Welcome our first weekly review of weird news from the Northern Territory, the place where all our favourite fucked up news stories come from.
This week was a good week for the NT. Crocodiles have been turning up in houses and golf courses, but so far no human bodies have turned up in crocodiles (that was last week).
Videos by VICE
In lieu of grisly crocodile attacks, the Greens began pushing for more death in a bill that aims to reintroduce voluntary euthanasia, which was overturned in the Territory 15 years ago. Also, bans on goodies were handed out left, right and centre: Stuart Park Primary has clamped down on Christmas lollies and the Senate passed a bill ordering for the mandatory introduction of the rough-on-the-nose Opal fuel to discourage petrol sniffing.
Here’s the rest of our highlights.
– Car salesman Milo Wild was sentenced for whipping out his dick, pissing in his hands and hurling the piss at park rangers in family-friendly Buley Rockhole on ANZAC Day this year. Lest we forget, the guy also chucked rubbish about, toppled four portable toilets and even tried to hug a ranger with his pissy hands. This is the second time Wild has offended on ANZAC Day.
Defence lawyer Georgia McMaster argued that there was no malicious intent in Wild’s pink pistol salute to Australia’s fallen soldiers. Still, Magistrate Daynor Trigg handed Wild a suspended three-month jail sentence and ordered 120 hours of community service. The final word? He’s “an absolute yobbo,” said the magistrate.
– A man found with 110 grams of ice and a .22 calibre sawn-off semi-automatic rifle in his car was let off after Alice Springs Supreme Court Justice Stephen Southwood concluded he had “sensible plans for his future”. The guy, who had been locked up since April, had his sentence backdated, reduced and suspended amid claims that the ice was just for personal use. “Sensible plans for his future” ostensibly include leaving the rifle safety on while banging premium shard.
– A car was stolen and sold illegally at auction in Alice Springs. The culprit? The Alice Springs Town Council. According to the Northern Territory Ombudsman’s recently released annual report, the council impounded the car the day it was stolen, told neither the owner nor the police about it and then flipped it for an easy $100.
– Hermione Quinn Penning received a rubbish welcome into this world after being born on the entrance road to a garbage tip. Mother Kelly had little choice when Hermione’s head began gophering out of her, and was forced to make an impromptu, unauthorised tip at the dump. Father Travis is looking forward to rubbing it in Hermione’s face as soon as she’s conscious. “At least for her 21st we’ll be able to say, ‘We can always take you back to the tip’,” he said.
– The Alice Springs Hospital is trialing the use of trained-up physiotherapists in the emergency department, because fuck health. It will be interesting to see whether they’ll be able to massage a severed limb back on.
– The Northern Territorian sport of lobbing rocks at passing traffic has claimed two victims in two separate incidences this week, with injuries sustained by radio personality Bruce Davenport and a bus driver. We don’t know the exact rules of the game, but we’re sure these rock lobbers received fewer points than the rock lobbers who managed to shatter an ambulance windscreen last year.