BREAKING NEWS M5 traffic now: Sydney grinds to a halt after major incident
The M5 East Tunnel is currently closed citybound following a crane rollover inside the tunnel.
Citybound motorists are being diverted onto King Georges Rd off-ramp to use D5 detour.
Allow extra travel time as traffic is heavy.
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Daily Mail
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Joe Marler was a self-confessed 's***house' during his rugby heyday, now he could be using the dark arts in hit TV show The Traitors as he reveals his first summer plans post-retirement
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The Guardian
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Why one couple, two kids and 10 camels are trekking almost 6,000kms through the Australian outback
Instead of a dozen red roses, a bottle of bubbly or romantic poetry, Emily Parrott gave her husband a camel to celebrate their first Valentine's Day. 'When he met me, that's when he met camels,' she says of husband, Luke. 'He found his first two loves. 'As long as I don't ask which one comes first, then we don't have a problem.' Nearly 15 years after that fateful February, camels remain the centre of the Parrott family's world. The couple runs the Oakfield Ranch with Parrott's father at Anna Bay in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, hosting camel rides along the picturesque beaches of Port Stephens. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email They're gearing up to take 10 camels, including Foxy Lady, Polished Copper, Bronte, Barry and Jeffrey on a nearly 6,000km round-trip via South Australia to Queensland for the Desert Champions Way: Outback Camel Trail. Winding through the red dust to the Queensland outposts of Jundah, Birdsville, Bedourie, Boulia and Winton in July, the trail features camel races and rides, live music and markets at every stop. Parrott, who has been around camels since she was a baby and began racing at 14, can get the animals running up to 45km/h. It's a bumpy – or humpy – ride around the dirt track as jockeys skilfully hover above the saddles. 'They're not very nice to sit on at speed,' Parrott says. 'They're quite bouncy, so the less your bottom is in the saddle is probably more comfortable.' Apart from the rollicking races, the trail is a celebration of the outback spirit and pays tribute to the history of cameleers. Camels were brought to Australia from Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent during the gold rushes, when they were used to transport goods across the arid inland. Cameleers established their own transport and import businesses until cars were introduced in the 1920s. Many of the animals were then released into the wild. An eccentric 'globetrotter' named HD Constantinou spent nine years walking with camels and a cameleer from Sydney to Perth in the 1930s, wearing through 50 pairs of boots. 'He stated he had walked every inch of the way across from Sydney, the camels … carrying his baggage,' Brisbane's Telegraph newspaper reported in 1939. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Parrott feels an affinity with the creatures, a passion passed down by her father who bought 20 camels to establish his business. 'Animals don't get enough recognition for the amount of effort they've put in for humanity,' she says. 'Donkeys and camels are a huge part of Australia's history. 'They were brought over here to build Australia up.' Her 10-year-old daughter, Abby, who will accompany her parents on the outback trail with her six-year-old brother, Cooper, has observed the deep connection between her mum and the herd. 'About six months ago she said, 'Mum, when do I get my special power?'. 'I said, 'what do you mean?', and she said, 'your special power, how you know what animals are thinking'.' The Desert Champions Way: Outback Camel Trail kicks off with the Jundah camel races on 5 July and ends in Winton on 26 July.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
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From Gaza to Parramatta: students fleeing global conflicts follow pathway to Australian university
Weeks after 7 October 2023, Hala Alsammak stood at the site of her once bustling university in Gaza. Al-Azhar university had been reduced to rubble. Alsammak had begun studying there after graduating from the Holy Family School in 2022, where her father had taught biology for more than two decades. After the Hamas attack on Israel, and the Israeli invasion of Gaza, the school became a place of shelter for hundreds of displaced people. Then, in July last year, it was bombed, killing four. 'When the war came, everything stopped,' Alsammak says. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'There's something called a green area – related to government or educational places like universities.' She says in previous conflicts, Israel didn't target them. 'But from the first week [after 7 October], they started bombing all the public facilities,' she says. Two years on, she's found herself reconnecting with former high school classmates in a place they had never expected to visit: Sydney. Western Sydney University (WSU) established a program for people fleeing conflict last year in response to global conflict in Palestine, Lebanon and Ukraine. Now 20, Alsammak didn't even know her friends Tala Hakoura, 20, and Hala Idrees, 18, were living in Australia until they found themselves in the same English class at WSU. 'I said 'Hala, what are you doing here!'' Hakoura – who was taught by Alsammak's father back in Gaza – laughs. The trio are among 35 Palestinian refugees who have joined the program, which offers a direct pathway to undergraduate degrees. A number of Australian universities including Flinders, the Australian Catholic University and Queensland University have established scholarships or doubled their efforts to support refugees following the war in Gaza. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory estimated earlier this month that more than 90% of the school and university buildings in Gaza have been destroyed and more than 658,000 children in Gaza have had no schooling for 20 months. A few months after the conflict began, Alsammak was among those required to evacuate. 'For us, and all the wars before us, my dad would say, 'we want to die together and in our home, to die in the same place together',' Alsammak says. 'The decision to evacuate our home was the most difficult decision in our whole lives. 'We didn't take anything, we were thinking we will come back, and two weeks after that, [the Israel Defense Forces] destroyed the whole area … and when you leave, you aren't able to go and look back.' Alsammak arrived in Australia with her parents and sisters a year ago, after seven months in limbo in Egypt. 'We didn't know anything,' she says. We didn't know the shops around us, the transport, we had to figure it all out alone. Then every time I went to universities [in Australia] they told me 'no, we can't help you'.' She says the call to WSU was her 'last chance'. Alsammak and her peers will complete their English course next week, paving the way to begin undergraduate degrees in July. It's been a particularly hard road for Idrees, whose year 12 studies were cut short by the war. She somehow managed to complete her education online from the West Bank after her school was bombed. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'I was the only one studying, completely alone,' she says. After arriving in Australia six months ago, she was referred to the WSU program on a community WhatsApp group, and encouraged by her family to apply. It's a similar story for Hakoura, who has been in Australia for a year without her mother and 17-year-old sister, who remain in Gaza. She says two years without studying has fractured her ability to focus. So, too, has watching and waiting for the war to end. 'Even now, I find it hard to study for an hour,' she says. 'But I promised my mum and sister – 'I'll make you proud of me, and I will study my best to get high marks'.' The vice-chancellor of WSU, Prof George Williams, says for many of his students, the war in Gaza is very personal. There have been pro-Palestine protests at the campus, like others that have spread across Australia's universities. 'There's been very high levels of distress, many have lost family members and loved ones,' Williams says. 'We felt we had to do more. The local community was telling us 'what can you do?', and we responded … because you have to give people hope and a sense you can make a difference. 'You can't change geopolitics but you can give people an education.' WSU educates 170 different ethnic groups. Two in three of its students are the first in their family to go to university, and half speaka language other than English at home. On Wednesday, WSU ranked first in the world in the Times Higher Education community impact rankings, which measures social and global impact – including addressing inequity – for the fourth year running. Next semester, Idrees wants to study medical science and eventually become a doctor. Hakoura is considering business or occupational therapy. Alsammak wants to do music therapy or psychology, after her experience working with children caught up in the conflict in Gaza. 'For me, I always come back and tell myself, Hala, if anyone came to you [before the war] and said 'you will be in Australia in two years' I wouldn't believe that,' she says. 'No, everything can be possible in this life.'
