Curious Canberra Curious Canberra

In the nation's capital, a popular Facebook page is helping the city's lost pets find their way home. Dinny McGettigan is a dog-owner and he wants to know - who's behind the page, and how do they reunite so many pets each year?

We're about to take a break for 2017 but before we do, we wanted to answer a question about an iconic summer festival in Canberra - Summernats. Rebecca Pearse thinks it's an odd fit in Canberra, she wants to know how it came to be here, and if there are any women who attend.
Photo: Christine Corkhill

Sam Robinson was chatting to a colleague at work, when something unusual came up. "Someone she had come across had heard that if a baby wasn't named within a fixed number of days ... then the government gets to name them," he said.

He wanted to know if this was true, and if so, whether the ACT Government had named any babies to date. What was the process, he wondered?

Digital journalist Elise Pianegonda went looking at the fine print of the ACT Government's Births, Deaths and Marriages practice manual.

Photo: Mariain on Flickr (CC-BY-NC) https://flic.kr/p/9M62vr

Faye Powell has spent years driving down Commonwealth Avenue, and in that time she's noticed a lot of international flags. She wanted to know - how many are there, who looks after them and where are they kept?

Reporter Sonya Gee took Faye to the ACT Government's flag store in Fyshwick.

Gary Brown knew exactly what he wanted Curious Canberra to look into - it's something that's been at the back of his mind for years.

His question is about the south Canberra district of Woden, which he thinks has been named after an old Norse god. So how did this happen? Intern Dharshini Sundran and reporter Sonya Gee find out.

Music:
Track 1 - Heliotrope by Blue Dot Sessions
Track 2 - Blinky Fish by J Geer

When single-use plastic bags were banned in 2011, some Canberrans found themselves without a steady supply of free plastic bags.

Colin Mckay was one of them. He asked: "Has the sale of kitchen tidy bags increased as a result of not having plastic bags?"

His worried that it had, and questioned whether the ban could be considered successful if that was the case.

Reporter Sonya Gee peered into a few Canberra bins to find out what was going on.