Off Track

Gliding over a glacier in the Himalayas is a metre long squirrel with a smallish head, silky fur as long as your little finger and a fluffy tail like a fox. The wooly flying squirrel has hardly ever been seen alive.

Unwittingly shipped almost 3000km across the continent in a hand of bananas, this small frog has no way to return home. Luckily, Arthur White is here to help.

Michelle and Graeme Hamilton from South Australia are fifth-generation dairy farmers. They haven’t made any money in two years. They work fifteen hour days and not a cent to show for it. Why do they stay? Reporter Cassandra Steeth finds out.

Australia's rufous fantails have managed to avoid extinction by snake, unlike their unfortunate cousins on the island of Guam. Lindsey Nietmann is trying to find out how these 'mad fans' do it.

The migratory birds have flown about 10,000kms all the way to the arctic for food, sex and to hatch the next generation of flying machines.

On the shorelines of the Yellow Sea, eight million shorebirds are probing the sediment for food but their bellies are empty. Could their epic migration end right here on this barren mudflat?

Australia's migratory shorebirds have just flown 5,000 kilometres northward to stopover in the Yellow Sea. What will they find when they arrive?

Millions of shorebirds fly between Australasia and the Arctic every year. They navigate over oceans using stars and magnetic fields, they sleep with half their brain at a time while they're on the wing.

But for some of them, this will be the last flight.

If you like Off Track, then you're going to love this new podcast, The Real Thing. Two mates travel the length and width of the country looking for the stories of REAL Australia, and in this episode, Mike and Tim travel to Tarcutta, a place of deep significance to the Australian trucking community.

There's a problem. The seeds won't germinate and the plant is endangered. Could the answer lie in a heady mix of gauze gift bags, heat torture, forced smoke inhalation and emu digestive juices? This is a repeat episode from the Off Track archives.