Parks and wildlife rangers have begun evacuating holidaymakers from Fraser Island as an intense low pressure system packing gale-force winds headed for the popular tourist destination north of Queensland's Sunshine Coast.There's a good chance that both 'cyclones' will blow themselves out before they do any real damage. Or not. It's always disturbing to hear meteorologists on TV saying stuff like "We don't really know what's going to happen." And of course they don't.
As the volatile system headed slowly south, threatening to bring huge waves and high winds to much of the Queensland coast, the Bureau of Meteorology said there was a significant risk of a severe tropical cyclone developing on the other side of the country, off Western Australia's northwest coast.
Attorney General Robert McClelland all but begged the media to go easy on Hicks :"I had hoped to be able to speak to the media but I am just not strong enough at the moment, it's as simple as that. I am sorry for that.
"So for now, I will limit what I have to say - I will say more at a later time.
"I would ask the media and the public understand and respect this.
"Right now I am looking forward to some quiet time with my wonderful Dad, my family and friends.
"I ask that you respect my privacy as I will need time to readjust to society and to obtain medical care for the consequences of five and a half years at Guantanamo Bay.
"I have been told that my readjustment will be a slow process and should involve a gentle transition away from the media spotlight."
"Mr Hicks is now entitled to start rebuilding his life."
"I urge the media and members of the public to respect Mr Hick's privacy."
West Australian mining entrepreneur Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest yesterday emerged as the richest man in Australia by a clear margin, having seen the shares in his recently restructured Fortescue Metals Group jump 17 per cent or $1.27 a share to $8.47 after reaching as high as $8.75.If Coca Cola can make hundreds of millions of dollars in Australia selling us our own spring water at prices more expensive than petrol, then why shouldn't a super-smart ex-jackeroo turn a few billion mining nothing?
He owns 1.023 billion shares in the company, which - as its critics like to point out - is yet to ship a tonne of iron ore.
The price jump puts his personal worth at about $8.66 billion. His nearest rivals in Australia are gambling and media tycoon James Packer, whose wealth was estimated mid-year by the BRW Rich List at $7.25 billion, and shopping centre magnate Frank Lowy.
There's a real possibility that people in the future, especially those on the right, will look back on the Howard years as we now view the Fraser ones: as a time of wasted opportunity.
The main achievement of both men was to bed down the reforms of their predecessor, in Malcolm Fraser's case Gough Whitlam's social policies, such as multiculturalism and changes to divorce law; in John Howard's case Bob Hawke's economic reforms.
The main claim made for the government is that it managed the economy well for 11 years, but the notion on which this is based, that governments these days actually do run the economy, is largely false. One reason it's false is that the Howard government gave the Reserve Bank more independence: it deserves credit for this, but the action further reduced the extent to which government can be said to "manage" the economy.
The main influences on the economy are various national and international trends, plus the hard work and ingenuity of the Australian people.
The Howard government deserves little credit for these.
Duffy then details how Howard failed to deliver on a number of nation-changing reforms, including the Aboriginal intervention, until it was all but too late...
They got played all right. Howard told them exactly what they wanted to hear, and the reaction from the committed-Liberals media was like that of a cult hearing from their leader about how he was going to lead them to paradise. Yet again.Howard was able to get away with all this partly because we were in a boom where there was little demand for reform, and partly because the intellectual right did not criticise him sufficiently. Conservative and liberal commentators, think tanks and magazines got too close to the government and generally allowed the agenda of public debate to be set by politicians, rather than themselves.
In contrast, conservative governments in other countries receive more vigorous and wide-ranging comment and criticism from friends outside their ranks - just as Labor does in Australia.
Howard attended conservative and liberal functions and told those there how important they were. His attendance was most useful for fund-raising, but in the longer term I suspect he played the conservative movement for suckers.
Would you be pushing it to get emergency services to airlift out the annoying uncle who's threatening to drain your Christmas week beer supply by Boxing Day?Residents in the north-west NSW town of Coonamble are preparing for a tense Christmas Day, with the rural centre set to be cut off by waters from the flooded Castlereagh River.
With more than 200mm of rain falling in the area in the past few days - more than Coonamble's entire three-month average - the State Emergency Services predict that 5.2-metre flood waters will reach the town by 9pm.
Several thousand people could be isolated for up to a week as waters continue rising, with flood waters already destroying fences and killing stock.
...at least 20 rural properties on the outskirts of the town have already been cut off due to the flooding, and at least 50 more are bracing themselves for up to a week without contact with the outside world.
"As the flood moves downstream, more of these rural properties will become isolated," a spokesman for the State Emergency Services, David Webber, said.
"They are used to experiencing these kinds of events and they are all well stocked up with supplies. At this stage no one has requested supply and we have not had any emergency call outs."
More than $1 million was spent researching the effectiveness of the ads with the Open Mind Research Group.The final tally for the advertising and marketing alone on WorkChoices could hit more than $50-$60 million.
And $12.6 million was spent buying advertising space for “welfare to work, support the system and workplace relations system campaigns”.
Dewey and Horton was paid $44,404.25 to take photos for Work Choices advertising while advertising agency Whybin/TBWA received $1.4 million for “creative services” that were part of the Work Choices campaign.
I hope and expect at this stage to be back in a few weeks - perhaps around Australia Day. I toyed with the idea of keeping the blog going during my holidays, but my wife gotWuss.angrycross (wife’s edit) and I think I probably need the break, to be honest. I need to look around me for a while, read a bit more, draw breath and recalculate perspective.
"Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."Or this one from Murdoch where he explains how he will use his vast global media empire to inflict psychological warfare on the public and make them believe climate change is a dangerous reality :
"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.
"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.
"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.
"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will be able to force content providers to take down offensive material and issue notices for live content to be stopped and links to the content deleted.
But ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said adults will not be affected by the new laws.
Of course not. Not yet, anyway.
"In developing these new content rules, ACMA was guided by its disposition to allow adults to continue to read, hear and see what they want, while protecting children from exposure to inappropriate content, regardless of the delivery mechanism," Mr Chapman said in a statement.
Providers of live services, such as chatrooms, must have their service professionally assessed to determine whether its "likely content" should be restricted.
And what if you are a one man chatroom operator who can't afford what is likely to be very expensive "professional assessment"? You won't allowed to operate your business online.
Personal emails and other private communications would be excluded from the new laws and so would news or current affairs services.Is that all news and current affairs services, or just the ones approved by the government censor?
Dear family I spent around three months in a muslim military training camp in the mountains.I learnt about weapons such as ballistic missiles, surface to surface and shoulder fired missiles, anti aircraft and anti-tank rockets, rapid fire heavy and light machine guns, pistols, AK47s, mines and explosives. After three months everybody leaves capable and war-ready being able to use all of these weapons capably and responsibly.
There is a very heavy war in the north (of Afghanistan) I have arranged to go to the front. Slowly I am becoming a well trained and practical soldier. As a muslim we believe in destiny that when it is my time then so be it. If it is my time that is called martyrdom I will always fight for Islam.
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There is one thing I wish to explain about jihad the non-believers, Jews and Americans in the western world are determined to prevent it to come back again. Jihad is still valid today and will be for all time. The West is full of poison. The western society is controlled by the Jews with music, TV, houses, cars, free sex takes Muslims away from the true Islam keeps Islam week and in the third world.
Real jihad is possible just like before in the Prophets day where martyrs die with a smile on their faces and their bodies stay smelling of beautiful perfume for weeks after death.
The West lives in the dark in a narrow sort of living. Allah will use his servants to punish non-believers in this world.
As a Muslim young and fit my responsibility is to protect my brothers from aggressive non-believers and not let them destroy it.
One reward I get in being martyred I get to take ten members of my family to heaven who were destined for hell
But first I also must be martyred. We are all going to die one day so why not be martyred?
The only true Muslims are those fighting.
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The Western World has mastered the art of propaganda global ignorance stresses me at times.
The Muslim world is ready for war but not the governments...It is exciting and promising but it is not the answer. The other governments are worried about losing their luxurious lifestyles and wont take serious action.
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I have told you about the non-Muslims they send a lot of spies here especially to Osama Bin Ladens Arab organisation which is where I am.
I have met Osama bin Laden about 20 times he is a lovely brother the only reason the West call him the most wanted terrorist is because he got the money to take action.
In charting a course back to government, the Coalition leadership needs to...learn the lessons of recent history. They will not win power by fighting the centralist Rudd Government from the rigid Right, any more than the Labour Party in Britain was going to beat the Thatcher/Major Conservatives fighting from the rigid Left.
Rather than trapping itself in a time warp, the Opposition's job is to exploit the weaknesses in the Rudd Government's IR policies. Later in the election cycle, when the impact of the Government's changes are clearer, the Coalition should refine andrebadge its alternative and sell it positively as the way of the future.
Just as the genesis of New Labour's victory in Britain was the pragmatic dumping of sacred "white elephants" such as socialism and nationalisation of the means of production, Australia's Coalition needs to review some of its positions. Welfare reform is now long-standing and was central to theHawke/Keating governments as well as to the Coalition. It is no coincidence that single mothers were heavily over-represented in eight of the 10 seats in which the Coalition suffered its heaviest losses. This suggests that too many felt antagonised at being forced off welfare and into the workforce.
To be competitive, the Coalition must learn how to soften its sales pitch, using more encouragement and less of the big stick. And while the culture wars are of no interest to many in marginal seats, the Coalition could make ground by focusing on issues such as what is taught at school.
So the advice is : keep sticking it to single mothers and the poor, but don't be so obvious about it. You've got to find yourself some new punching bags, preferably ones that don't have a lot of voting power.
Translation : The Liberals should stop basing their policies on the hysterical opinions of Andrew Bolt and Piers Akerman (eg - Global Warming is an evil Green conspiracy), and realise that all the bitterness hacked up from their religiously committed commenters only represent the nuttier fringes of conservative Australia.Labor campaigned cleverly on interest rates and petrol and grocery prices, which are largely beyond the control of any government.
But if the Rudd Government fails to meet voters' expectations in a worsening economic climate, the Coalition could argue that they were indeed more competent at steering Australia through challenging times, such as the Asian economic crisis.
In 1996, John Howard won by promising not a conservative revolution but to govern "for all of us" and to make Australians feel "relaxed and comfortable". He wooed the battlers by lifting their aspirations, just as Kevin Rudd did 11 years later. Such a strategy should also mean uniting disparate groups in the national interest, rather than playing the politics of division.
While playing the competing interests of one group off against another can appeal to particular constituencies in the short term, punters wise up over time and tend to reject such cynical politics.Punters know that self-appointed extremist spokespeople-provocateurs for Australian conservatives, like Bolt (who regards Pinochet as a hero), are crazier than a burning cat dumped dumped into a bucket of ice water.
In its new role, the Coalition should understand why fighting on the fringes is no place for an alternative government.Translation : The so-called 'Culture Wars' are a mind-numbingly tedious bust for most Australians, those that have actually heard of them, and nobody reads Quadrant, but the few that do are hardly representative of the Australian people as a whole, or even a broad slice of Australian conservatives.
He served in Afghanistan for just six weeks, but it was enough time to see things that would haunt Andrew Paljakka long after his tour of duty ended.
He told of having witnessed an atrocity with a civilian victim, and of having to listen to the sounds of a man he had shot slowly dying.
After Captain Paljakka, 27, returned to Australia last year, he began drinking heavily and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and severe depression. In February he was admitted to a private hospital, but discharged himself.
On February 26 he was found hanging from a bootlace in a cupboard in a Kings Cross hotel room. He left a young widow.
Captain Paljakka was the youngest army recruit ever to graduate as an officer from Duntroon Military College in Canberra. He went on to become a specialist weapons expert in the field of major explosives and their destruction.
He was based at the army's Explosives Ordinance Distribution Ammunitions Centre at Orchard Hills. His expertise in destroying unexploded bombs, bunker systems and booby traps led to his deployment in Afghanistan with an SAS group in April last year.
His suicide is the second to have occurred among troops who have returned from Afghanistan.
In May, a former SAS trooper, Geffry Gregg, took his life in Perth. He was a signalman, and had been among the first SAS soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. He had been involved in a bungled mission in which 11 civilians died and many were injured in an attack by Australian troops.
Mr Gregg's family were angry that the Defence Department did not try to find out why he missed psychiatric appointments in the nine months before he killed himself. He had been suffering from post-traumatic stress, and they said he was frustrated at having to deal with three different agencies.
In August, war veterans urged the Government to provide greater access to psychiatric treatment for former soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress, particularly those who had served in East Timor.
About 1200 claims for shell shock and post-traumatic stress from the 16,000 veterans of the East Timor peace-keeping operation have been filed with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
There have also been suicide attempts.
In August 2005, two years after being discharged from the navy after rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, David Buck, 53, a Timor veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress as a result of seeing machete-wielding mobs and hacked bodies, tried to get police to shoot him by staging a robbery at the Umina Bowling Club with a fake bomb. He hoped the police would kill him in the belief he was a terrorist.
Last year the District Court judge Michael Finnane, in deciding not to jail Mr Buck, described his case as tragic and bizarre, and a case of post-traumatic stress.
"He is a tragic and broken man who has been exposed in the course of the service in the navy to terrible events which it is hard for me to fully comprehend," Judge Finnane said.
For three years, Goulburn in southern NSW endured the tightest water restrictions in the country. But as rains continue to bring relief to swathes of eastern Australia, the town's dams are more than half full, kids are playing on the ovals again and the deputy mayor even has his vegetable garden growing again.Under Level 5 restrictions, residents were allowed only 150litres a person a day, but they were so water conscious many cut their use to closer to 100 litres a person a day.
Under Level 3 restrictions, residents are allowed to water for an hour a day by hose, and there is no limit on watering cans.
Sally Nelson, from Goulburn's Gehl Garden Centre, said the business had had a good spring. Townspeople had stopped buying plants during the severe water restrictions, she said, but after the June rain they began to garden again, opting first for vegetable and annual flower seedlings.
Playing fields that were rock hard and closed at the height of the drought are now green and in use again. (The mayor) Mr Sullivan pointed out the local racecourse and soccer fields were being watered with recycled water, and there were plans to increase recycled water use on all sports fields.
Goulburn's water supplies are now at 60%. There were predictions earlier this year they would run out of water completely by May, 2008.
By the time the next drought arrives, if it actually does, Goulburn should have a new pipeline in place, but even then they won't use as much water as they did before the drought began in 2004.
These are lessons in water conservation that are, and have been learned, in towns and cities all over Australia in the past few years.
At a news conference with Deputy Leader Julie Bishop, Dr Nelson said the Coalition would now scrutinise the Rudd Labor Government's scrapping of the laws to ensure it was "implemented as stated''.
"We will be working very hard to make sure that the legislation the Labor Party and Mr Rudd present to the Australian Parliament is consistent with the last stated position of the Labor Party,'' he said.
Wow. who needs drugs? Just try and wrap your head around that. The Liberal Party is now going to "scrutinise" the Labor Party's windback of WorkChoices to make sure that they live up to their promise to get rid of the John Howard's biggest political ambition : utterly stripping away the most essential rights of Australian workers, destroying the unions, and handing control of Australia's workforce to the country's biggest corporations.
Nelson is basically saying : "We introduced it, now we're going to make sure that you really get rid of it."
Parliament next year will be hallucinogenic if this is any indication of how Monty Pythonesque the Liberal Party will be in opposition.The rest of the story :
"We have listened and we have learned, and one of the issues that was very important to the Australian people in changing the Government on November 24 was that of WorkChoices," he said.
"We've listened to the Australian people, we respect the decisions they have made, and WorkChoices is dead."
Dr Nelson said the package of industrial reforms was "one of the reasons'' Australians voted to change the Government.
The Liberal Party insist they are now listening to the Australian people. Talk about a revolution. Actually listening to the majority collective opinion of the Australian people? WorkChoices was brought in because the Liberal Party had spent so long listening to the opinions and demands of Australia's business community.
Melbourne death metal band's lead singer and merchandiser were killed when their mini-bus crashed on the Pacific Highway, north of Coffs Harbour, earlier today.The Red Shore's My Space is here. You can hear some of their songs at the top right of the MySpace page. Sounds like they carved.The Red Shore were on tour with US band All Shall Perish at the time of the accident.
Earlier reports claimed members of All Shall Perish were involved. But a spokeswoman for touring agency Destroy All Lines has confirmed the mini-bus was not carrying the US band.
The Red Shore's lead singer and merchandiser were killed when the driver of the mini-bus lost control of the vehicle near Moonee Beach and crashed into a tree at 7:00am AEDT.
"I think Paul Keating got it right...this election has wiped away the toxicity. People are smiling, a sort of sense of, we can get on and do things.The Liberals should be thanking McKew. They wanted to get rid of Howard, but they couldn't do it. Too scared, too gutless, too spineless. So they had to rely on a former ABC host and Labor candidate to do the job for them.
"And I think we all want to get on and do things in a certain way, in a civil way, in a sensible way, and get rid of perhaps I think that brutishness that has characterised our politics probably since 2001.
"A terrible thing happened then, but we all, we all have assembled here today, haven't we? And I think it's time to get rid of that horrible absolutism - because it's just not going to get us through the complex issues we need to solve."
The Arts Minister, Peter Garrett, he was going to be here today, he even penned a short jocular speech for the occasion. Unfortunately Penny Wong couldn't be here to deliver it, so …Garrett is set to replace Alexander Downer as the most popular power figure for comedic mockery in Australian politics. At least until Alex Hawke gets a position of some power in the opposition, around the same time that Brendan Nelson gets ousted from the leadership.
Every Australian household should stockpile at least 10 weeks' worth of food rations to prepare for a deadly flu pandemic, a panel of leading nutritionists has warned.World health experts now agree a pandemic is inevitable and will spread rapidly, wiping out up to 7.4 million people globally and triggering rapid food shortages.
....Woolworths and Coles, the nation's two major supermarket chains, will run out of stock within two to four weeks without a supply chain – or even faster if shoppers panic.
This has prompted a team of leading nutritionists and dietitians from the University of Sydney to compile "food lifeboat" guidelines to cover people's nutritional needs for at least 10 weeks.
Their advice – published in the Medical Journal of Australia – would allow citizens to stay inside their homes and avoid contact with infected people until a vaccine becomes available.
The lifeboat includes affordable long-life staples such as rice, biscuits, milk powder, Vegemite, canned tuna, chocolate, lentils, Milo and Weet-Bix.
Jennie Brand-Miller, professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney and co-leader of the study, believes it is common sense to stockpile food before a pandemic strikes.
"It's really not a question of if: it's a question of when," she said.
"It will spread very rapidly just like flu does normally because it's a highly contagious organism, except this will be a really lethal one. What we suffer from is a false sense of security that someone else is looking after all this."
The short version is, as was made clear by BushCo. in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, don't rely on the government to come to your rescue when a pandemic, or another major disaster, hits. You're pretty well on your own.
And the better that you can take care of yourself and your family, and feed yourselves, the more likely you are to get through two months of quarantine without having to go and queue for hours in a local carpark with thousands of others, waiting for food and water.
Influenza pandemics are a real risk and are best managed by self-isolation and social distancing to reduce the risk of infection and spread.
Such isolation depends on availability of food of adequate quantity and quality.
Australia has one of the most concentrated food supplies of any country, making rapid food depletion more likely in a crisis.
Food stockpiling by both authorities and citizens is an important safety precaution that should be given greater media coverage.
In the event of a lethal pandemic, emergency measures such as closing schools, staying home with family and friends, and avoiding contact with other people (until all have been immunised) will be instrumental in avoiding infection.The MJA has a detailed list of what foods, and in what quantities, they recommend you stockpile for emergencies here.The Australian Government and the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) have been planning for such a scenario for several years and have advanced plans in place
Australia has one of the most concentrated food supplies of any country, being dominated by two large supermarket chains. These organisations operate with such efficiency that their logistic chains hold only a few weeks’ supplies.
If the supply chain shuts down, or if there is no delivery from central stores, supermarkets’ stocks will be depleted within 2–4 weeks. If domestic stockpiling begins at this late stage, then depletion will be accelerated.
Food supplies in the home will need to last as long as it takes for vaccine development and production. For ordinary seasonal influenza vaccines, there is a lag of 6 months or more after a new virus strain has first been discovered until a new vaccine is available for distribution. For weather-related catastrophes, food stockpiles might be required for much longer.
A destabilised global climate, where small changes in atmospheric and ocean circulations have major consequences for temperature, rainfall, wind and storm patterns, may precipitate food stockpile dependence for several years.
While long-term food stockpiling could be considered a governmental responsibility, we suggest that home stockpiling of food to last about 3 months might be done by individual households. This would allow a window of time for governments to put emergency action plans and food deliveries in place.
When asked what scares them, a survey of 220 Australian children put animals, bullying and getting hurt ahead of war or natural disasters. Only three mentioned terrorism.
Being lost and The Dark were the most common answers for one third of six to twelve year olds.
Second most cited general fears were of snakes, spiders, dogs. Being hit by a car, death, injury, the school principal and bullying also ranked high.
More boys than girls were fearful of The Dark, or of being lost. More girls were scared of animals and injury. Being unable to breathe also scored highly for boys and girls.
Younger children are more likely to be concerned about monsters, with 26 kids listing them as their greatest fear.
The researchers concluded that for children, the most common fears had "remained very stable over the past 25 years."
When I was a little kid, I had a bastard of a teacher tell my class that we shouldn't be afraid of spiders and cockroaches, because they crawled over our faces all the time when we were asleep anyway, particularly in winter, when they were attracted by the heat of human breath.Melbourne Zoo's invertebrate specialist Patrick Honan said children should be cautious about approaching animals they don't know.
"People do get bitten by snakes and dogs, but generally when they are touching them or, in the case of snakes, trying to kill them," he said.
"But there is no logic to the fear of spiders. Spiders and people coexist very happily."
There was no moon, and with no huge glow of city lights, the star field seemed to be suspended just out of reach. Bright pure pindots of light, planets flashing colours, the occasional satellite blinking past.
The dogs were quiet last night. We could hear the dolphins in the harbour chattering away to each other. It seems like such a normal sound of this city now.This is it then, I thought, this is how my new life really begins, in this new society in this new world after ED Day, it begins here, with Kat, kissing her under falling stars on the rooftop of the Imperium, in Dead Sydney.
One day, I said to myself, years from now, I will look back at this moment as the punctuation mark to when my old life ended and my new life began. Everything that happened between ED Day and now was just preamble, the prologue, this was the new start. With Kat, this was my new life.
I had to tell her. I knew it was too soon, but it felt like it was going to be the right thing to say...
I felt the words, I could taste them in my mouth, like I could taste the wine and chocolate on Kat's breath. I had felt this way for weeks now. I was sure she felt this way, too. How could it be too soon when we had both lost so much?
We needed to hear each other say this.
The father of a Sydney boy with cerebral palsy claims his son was used for an election stunt by former prime minister John Howard.Turnbull's names on the letter saying funding had been agreed to, so why shouldn't he and Howard reach into their pockets to keep the promise made to Daniel?Mr Howard paid a visit to the Terrey Hills home of 11-year-old Daniel Clarke on November 5, in the midst of the election campaign, to announce funds to save endangered orang-utans...
Daniel's father, Rodney Clarke, 40, said he has now been informed the $200,000 is no longer going ahead because it was an election promise.
"The prime minister looked into my son's eyes and made him a promise," he said.
"Daniel had worked so hard and faithfully to make a difference and at no time did the prime minister indicate that this commitment would be an election promise.
"My wife and I raise our children on values in which your word is your bond, which made it particularly difficult for us to explain the prime minister's actions to Daniel."
A letter from Malcolm Turnbull, dated November 9, confirms the funding and does not specify it as an election promise. It reads: "I am delighted to advise that the Australian Government has agreed to provide funding of $200,000 in 2007/08 to the Australian Orang-utan Project (AOP) to continue the valuable work of the orang-utan protection units."
Heritage Strategy Branch assistant secretary Greg Terrill withdrew the funding commitment in an email.
Give the dogs bravery medals by all means, but why not the free run of a butcher shop as well for, say, half an hour?The dogs, a rottweiler cross and a Staffordshire terrier named Muck and Tank, were today praised by the animal welfare group after they dragged their two-year-old owner from the dam on a property near Mackay, on the central Queensland coast.
Police said the dogs' heroic actions were discovered when the Andergrove property owner heard a noise and found the boy and his dogs on the embankment of her dam about 11am (AEST) yesterday.
The boy was covered in mud, had marks on his upper arms, and there were drag marks from his body in the mud, consistent with the dogs pulling him from the water.
Police said the boy had wandered from his home to a nearby property, and his dogs had followed.
