In a high-school classroom in western Sydney, teacher Noeleen Lumby is asking her pupils to recall the Aboriginal name for animals that indigenous Wiradjuri people have used for hundreds of years.

As she holds up stuffed toys representing some of Australia's native wildlife, including a kangaroo, an emu and a cockatoo, the class of about 25 -- many from Vietnamese and Cambodian backgrounds -- come to grips with the ancient tongue.

A huge slab of sea floor near the Great Barrier Reef is in the early stages of collapse and could generate a tsunami when it finally breaks off, researchers warned Friday.

Marine geologists from Australia's James Cook University have been using advanced 3D mapping techniques on the deepest parts of the reef -- below diving depth -- since 2007 and have discovered dozens of sub-marine canyons.

Two German tourists and an Australian have been rescued following two days in the sea in the central Philippines after their boat capsized while they were island hopping, the coast guard said Friday.

Ralf Harald Auer, 54, his son Thomas Auer, 20, and Australian family friend, Joshua Marsh, were taken to hospital and treated for bruises and dehydration before being released, said Chief Petty Officer Venerando Celis.

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan on Thursday conceded for the first time he was unlikely to deliver a budget surplus this financial year, a backdown the opposition called "humiliating".

Earlier this year, Swan declared the "deficit years of the global recession" over and since then he has insisted a surplus was on the cards, despite plunging commodities prices sending clear signs that all was not well.

The European Union plans to ban menthol cigarettes and force tobacco firms to print large health warnings covering 75 percent of packets in proposals released on Wednesday, the first for more than a decade.

The proposed new rules on labeling, ingredients and smokeless products, fall short of demands by some health campaigners for a total ban on company branding and logos on packets, along the lines of measures enforced this month in Australia.

Australia Saturday announced plans to drill a 2,000 year-old ice core in the heart of Antarctica in a bid to retrieve a frozen record of how the planet has evolved and what might be in store.

The Aurora Basin North project involves scientists from Australia, France, Denmark and the United States who hope it will also advance the search for the scientific "holy grail" of the million-year-old ice core.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Thursday weighed into the debate about whether the world will end on December 21 under the Mayan calendar in a spoof video about Korean pop and flesh-eating zombies.

In a one-minute video address recorded for the youth radio station Triple J, a sombre-looking Gillard said the pending apocalypse was at hand despite there being no proof found by the "best and brightest" government scientists.

Australian researchers are working on a new breed of pineapple -- one that is not only sweet and juicy but which has the added tropical taste of coconut.

In what is thought to be a world first, the Department of Agriculture in Queensland state is in the final stages of developing the new variety of the fruit, to be known as the AusFestival pineapple.

Australia Tuesday joined Britain and France in summoning the Israeli ambassador to convey its "grave concern" over plans to build new settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr said the Israeli proposal, and plans to withhold tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority, "enormously complicate the prospects for resuming negotiations between the two sides.”

Hopes were fading Monday for a nine-year-old boy taken by a four meter (13 feet) crocodile in northern Australia, which police said was being fed by the local community.

The child was swimming with a group of people at Port Bradshaw, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the town of Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory, on Saturday when he was grabbed.