Thirty years ago, Wally Conron was asked to breed a non-shedding guide dog. Looking back, he worries that he created a monster.

In the 1980s, Wally worked as the breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dogs Association of Australia, now known as Guide Dogs Victoria.

Most of the time, that meant breeding Labrador pups. But one day he received a letter from a blind lady in Hawaii whose husband was allergic to long-haired dogs.

After trialling 33 different standard poodles, Wally concluded that the poodle didn't have the right temperament to be a successful guide dog.

So, Wally came up with the idea of a brand new crossbreed —"a dog with the working ability of the Labrador and the coat of the poodle".

"I bred the labradoodle for a blind lady whose husband was allergic to dog hair," he says. "Why people are breeding them today, I haven't got a clue."

Read Fiona Pepper's article about the first labradoodle.

And listen to the full story on Sum of All Parts.

Ellyse Borghi encountered ancient Jewish texts early in her life, but it's taken many years for her to become a recognised authority in rabbinical matters.

She recently received her ordination — or smicha in Hebrew — which qualifies her as the newest and second-ever Australian female Orthodox rabbi.

Except she doesn't want to be known as a rabbi, or a rabba, both common honorifics for Jewish women who are ordained. She's a rabbanit — the Hebrew word for a rabbi's wife.

This may sound confusing, because the Melbourne lawyer has become an ordained religious leader, not the wife of one.

"I appreciate that I've come to have a leadership role in a different way," she says. "I'm not married to a rabbi. But the work that I do is essentially the same."

Read Alice Moldovan's story for ABC Religion and Ethics.

Claude the cockatoo impinged upon the Jones family home, and then crept into their hearts a year before Amabelle was born in 1983.

Her dad, a radio personality and comedian, had recently plastered the neighbourhood with posters of their missing cockatoo — a beautiful, majestically feathered specimen called Radar.

Among reports of sightings of Radar, someone called the house claiming to have captured the cockatoo and requesting the family come to collect him.

Mum, dad and five siblings piled into the car, excited to retrieve the beautiful bird — only to arrive to a dishevelled, balding juvenile cockatoo who couldn't fly.

His flight feathers had fallen out and he would never fly again. He couldn't go back into the wild, so he happily became Clawedy Claude Jones.

Read Amabelle Jones's story about growing up with a cockatoo.

And listen to Ann Jones's story for Off Track about the cockatoos who love bin day.

For many of us, the rotary clothes hoist is as Australian as a kookaburra, even given a starring role in the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony, and so it is natural to assume that it's an Australian invention.

In fact, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly who created it. There were many different variations on a similar theme proposed if not actually manufactured in America and Britain, with one patent dating back to the 1850s.

But one thing is certain: while the first rotary clothes lines certainly appeared elsewhere in the late 1800s, Australia, with its reliably sunny days and warm breezes, proved to be its natural home.

Until the 19th century, the normal way to dry laundry was to drape sheets and clothing on bushes — scented, if you were particular — or to peg them to a line hung between two posts or across whole streets, as is still picturesquely encountered in cities like Naples.

The beauty of a rotary clothes hoist was that metres of clothesline could be contained within a small area. With the frame of splayed arms sitting on a pivot, the person pegging out the damp items could simply stand in one place and pull the free line around to them.

Read more in Colin Bisset's article about the Hills hoist.

Or listen to Colin on Blueprint for Living.