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STRANGESIGHTS: DROPBEARS WIN QUIDDITCH!; ‘GRAHAM’, THE UNSIGHTLY SURVIVOR; AUSTRALIAN MAN WINS PACIFIC RESORT IN RAFFLE; AND, THE TEMPPELIAUKIO CHURCH…

Graham

DAVID ADAMS reports on the odder side of life..

Australia’s Dropbears have won the Quidditch World Cup! Let us explain. The Dropbears is the team name for Australia’s entry into the cup which saw teams from around the world battle it out in a game of quidditch, a sport inspired by that played by fictional aspiring wizards in the Harry Potter series of books  (although the rules have been adapted – there’s apparently no flying on powered broomsticks). For the record, the Dropbears defeated the US team in the final, 150*-130, a victory made all the more sweet by the fact the US defeated the Australian team in the 2014 final.

Graham

Graham. PICTURE: Via TAC

Pardon us, but he looks a little lumpy (to say the least!). Yet, while he’s certainly not going to win any fashion shows, “Graham” does have one thing in his favour – he has the best chance of any of us of surviving a low impact car crash. In their latest campaign to promote safer driving, the Australian state of Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission have created Graham to illustrate just how badly designed the human body is when it comes to surviving road trauma. Graham, who is the creation of a surgeon, a crash expert and an artist, can be seen at the State Library in Melbourne until 8th August. 

An Australian man this week won his own Pacific Island resort after buying a $US49 dollar ticket in a raffle. Identified only as ‘Joshua’ from New South Wales, his was among tens of thousands of tickets sold in the raffle (reported at more than 53,000 earlier this week) for the 16 room Kosrae Nautilus Resort which attracted entries from people in more than 150 countries. Its Australian owners Doug and Sally Beitz decided to raffle off the premises, which they built on the Micronesian island of Kosrae, which lies to the north of the Solomon Islands, 22 years ago, after reportedly deciding it was time to return to Australia to be with family.

Temppeliaukio Churcha

PICTURE: Matthew Duncan/CC BY-SA 3.0/Via Wikimedia Commons.

We’re heading back to Scandinavia for this week’s unusual church – and like last week’s, it’s a church hewn down into the rock. The Temppeliaukio Church, known as the ‘Church of the Rock’, was completed in 1969 and is one of the main tourist attractions in Finland’s capital of Helsinki (despite encountering significant opposition when it was built). Designed by architects Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen, its interior is oval in shape with a copper-covered dome overhead and bare rock walls. 

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