November 23, 2025 • 27 mins
This week the Happy Pants team's happy pants have labels all over them from different places, like London, Venice, Morocco... some are places they've been and others are places they might like to go. Where in the world would you like to visit? Where in the world do you call home? Let us know! Email radio@visionaustralia.org.
Tune in for some big words and their meanings, activities, songs, and a reading of 'When I Can Fly' by Katie Stewart. Keep wearing those happy pants, and we'll catch you next week!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:13):
One, two, three. It's happy pants.
S2 (00:29):
Good day. And welcome to Happy Pants, a show specially
for kids and especially for you. My name is Geraldine.
S3 (00:37):
And my name is Kate. And together we will be
your happy pants team for today.
S2 (00:44):
Are you wearing your happy pants today? We are. And
both of us are wearing white. It's like the color
of ice cream and they have labels all over them.
S3 (00:56):
They certainly do. This one says business class and this
one says London. There's a lot of other labels too,
but the place I'd most like to go is London.
London Bridge. I hope it isn't falling down, though. Big Ben,
Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Castle. So many wonderful places to visit.
(01:19):
I know there are some labels around the back, but
I can't see what's written on them.
S2 (01:24):
I probably can if you stand up. Aw. That's better.
This one says 24 Elm Street and the other one says, um.
S3 (01:37):
Mm. That's strange. That's where I grew up. Mum and
dad still live there.
S2 (01:42):
Well, I can see a couple of my labels. Aw,
I like this one. It says Venice. I'd love to
go to Venice. The other one says Morocco. That's another
exotic place to visit.
S3 (01:58):
Big word alert. Exotic means from a distant foreign place.
If you turn around, I could read the labels on
the back of your happy pants. Ah, there we go.
One says Western Australia and the other one says return
to sender.
S2 (02:15):
Oh, very funny, Kate. Very funny. Actually, I think the
labels on the front of our happy pants are places
we would like to go to in the future, and
the ones on the back are places from which we
have come in the past.
S3 (02:32):
I think you're right. Anyway, perhaps we should check our pockets.
Happy pants head office always puts clues in our pockets.
S2 (02:41):
And we have to wrack our brains.
S3 (02:44):
Big word alert rack used to mean rubbish washed up
after a shipwreck. But now it means to wreck or
to fall into ruin.
S2 (02:54):
Oh, it's a good word. As I said, our brains
to find a way to fit all the clues together.
S3 (03:02):
Mine was wrecked to start with. Anyway, I'd better see
what this jingly little lump in my front pocket is.
Pockets are a set of keys. They're the wrong shape
for car keys. They must be house keys. Maybe screen door,
front door and a little one. Or perhaps a letterbox key. Yep.
(03:23):
House keys.
S2 (03:25):
Mine has. Oh, it's pretty hard to get out the spouts. Court. Oh,
there we go. It's a teapot.
S3 (03:35):
And there's something big and bristly in this pocket. It's
a doormat which says welcome in big black letters.
S2 (03:45):
Well that's funny. My other pocket has two things in it.
A small collar with a little bell, and a big
collar with a name tag that says.
S3 (03:57):
That big collar is definitely large enough for a dog.
And Rover is a doggy name. I'm pretty sure the
little one with a bell is a cat collar.
S2 (04:07):
Okay, let's make a list of these pocket clues. There
were house keys, a teapot, a welcome mat, a cat collar,
and a dog collar.
S3 (04:20):
Keys to a front door. A mat to welcome you home,
a teapot to make a nice cup of tea. And
a cat and a dog to greet you. Sounds like
home to me.
S2 (04:32):
Home sweet home.
S3 (04:34):
A home among the gum trees. Just like our happy
pants headquarters.
S2 (06:39):
If you look at the labels on our Happy Pants,
there are about places we would like to go to
on the front and places we would like to come
back to. That's like home on the back.
S3 (06:52):
You're right. I love to go to new places. There
are new places to see and new things to do.
S2 (07:01):
Some places are very different from Australia and it's fun
to try different kinds of food and and see different
ways of living.
S3 (07:10):
No matter how interesting things are, when you visit somewhere else,
it's always nice to come home. Though.
S2 (07:17):
Home isn't just a house. It's all the things about
the house that draw you back.
S3 (07:23):
Like a welcome mat at the door, a nice cup
of tea, pets to cuddle and my own bed in
which to snuggle up.
S2 (07:32):
I like the smell of gum trees and the warble
of magpies in the morning. You don't get that anywhere else.
S3 (07:41):
I reckon nearly everybody, whatever country they come from, loves
the thought of home. Family around you, friends to greet you,
and the familiar sounds and smells of your neighbourhood.
S2 (07:54):
No matter how interesting and exciting some other place is.
I like the place where I live. The place I
call home.
S1 (11:00):
It's Happy Pants on Vision Australia radio.
S3 (11:04):
Funny that we humans can go anywhere and we want
to see and do the most amazing things. But the
place where we are most happy is the place we
have made our home.
S2 (11:16):
Humans aren't the only ones who choose a home. And
even if they live somewhere for a while, return to
it over and over again.
S3 (11:25):
Have you heard of the Bogong Moth? Their story begins
on the plains near the darling River basin. When the
first winter rains caused the grasses to start growing, millions
of bogong moth eggs hatch and the caterpillars begin to
feed on the lush leaves. After weeks of steadily munching,
the caterpillars are ready for the next stage of their
(11:47):
lives and they burrow into the soil, make a waterproof
little shell, and spend weeks changing from a crawling caterpillar
to a moth. By the time the spring sun has
brought out all the flowers. The moths are ready to
come out and ready to fly. They feast on nectar
from the flowers. Then, when they have stored up enough
(12:08):
energy to last them through the summer, they form huge
groups and fly off to spend the summer months sleeping.
S2 (12:16):
This mass migration.
S3 (12:18):
Big word alert. To migrate means to travel from one
place to another.
S2 (12:25):
This mass migration can be up to 1000km, which is
a huge distance for something as small as a moth.
They travel from the plains of the Darling Basin all
the way to the Australian Alps.
S3 (12:40):
When they get to the mountains, the moths crowd into
cool caves and cracks in the rocks piled up like
thick blankets, and snooze the summer away.
S2 (12:51):
Then when autumn comes again, the moths pack up and
fly back to the planes where they were hatched. They
lay their eggs and.
S3 (13:01):
And what are.
S2 (13:05):
All the adult moths die.
S3 (13:08):
The mystery is, if all the adults are dead and
the eggs haven't hatched yet, how does the new batch
of moths know where the summer resting caves are and
how to get there? There are no old moths to
show them the way. And moths can't read maps and GPS.
S2 (13:26):
I don't think there is an answer to that question.
It is indeed a mystery. I think I need some
thinking music to unwrap my brain after that.
S3 (15:20):
Some animals really love their home, and they manage to
travel huge distances to get back to their own special
place and their human friends. Have you heard the story
about Gimpa.
S2 (15:31):
Know who's whose jumper?
S3 (15:33):
Gimpa was a pet dog, a Labrador boxer cross, his owner,
took him from their home in Pompano in Victoria, right
across Australia, to a wheat farm at Nyabing in Western Australia.
They stayed there for a couple of months while his
owner helped with the farm work. But when it was
time to go back home, Jumper could not be found anywhere.
(15:57):
His owner and the farmer's family searched and searched, but
eventually had to give up and the sad owner went
back to Pimpinone. Guess what? 14 months later, jumper turned
up at his old home. His owner was astonished. Jumper
had walked 2318km across Australia to get home to his owner.
(16:25):
This was such an astonishing thing for a pet dog
to have done, and that ended up in the Guinness
Book of Records.
S2 (16:32):
Another mystery how did a pet dog survive for 14
months by himself in the bush? He had to cross
the Nullarbor to get from Nyabing to Pimpinela.
S3 (16:44):
How did jumper know where home was? Somehow he just did.
S2 (16:52):
Then there was a Persian cat called Howie, who also
made a tremendous journey to get home. He walked from
Gold Coast in northern New South Wales to near Adelaide
in South Australia, which is a huge journey for a
cat 1600 kilometres, a cat.
S3 (17:13):
A fluffy pet cat? Surely not.
S2 (17:17):
Yep, true. It happened in 1979. Howie's owners were going
on an overseas holiday, so they took their much loved
Howie 1600km north to friends in the Gold Coast, so
he would be properly cared for while they were away.
(17:39):
How he stayed at the Gold Coast home for about
two weeks, waiting for them to come back for him.
And then he must have decided that if they weren't
coming for him, he'd have to go home to them.
So he ran away.
S3 (17:54):
When his owners returned from their holiday to collect him.
I bet they were heartbroken. How? He was a pet
cat in his whole life, he had never even seen
a dog. How would he know how to escape one?
He'd always had his food prepared for him. How would
he feed himself? He could never survive on his own.
S2 (18:14):
The family went home to South Australia. Very sad and worried.
But somehow, how he did survive. One day, just over
a year later, there he was, thin, filthy, dirty, with ragged,
matted fur and a wounded paw on their front door mat.
(18:38):
He had walked 1600km. He'd crossed rivers, deserts and a
lot of bushland to get back to his home. And
all of that without a map.
S3 (18:54):
Home is a special place. It is where the people
you love and who love you live. It's where happy
things happen. Where you feel safe.
S2 (19:03):
Home isn't just a house. A house can be anywhere.
Home is all the things around you. The places you play,
the trees you climb, the smell when you pass the
baker shop.
S3 (19:17):
The sounds of the birds in the garden. The warmth
of a cuddly kitten or puppy.
S2 (19:22):
Well, it's great to go to new places and do
new things, but it's even nicer to come home to
the things you know.
S3 (19:30):
Have you ever heard someone say the grass always looks
greener on the other side of the fence? It doesn't
mean real grass. It means we sometimes think that things
are better somewhere else. But really, grass is grass no
matter which side of the fence it is growing on.
S2 (19:47):
Even when we do have real green grass outside, some
people just don't go outside to enjoy it.
S3 (20:57):
Do you have something you specially like to do when
you're outside? I do. I like to listen to the
trees talking. Each kind of tree has a different sound
when the breeze blows through the leaves.
S2 (21:09):
If you want to listen in on what's happening, you
can use an ear trumpet. You can make one easily.
All you need is the cardboard tube from a roll
of kitchen wrap. If you put one end to your
ear and cover up the other ear, then put the
free end of the tube on your pet's chest. You
(21:31):
could hear its heart beating.
S3 (21:33):
You can use your ear trumpet to listen to all
sorts of things, like caterpillars munching on leaves.
S2 (21:40):
Oh, did you know that earthworms have bristles to stop
them from slipping backwards when they're burrowing through the soil.
You can't see the bristles or feel them, but you
can hear them with your ear trumpet.
S3 (21:55):
Put an earthworm on a sheet of paper and listen.
That scratching sound is its bristles. There is so much
to see and do near your home.
S2 (22:06):
Our story today is about Little Blue Book, who thought
things would be much brighter and more exciting in the
city than they were where he lived. That was until
he went to the city.
S3 (22:22):
When I Can Fly by Katie Stewart, Little Blue Book
sat on a branch watching the lights of the city.
When I can fly, he said, I'm going to fly
to the city. His mother landed beside him. Why do
you want to do that? She asked. Little Blue Book
waved his tiny wing. Look at all those pretty lights,
(22:46):
he said. They must be so much brighter up close.
Mother boobook looked up at the sky. The moon's very
beautiful to night, she said. I can see the moon anywhere,
said little boobook. Some of the lights in the city move.
I can see them. Her mother smiled. I think I
(23:07):
just saw a shooting star, she said. Shooting stars vanish,
said little boobook. It's too quiet here. I've heard the
city is full of noises. Just listen to the frog,
said his mother. But, said little boobook, when I can fly,
(23:30):
I'm going to go. Little boobook practiced flapping his wings
until they were big and strong. Finally the time came
when he could fly. I'm ready, he told his mother.
I'm going to see the city. Be careful, said Mother boo. Book.
(23:52):
I'll be right here when you get back. Little boo
Book flew to the city. The lights were bright. Too bright.
Some lights moved fast. Too fast. Nino. Nino. Nino.
S4 (24:19):
Rum. Rum. Rum. Rum.
S5 (24:24):
Doo doot. Beep beep beep. Bing!
S3 (24:28):
The noise was loud. Much too loud. There were hungry
pussycats that wanted him for breakfast. Little Boo Boo couldn't sleep.
The city was not what he had expected. Tired little
people watched the moon rise and thought of home. He
(24:50):
missed his mother. He missed the stars. And he missed
the sound of the frogs. Determined, he turned around and
set off for home. When he got there, Mother Boobook
was sitting on her branch, as she had promised. How
was the city? She asked. I didn't like it, said
(25:12):
Little boobook. I'll visit again one day. But it's not home.
His mother gave him a big, juicy moth. What do
you want to do now? I'd just like to sit
for a while, said little boobook, and listen to the quiet.
I like that idea, said his mother. So that's what
(25:32):
they did.
S2 (25:34):
That was a reading of when I Can Fly, written
by Katie Stewart.
S3 (25:41):
I think Little Blue Book found that things were brighter
in the city. Too bright, too fast and too dangerous.
It was exciting, but it didn't suit a little. Oh
at all. It was a good place to visit, but
home was where his heart was. But the best thing
about being able to fly is that you can always
(26:02):
change direction.
S2 (26:04):
So what have we done today?
S3 (26:07):
We had three big words to add to our big
words list. There was exotic, which means something which has
come from a far away place. Rak which means to
wreck or ruin and migrate, which means to move from
one place to another.
S2 (26:22):
We heard about some animals which are able to find
their own way home over great distances when they're lost.
S3 (26:30):
And we learned how to make an ear trumpet so
we can listen in on what is happening with some
of the little quiet things in our environment.
S2 (26:38):
If there was anything in today's program about which you
would like more information, you can find us on radio
at Vision Australia.
S3 (26:49):
Keep wearing those happy pants and we'll catch you next time.
S6 (27:06):
Happy pants is produced on the lands of the Whadjuk
Noongar people. Vision Australia Radio acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples as the first Australians, and the traditional owners
of the land. Across our working area, we pay our
respects to elders past, present and future in maintaining their cultures,
countries and their spiritual connection to the lands and waters.
Vision Australia Radio acknowledges and respects the genuine diversity and
(27:30):
richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Australia.
Happy pants has been made possible with the support of
the Community Broadcasting Foundation.
One, two, three. It's happy pants.
S2 (00:29):
Good day. And welcome to Happy Pants, a show specially
for kids and especially for you. My name is Geraldine.
S3 (00:37):
And my name is Kate. And together we will be
your happy pants team for today.
S2 (00:44):
Are you wearing your happy pants today? We are. And
both of us are wearing white. It's like the color
of ice cream and they have labels all over them.
S3 (00:56):
They certainly do. This one says business class and this
one says London. There's a lot of other labels too,
but the place I'd most like to go is London.
London Bridge. I hope it isn't falling down, though. Big Ben,
Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Castle. So many wonderful places to visit.
(01:19):
I know there are some labels around the back, but
I can't see what's written on them.
S2 (01:24):
I probably can if you stand up. Aw. That's better.
This one says 24 Elm Street and the other one says, um.
S3 (01:37):
Mm. That's strange. That's where I grew up. Mum and
dad still live there.
S2 (01:42):
Well, I can see a couple of my labels. Aw,
I like this one. It says Venice. I'd love to
go to Venice. The other one says Morocco. That's another
exotic place to visit.
S3 (01:58):
Big word alert. Exotic means from a distant foreign place.
If you turn around, I could read the labels on
the back of your happy pants. Ah, there we go.
One says Western Australia and the other one says return
to sender.
S2 (02:15):
Oh, very funny, Kate. Very funny. Actually, I think the
labels on the front of our happy pants are places
we would like to go to in the future, and
the ones on the back are places from which we
have come in the past.
S3 (02:32):
I think you're right. Anyway, perhaps we should check our pockets.
Happy pants head office always puts clues in our pockets.
S2 (02:41):
And we have to wrack our brains.
S3 (02:44):
Big word alert rack used to mean rubbish washed up
after a shipwreck. But now it means to wreck or
to fall into ruin.
S2 (02:54):
Oh, it's a good word. As I said, our brains
to find a way to fit all the clues together.
S3 (03:02):
Mine was wrecked to start with. Anyway, I'd better see
what this jingly little lump in my front pocket is.
Pockets are a set of keys. They're the wrong shape
for car keys. They must be house keys. Maybe screen door,
front door and a little one. Or perhaps a letterbox key. Yep.
(03:23):
House keys.
S2 (03:25):
Mine has. Oh, it's pretty hard to get out the spouts. Court. Oh,
there we go. It's a teapot.
S3 (03:35):
And there's something big and bristly in this pocket. It's
a doormat which says welcome in big black letters.
S2 (03:45):
Well that's funny. My other pocket has two things in it.
A small collar with a little bell, and a big
collar with a name tag that says.
S3 (03:57):
That big collar is definitely large enough for a dog.
And Rover is a doggy name. I'm pretty sure the
little one with a bell is a cat collar.
S2 (04:07):
Okay, let's make a list of these pocket clues. There
were house keys, a teapot, a welcome mat, a cat collar,
and a dog collar.
S3 (04:20):
Keys to a front door. A mat to welcome you home,
a teapot to make a nice cup of tea. And
a cat and a dog to greet you. Sounds like
home to me.
S2 (04:32):
Home sweet home.
S3 (04:34):
A home among the gum trees. Just like our happy
pants headquarters.
S2 (06:39):
If you look at the labels on our Happy Pants,
there are about places we would like to go to
on the front and places we would like to come
back to. That's like home on the back.
S3 (06:52):
You're right. I love to go to new places. There
are new places to see and new things to do.
S2 (07:01):
Some places are very different from Australia and it's fun
to try different kinds of food and and see different
ways of living.
S3 (07:10):
No matter how interesting things are, when you visit somewhere else,
it's always nice to come home. Though.
S2 (07:17):
Home isn't just a house. It's all the things about
the house that draw you back.
S3 (07:23):
Like a welcome mat at the door, a nice cup
of tea, pets to cuddle and my own bed in
which to snuggle up.
S2 (07:32):
I like the smell of gum trees and the warble
of magpies in the morning. You don't get that anywhere else.
S3 (07:41):
I reckon nearly everybody, whatever country they come from, loves
the thought of home. Family around you, friends to greet you,
and the familiar sounds and smells of your neighbourhood.
S2 (07:54):
No matter how interesting and exciting some other place is.
I like the place where I live. The place I
call home.
S1 (11:00):
It's Happy Pants on Vision Australia radio.
S3 (11:04):
Funny that we humans can go anywhere and we want
to see and do the most amazing things. But the
place where we are most happy is the place we
have made our home.
S2 (11:16):
Humans aren't the only ones who choose a home. And
even if they live somewhere for a while, return to
it over and over again.
S3 (11:25):
Have you heard of the Bogong Moth? Their story begins
on the plains near the darling River basin. When the
first winter rains caused the grasses to start growing, millions
of bogong moth eggs hatch and the caterpillars begin to
feed on the lush leaves. After weeks of steadily munching,
the caterpillars are ready for the next stage of their
(11:47):
lives and they burrow into the soil, make a waterproof
little shell, and spend weeks changing from a crawling caterpillar
to a moth. By the time the spring sun has
brought out all the flowers. The moths are ready to
come out and ready to fly. They feast on nectar
from the flowers. Then, when they have stored up enough
(12:08):
energy to last them through the summer, they form huge
groups and fly off to spend the summer months sleeping.
S2 (12:16):
This mass migration.
S3 (12:18):
Big word alert. To migrate means to travel from one
place to another.
S2 (12:25):
This mass migration can be up to 1000km, which is
a huge distance for something as small as a moth.
They travel from the plains of the Darling Basin all
the way to the Australian Alps.
S3 (12:40):
When they get to the mountains, the moths crowd into
cool caves and cracks in the rocks piled up like
thick blankets, and snooze the summer away.
S2 (12:51):
Then when autumn comes again, the moths pack up and
fly back to the planes where they were hatched. They
lay their eggs and.
S3 (13:01):
And what are.
S2 (13:05):
All the adult moths die.
S3 (13:08):
The mystery is, if all the adults are dead and
the eggs haven't hatched yet, how does the new batch
of moths know where the summer resting caves are and
how to get there? There are no old moths to
show them the way. And moths can't read maps and GPS.
S2 (13:26):
I don't think there is an answer to that question.
It is indeed a mystery. I think I need some
thinking music to unwrap my brain after that.
S3 (15:20):
Some animals really love their home, and they manage to
travel huge distances to get back to their own special
place and their human friends. Have you heard the story
about Gimpa.
S2 (15:31):
Know who's whose jumper?
S3 (15:33):
Gimpa was a pet dog, a Labrador boxer cross, his owner,
took him from their home in Pompano in Victoria, right
across Australia, to a wheat farm at Nyabing in Western Australia.
They stayed there for a couple of months while his
owner helped with the farm work. But when it was
time to go back home, Jumper could not be found anywhere.
(15:57):
His owner and the farmer's family searched and searched, but
eventually had to give up and the sad owner went
back to Pimpinone. Guess what? 14 months later, jumper turned
up at his old home. His owner was astonished. Jumper
had walked 2318km across Australia to get home to his owner.
(16:25):
This was such an astonishing thing for a pet dog
to have done, and that ended up in the Guinness
Book of Records.
S2 (16:32):
Another mystery how did a pet dog survive for 14
months by himself in the bush? He had to cross
the Nullarbor to get from Nyabing to Pimpinela.
S3 (16:44):
How did jumper know where home was? Somehow he just did.
S2 (16:52):
Then there was a Persian cat called Howie, who also
made a tremendous journey to get home. He walked from
Gold Coast in northern New South Wales to near Adelaide
in South Australia, which is a huge journey for a
cat 1600 kilometres, a cat.
S3 (17:13):
A fluffy pet cat? Surely not.
S2 (17:17):
Yep, true. It happened in 1979. Howie's owners were going
on an overseas holiday, so they took their much loved
Howie 1600km north to friends in the Gold Coast, so
he would be properly cared for while they were away.
(17:39):
How he stayed at the Gold Coast home for about
two weeks, waiting for them to come back for him.
And then he must have decided that if they weren't
coming for him, he'd have to go home to them.
So he ran away.
S3 (17:54):
When his owners returned from their holiday to collect him.
I bet they were heartbroken. How? He was a pet
cat in his whole life, he had never even seen
a dog. How would he know how to escape one?
He'd always had his food prepared for him. How would
he feed himself? He could never survive on his own.
S2 (18:14):
The family went home to South Australia. Very sad and worried.
But somehow, how he did survive. One day, just over
a year later, there he was, thin, filthy, dirty, with ragged,
matted fur and a wounded paw on their front door mat.
(18:38):
He had walked 1600km. He'd crossed rivers, deserts and a
lot of bushland to get back to his home. And
all of that without a map.
S3 (18:54):
Home is a special place. It is where the people
you love and who love you live. It's where happy
things happen. Where you feel safe.
S2 (19:03):
Home isn't just a house. A house can be anywhere.
Home is all the things around you. The places you play,
the trees you climb, the smell when you pass the
baker shop.
S3 (19:17):
The sounds of the birds in the garden. The warmth
of a cuddly kitten or puppy.
S2 (19:22):
Well, it's great to go to new places and do
new things, but it's even nicer to come home to
the things you know.
S3 (19:30):
Have you ever heard someone say the grass always looks
greener on the other side of the fence? It doesn't
mean real grass. It means we sometimes think that things
are better somewhere else. But really, grass is grass no
matter which side of the fence it is growing on.
S2 (19:47):
Even when we do have real green grass outside, some
people just don't go outside to enjoy it.
S3 (20:57):
Do you have something you specially like to do when
you're outside? I do. I like to listen to the
trees talking. Each kind of tree has a different sound
when the breeze blows through the leaves.
S2 (21:09):
If you want to listen in on what's happening, you
can use an ear trumpet. You can make one easily.
All you need is the cardboard tube from a roll
of kitchen wrap. If you put one end to your
ear and cover up the other ear, then put the
free end of the tube on your pet's chest. You
(21:31):
could hear its heart beating.
S3 (21:33):
You can use your ear trumpet to listen to all
sorts of things, like caterpillars munching on leaves.
S2 (21:40):
Oh, did you know that earthworms have bristles to stop
them from slipping backwards when they're burrowing through the soil.
You can't see the bristles or feel them, but you
can hear them with your ear trumpet.
S3 (21:55):
Put an earthworm on a sheet of paper and listen.
That scratching sound is its bristles. There is so much
to see and do near your home.
S2 (22:06):
Our story today is about Little Blue Book, who thought
things would be much brighter and more exciting in the
city than they were where he lived. That was until
he went to the city.
S3 (22:22):
When I Can Fly by Katie Stewart, Little Blue Book
sat on a branch watching the lights of the city.
When I can fly, he said, I'm going to fly
to the city. His mother landed beside him. Why do
you want to do that? She asked. Little Blue Book
waved his tiny wing. Look at all those pretty lights,
(22:46):
he said. They must be so much brighter up close.
Mother boobook looked up at the sky. The moon's very
beautiful to night, she said. I can see the moon anywhere,
said little boobook. Some of the lights in the city move.
I can see them. Her mother smiled. I think I
(23:07):
just saw a shooting star, she said. Shooting stars vanish,
said little boobook. It's too quiet here. I've heard the
city is full of noises. Just listen to the frog,
said his mother. But, said little boobook, when I can fly,
(23:30):
I'm going to go. Little boobook practiced flapping his wings
until they were big and strong. Finally the time came
when he could fly. I'm ready, he told his mother.
I'm going to see the city. Be careful, said Mother boo. Book.
(23:52):
I'll be right here when you get back. Little boo
Book flew to the city. The lights were bright. Too bright.
Some lights moved fast. Too fast. Nino. Nino. Nino.
S4 (24:19):
Rum. Rum. Rum. Rum.
S5 (24:24):
Doo doot. Beep beep beep. Bing!
S3 (24:28):
The noise was loud. Much too loud. There were hungry
pussycats that wanted him for breakfast. Little Boo Boo couldn't sleep.
The city was not what he had expected. Tired little
people watched the moon rise and thought of home. He
(24:50):
missed his mother. He missed the stars. And he missed
the sound of the frogs. Determined, he turned around and
set off for home. When he got there, Mother Boobook
was sitting on her branch, as she had promised. How
was the city? She asked. I didn't like it, said
(25:12):
Little boobook. I'll visit again one day. But it's not home.
His mother gave him a big, juicy moth. What do
you want to do now? I'd just like to sit
for a while, said little boobook, and listen to the quiet.
I like that idea, said his mother. So that's what
(25:32):
they did.
S2 (25:34):
That was a reading of when I Can Fly, written
by Katie Stewart.
S3 (25:41):
I think Little Blue Book found that things were brighter
in the city. Too bright, too fast and too dangerous.
It was exciting, but it didn't suit a little. Oh
at all. It was a good place to visit, but
home was where his heart was. But the best thing
about being able to fly is that you can always
(26:02):
change direction.
S2 (26:04):
So what have we done today?
S3 (26:07):
We had three big words to add to our big
words list. There was exotic, which means something which has
come from a far away place. Rak which means to
wreck or ruin and migrate, which means to move from
one place to another.
S2 (26:22):
We heard about some animals which are able to find
their own way home over great distances when they're lost.
S3 (26:30):
And we learned how to make an ear trumpet so
we can listen in on what is happening with some
of the little quiet things in our environment.
S2 (26:38):
If there was anything in today's program about which you
would like more information, you can find us on radio
at Vision Australia.
S3 (26:49):
Keep wearing those happy pants and we'll catch you next time.
S6 (27:06):
Happy pants is produced on the lands of the Whadjuk
Noongar people. Vision Australia Radio acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples as the first Australians, and the traditional owners
of the land. Across our working area, we pay our
respects to elders past, present and future in maintaining their cultures,
countries and their spiritual connection to the lands and waters.
Vision Australia Radio acknowledges and respects the genuine diversity and
(27:30):
richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Australia.
Happy pants has been made possible with the support of
the Community Broadcasting Foundation.
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