Surf lifesaving began on Sydney's eastern beaches once daytime swimming was allowed in the early 1900s; Bondi and Bronte both claim the first club. Its carnivals turned rescue skills into races, like rowing heavy surf boats through the waves.
📍 Melbourne, Australia
In rogaining, teams with a map and compass hunt for as many checkpoints as they can in up to 24 hours. The sport was founded in Melbourne in 1976, and its odd name comes from three founders: ROd, GAIl and NEil Phillips.
📍 Great Lakes (Haudenosaunee & neighbouring nations), Canada & USA
Snow snake is a winter game of the Haudenosaunee and other Great Lakes peoples: players hurl polished wooden "snakes" with weighted tips down a long icy trough of snow. Haudenosaunee tradition says it is more than 500 years old.
📍 Nepal
In bagh-chal, "moving tigers" in Nepali, one player has four tigers and the other twenty goats. The tigers win by jumping over and capturing five goats; the goats win by hemming the tigers in so they cannot move.
📍 Southeast Queensland & northern NSW, Australia
Macadamias are native to eastern Australia, the only widely grown food plant native to that continent. Seeds reached Hawaii in the 1880s, and Hawaii led world production for decades until Australia overtook it in 1997.
📍 Marshall Islands
Marshall Islands navigators tied palm-frond ribs into maps of ocean swells, with tiny shells marking the islands. They memorized the charts before a voyage instead of reading them at sea.
📍 New Zealand
Mako is a Māori word from New Zealand for the shark or its tooth; Samoans say mago and Hawaiians manō. The shortfin mako is the fastest known shark and is famous for leaping high out of the water when hooked.