Murray Olds: Australia correspondent on teacher aide who saved lives of children remembered as "cherished mother, wife, daughter and sister", foreign nationals found on remote island and corpse flower once in a decade bloom

A teacher aide has died in Australia after a truck crashed into a preschool playground.

The crash comes less than two weeks after an 11-year-old was killed and four other students injured after an SUV crashed through a fence in Melbourne.

Australia correspondent Murray Olds tells Heather du Plessis-Allan the teacher aide saved a number of children’s lives by pushing them out of the way in time. Her family has paid tribute to the “cherished mother, wife, daughter and sister”.

Plus, four foreign nationals have been found on a remote island off the northern territory.

And, plant lovers are queueing up to catch a once-in-a-decade whiff of the corpse flower in Melbourne.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murray Old's Ossie corresponds with us. He mus afternoon, do
you have ah mate? This is a tough one about
the Kendy. Do we know what happened to the truck?
Why was it out of control?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Were not one hundred percent sure? The driver, sixty eight
year old fellow. They have had a medical episode at
the wheel he's left, mean, there's no reason for him
to leave the road other than that. Mandity tests would
have been done by now. We don't know the results
of those, but you can only imagine he's had some
sort of medical episode and he's left the road. A
very big heavy water tanker it's careered into the grounds.

(00:32):
Forty three year old Eleanor O'Bryant, the family's you know.
The police on the scene say she shoved children out
of the way as the truck arrived and saved quite
a number of lives. A little three year old boy
was hurt. But of course Eleanor O'Bryant, she was forty
three years old, her self speech pathologist. She was killed

(00:53):
in the truck at her now the family's paid tribute today.
He sounds like a beautiful woman, the light of our lives,
they said, as mother, wife, daughter, and sister. We're going
to miss you like crazy. So it's just the saddest, sadest.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yarn really is. We'll talk about this a little bit
more later in the program. Maz tell me about these
people that were found on the remote island off the
Northern Territory.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well four of them discovered very very remote island about
two hundred and fifty kilometers northeast of Darwin way way
out in the Torres straight, very remote, discovered by traditional
landowners on the weekend. Now, these people apparently told the
locals that paid money, not sure how much to come
to Australia. They were suffering from exhaustion, the effects of

(01:34):
a big heat wave that's hitting the Northern Territory apparently,
and the speculation that could have been fishermen who dropped
them off, because the remains of two sharks and fins
at the two sharks with tails and fins removed were
found on the east coast of Cape Croker, and these
guys were found on Croker Island. So put two and
do together come up with fishermen dropping them off looks

(01:55):
like the most obvious explanation.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
How you ever smelt this corpse flower?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
God, God, no, you want to oh wade it. It
flowers once a decade, and these halfwords are queuing around
the block down in Melbourne to stick their beaks inside.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Never web, do you actually have to put your nose
inside it?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, maybe you can smell it a block away. I
don't know. I don't care to know, to be honest,
but this flower, of course globally famous for its dreadful smell.
There's a big, big crowd. I mean it literally flowers
for forty eight hours every decade. So these people have
been done. They've literally been flying into Melbourne to have
a sniff. You know, all the people who are in

(02:36):
charge of the plants there, so it's marvelous. Everyone who's
waiting to queue up says the same thing. But I
think most normal people will say, you've got to be keddy.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
I reckon, I'd do it, muz, because then you're want
not no what, because then you could say you've done
it and then and then and then and then relative like,
don't you think sometimes you should experience some of the
worst things in the world. So after that you're grateful
that you don't have to do it again.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, the guy play gold every week that's one of
the worst things in the world. I'm quite happy.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Thanks Matz, Thank you very much, Maril's Aussie correspondent. For
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