Southern highlands whats on

The average cost of buying a house in Australia climbed to $660,583 this year, but picture postcard towns across Europe offer villas, views and incredible value for a fraction of the cost. Split level villas in Greece and stone walled cottages in Portugal could be yours for as little as $24,300, while a timber frame four-storey home on a German hillside will set you back just $35,600 - furniture included. A fully furnished luxury duplex in the heart of a Bulgarian tourist resort is on the market for $59,200, with an outdoor pool, restaurant and children's playground downstairs. Three-bedroom townhouses with terracotta roofs in the Italian mountains are going for the symbolic sum of $1.62, but there's a catch. This one-of-a-kind timber frame house with stunning mountain views in a picturesque village in central Germany can be yours for $35,660 - furniture included THE $35,600 HILLTOP HIDEAWAY - CENTRAL GERMANY The average cost of a home in every Australian state Sydney, New South … [Read more...] about What $60,000 will buy you around the world: From a countryside cottage in Portugal to a historic townhouse in central Italy these are the best (and most affordable) homes overseas

Trekking through damp woodlands in the Scottish Highlands, I pause and look down at my feet. On a thread-like deer trail on a steep hillside, animal footprints have been pressed into a hollow of mud. I reach into my backpack and take out a battered field guide. I identify the imprints as those of a pine marten; an elusive UK carnivore that I’m told is partial to eating small rodents, eggs, insects… and peanut butter if there are generous humans around. With luck, I may see the trackmaker itself. I tread quietly onward through the forest. For palaeontologists, identifying the makers of a fossil footprint is not so simple. There are no handy laminated field guides matching dinosaur species to their tracks, or ancient insects to their burrows. The only way to link a fossil animal directly to its imprints is to find it, literally, dead in its tracks. The term fossil footprint may seem like a misnomer. The word fossil is more commonly applied to the mineralised bones or tissues … [Read more...] about Walking in the footsteps of giants and gerbils: what fossil prints can tell us

Benh Zeitlin's debut feature is part film, part hallucination: a ripe and gamey piece of what you might call Apocalyptic Southern Gothic, ambitious and flawed but sprinting with energy. It's set at the time of the Katrina catastrophe – though it could as well be happening hundreds of years in the future, when much-prophecied climate calamities have come to pass. At other times it looks like some sort of modern-dress re-enactment of the distant biblical flood. The setting is a fictional bayou territory, partly modelled on the real Isle de Jean Charles in southern Louisiana, the kind of place where, in another, more heartless type of movie, yuppies might ask for directions or gasoline from sinister locals inscrutably playing a mean banjo on their crumbling porch. This place is an eerily beautiful wetland called The Bathtub, because of the semi-permanent flood risk. It exists below the levee wall, indicating not merely that risk, but some suspension of the rules. The … [Read more...] about Beasts of the Southern Wild – review

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, is to cut short a trip to Moscow having declared martial law in the south of his country. Duterte was at the beginning of a five-day trip to Russia and was due to meet his “favourite hero”, President Vladimir Putin, on Thursday. The visit was part of an attempt to reorient his country’s geopolitical alliance further away from the US and towards Moscow. But after he declared martial law on Tuesday evening following a shootout between government troops and militants in the southern city of Marawi, presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said Duterte was needed at home. The meeting with Putin has reportedly been brought forward to Tuesday evening, to allow for his urgent return to Manila. Duterte has lambasted the US since he came to power last year, calling Barack Obama a “son of a bitch”, and has said Russia and China are the only two major world powers he trusts. “I’ve realigned myself in your … [Read more...] about Duterte cuts short trip to Russia after declaring martial law in southern Philippines

Nessie fever has taken hold after the legendary Loch Ness Monster was reportedly sighted twice in five days. A woman from Manchester claims she spotted and snapped the beast on February 23, then Irish tourist said he caught an image of the monster on the Loch’s official webcam. Both are convinced that what they saw was the elusive creature, said to dwell in the deepest, darkest depths of the Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands. The mysterious images showing a dark shape in the water have reignited public fascination for the fabled water beast. But today the world’s two most famous Nessie hunters warned people not to get carried away - claiming the monster DOESN'T exist and the sightings are no more than a figment of people's imaginations. Naturalist Adrian Shine has led the Loch Ness Project since 1973 when he began searching for the monster after constructing a manned observation chamber called Machan. Self-styled Nessie hunter Steve Feltham was convinced he would catch … [Read more...] about Loch Ness Monster experts reveal what’s really in the water after two new sightings