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Monday News Roundup: The Tromp Family Saga Comes to an End and a Female Duo Wins the Birdsville Cup

Here's a bunch of stuff that happened while you were ignoring the weekend news.

Tromp Family Found After Bizarre Family Road Trip

Mark Tromp, the father of the family whose frenzied interstate road trip mystified Australia last week, was found on the outskirts of Wangaratta on Saturday. Mark was the last member of the Tromp family missing after his wife Jacoba, and their three adult children—Riana (29), Mitchell (25), and Ella (22)—were all found last week, in various states of mental distress.

Police were first alerted to the Tromp family's disappearance when Riana and Ella walked into Goulburn police station on August 30 and reported their parents missing. However, for unknown reasons, the girls then split up—Riana was found later that day in the tray of a stranger's ute. "I asked her who she was and if she was alright," local Keith Whittaker told the Goulburn Post. "She did not know her name and had no idea where she was."

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Ella showed up on Tuesday evening at the family's berry farm in Silvan while police were searching the property. It emerged she had stolen a car at the Jenolan caves in New South Wales and driven all the way home. Mitchell Tromp had left the family before they arrived at the caves, catching trains all the way back to Melbourne, where he arrived on Wednesday. Their mother, Jacoba, was found wandering in Yass, NSW on Thursday. She was taken to the hospital in town and later transferred to a mental health unit where she was joined by Riana.

It's unknown why the Tromp family fled their farm last Monday, although reports have been circulating that they were suffering from shared paranoid delusions.

The Hume Dam at 40 perent capacity in 2007. Image by Flickr user Tim J Keegan.

The Climate Change Authority Calls Bullshit on Its Own Report

Two members of the Australian Climate Change Authority have accused their colleagues of designing a climate report to be politically viable, rather than an objective analysis.

Last week, the Climate Change Authority published a "special review" report to recommend "what action Australia should take to deliver on the commitments that flow from the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris conference held in late 2015."

The report plays it safe, using the Australian government's current emission reduction targets as its basis. Yet climate scientist David Karoly and economist Clive Hamilton say this isn't enough—and that the report is in fact "untrue and dangerous." They have issued a dissenting minority report that say instead of cutting emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2030 (that's the current target), Australia should create a carbon trading scheme and aim for 65 percent renewable electricity within the same timeframe.

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This morning, Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg denied that the government had influenced the original Climate Change Authority report.

AFL Women's All Star Game Pulls Massive TV Audience

On Saturday night, the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne faced off in an exhibition match which proved to be the most-watched game of the season. At its peak, 1.05 million people tuned into the game, which averaged 746,000 viewers Australia-wide—nearly half from Melbourne. Online, #AFLWomensGame began trending on Twitter. On the ground support was also strong: 6,365 people descended on Whitten Oval to watch the match.

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan admits the ratings were higher than executives had predicted. "It is thrilling for the AFL and our women players," he said in a statement. "The women provided a great taste of what's to come when the national league begins in 2017."

Women's sporting teams have historically struggled to attract sponsors because of the widely-held belief they're less popular than men's games—that means poorer training facilities and lower wages than their male counterparts. This match's impressive ratings have gone some ways to dispel that myth.

The inaugural national women's league will debut in February 2017 for eight-week season. Eight teams will compete—Adelaide, Brisbane Lions, Carlton, Collingwood, Fremantle, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs—with more to join in 2018.

Image by Flickr user Geoffrey Rhodes

A Female Jockey-Trainer Combination Seized the Birdsville Cup For the First Time Ever

The Birdsville Cup is an annual horse race held in central-western Queensland. On Sunday, a female duo won the race for the first time in 134 years—with jockey Kayla Cross beating nine other riders across the line on More Alpha, a horse trained by Heather Lehmann.

The race, which is usually held on a Saturday, had to be postponed to Sunday this year after rain turned the dirt track into sludge. However, it appears the bad weather didn't affect the Darwin-based jockey's performance across the 1600 metre Cup. The race, which raises money for the Royal Flying Doctor's Service, draws thousands of people to Birdsville, swelling the local population from 115 people to over 7,000.