol. “Later we started to pick up larger volumes of beetles in [our] traps which seemed to suggest they were arriving by other means. All of the research we have done now has indicated they are being blown over from the continent on the wind,” she added.

Daegan Inward/Forestry Research The Ips beetle has left some spruce forests in Denmark and other European countries decimated

The team knew they had to act quickly and has been deploying a mixture of techniques that wouldn’t look out of place in a military operation. Drones are sent up to survey hundreds of hectares of forest, looking for signs of infestation from the sky – as the beetle takes hold, the upper canopy of the tree cannot be fed nutrients and water, and begins to die off. But next is the painstaking work of entomologists going on foot to inspect the trees themselves. “They are looking for a needle in a haystack, sometimes looking for single beetles – to get hold of the pioneer species before they are allowed to establish,” Andrea Deol said. In a single year her team have inspected 4,500 hectares of spruce on the public estate – just shy of 7,000 football pitches. Such physically-demanding work is difficult to sustain and the team has been looking for some assistance from the natural and tech world alike.

Tony Jolliffe/BBC Drones are able to survey large areas of forest detecting potentially infested areas for closer inspection

When the pioneer Spruce bark beetles find a suitable host tree they release pheromones – chemical signals to attract fellow beetles and establish a colony. But it is this strong smell, as well as the smell associated with their insect poo – frass – that makes them ideal to be found by sniffer dogs. Early trials so far have been successful. The dogs are particularly useful for inspecting large timber stacks which can be difficult to inspect visually. The team is also deploying cameras on their bug traps, which are now able to scan daily for the beetles and identify them in real time. “We have [created] our own algorithm to identify the insects. We have taken about 20,000 images of Ips, other beetles and debris, which have been formally identified by entomologists, and fed it into the model,” said Dr Blake. Some of the traps can be in difficult to access areas and previously had only been checked every week by entomologists working on the ground. The result of this work means that the UK has been confirmed as the first country to have eradicated Ips Typographus in its controlled areas, deemed to be at risk from infestation, and which covers the south east and east England. “What we are doing is having a positive impact and it is vital that we continue to maintain that effort, if we let our guard down we know we have got those incursion risks year on year,” said Ms Deol.

Tony Jolliffe/BBC Sniffer dogs are piloted to sniff out the spruce bark beetle at a test ground in the Alice Holt forest in Hampshire

And those risks are rising. Europe has seen populations of Ips increase as they take advantage of trees stressed by the changing climate. Europe is experiencing more extreme rainfall in winter and milder temperatures meaning there is less freezing, leaving the trees in waterlogged conditions. This coupled with drier summers leaves them stressed and susceptible to falling in stormy weather, and this is when Ips can take hold. With larger populations in Europe the risk of Ips colonies being carried to the UK goes up. The team at Forest Research has been working hard to accurately predict when these incursions may occur. “We have been doing modelling with colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the Met Office which have adapted a nuclear atmospheric dispersion model to Ips,” explained Dr Blake. “So, [the model] was originally used to look at nuclear fallout and where the winds take it, instead we are using the model to look at how far Ips goes.” Nick Phillips at The Woodland Trust is strongly supportive of the government’s work but worries about the loss of ancient woodland – the oldest and most biologically-rich areas of forest. Commercial spruce have long been planted next to such woods, and every time a tree hosting spruce beetle is found, it and neighbouring, sometimes ancient trees, have to be removed. “We really want the government to maintain as much of the trees as they can, particularly the ones that aren’t affected, and then also when the trees are removed, supporting landowners to take steps to restore what’s there,” he said. “So that they’re given grants, for example, to be able to recover the woodland sites.” The government has increased funding for woodlands in recent years but this has been focused on planting new trees. “If we only have funding and support for the first few years of a tree’s life, but not for those woodlands that are 100 or century years old, then we’re not going to be able to deliver nature recovery and capture carbon,” he said. Additional reporting Miho Tanaka

Related internet links Forest Research

South Australia will be the first place in the world to ban fish-shaped soy sauce dispensers.

They have been a familiar sight at takeaway sushi shops around the world for decades but it could be the beginning of the end for fish-shaped soy sauce dispensers.

South Australia will be the first place in the world to ban them under a wider ban on single-use plastics that comes into force on 1 September.

The device known as shoyu-tai (or soy-sauce snapper in Japanese) was invented in 1954 by Teruo Watanabe, the founder of Osaka-based company Asahi Sogyo, according to a report from Japan’s Radio Kansai.

It was then common for glass and ceramic containers to be used but the advent of cheap industrial plastics allowed the creation of a small polyethylene container in the shape of a fish, officially named the “Lunch Charm”.

The invention quickly spread around Japan and eventually worldwide, and it is estimated that billions have been produced.

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Under South Australia’s new law, only pre-filled soy sauce containers with a lid, cap or stopper and containing less than 30ml of soy sauce will be banned. Plastic sachets will be allowed but the government hopes bulk bottles or dispensers will be used in sushi shops instead.

The South Australian environment minister, Dr Susan Close, said each plastic fish container was used for just seconds but “their small size means they’re easily dropped, blown away, or washed into drains, making them a frequent component of beach and street litter”.

“They’re a ‘convenience packaging’ item that can be replaced with bulk or refillable condiment solutions or more manageable alternatives, meaning their elimination directly reduces the volume of single-use plastic entering the waste stream,” Close said.

Other single-use plastic items included in the ban are plastic cutlery and expanded polystyrene food packaging, such as pre-packed instant bowl noodles.

Dr Nina Wootton, a marine ecologist at the University of Adelaide, said plastic sushi fish are more damaging because they could be mistaken for food by marine life.

“If it hasn’t already been broken down into microplastics yet and it’s floating around in its whole form, then other organisms that eat fish that size could think it is a fish and then eat it,” Wootton said.

“Since they are quite a thick plastic, it does take quite a while for them to degrade.”

Cip Hamilton, a campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society , said banning single-use plastics was a good start but more needed to be done.

“Bans like these are an important small step towards reducing plastic pollution but it’s important that governments start to look at reducing and removing problematic plastics across the whole system,” Hamilton said.

“What our oceans really need is for state and federal governments to introduce strong laws that reduce plastic production and consumption and hold businesses accountable for the products they place on shelves, otherwise Australia’s marine life and coastlines will continue to suffer under mountains of plastic pollution”.