Two "extremely rare" gold medals awarded to Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty fame will be auctioned in Melbourne this week in one of the most significant maritime history offerings in recent years.

"You'll never see the likes of the Bligh medals again. They're so historical," a spokesman for the auction house told Agence France Presse.

A man suffered life-threatening burns Monday after a portaloo he was using exploded apparently after he lit a cigarette.

The victim, who was taking part in a joint Australia-United States military exercise at the time, was rushed to hospital with burns to his head, face, arms, chest and airways after the incident at Rockhampton airport.

A man who claimed it was acceptable in his culture to have sex with a child was Friday sentenced to 10 years' jail for his lengthy abuse of a girl who became pregnant at 11.

The Victorian County Court heard that the man was from the same ethnic minority as the girl and had been a family friend when he began abusing her in 2008. She gave birth to a baby boy in October 2010.

Australia on Thursday said it was considering upping the restrictions placed on Facebook, giving parents access to their children's pages and requiring proof of age at sign-up.

The social networking site has 10 million Australian users -- almost half the population -- and requires people to state at sign-up that they are at least 13, but there is currently no way to formally enforce the age limit.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said Thursday Australia's terror threat level would not change despite an image of Sydney's iconic Opera House appearing in an online magazine linked to al-Qaida.

The landmark building is featured in the latest edition of "Inspire", an English-language site that deals with bomb-making and terrorism.

Australian police Wednesday said they fired tear gas, sound and flash weapons and "bean bag" bullets to quell overnight riots at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre.

Immigration authorities said about 50 detainees were involved in the disturbance, which saw fires lit and police threatened with makeshift weapons at the centre, some 2,600 kilometers from Australia's mainland.

A prosecutor in Australia filed charges Tuesday against one of four men accused of breaking into a Sydney man's home late at night, holding him down on his bed and whipping him 40 times with a cable as a religious punishment.

Tolga Cifci, 20, appeared in court Tuesday charged with aggravated breaking and entering and committing an indictable offense. He did not enter a plea.

Staff at an Australian hospital accidentally mixed up two newborns and gave them to the wrong mothers, who breast-fed the infants before the mistake was caught, the hospital said Monday.

A family member of one of the mothers noticed something was wrong and alerted staff after the mothers had been with the wrong infants for more than eight hours Friday, said Stephen Roberts, CEO of St. John of God Hospital, which is in the city of Geelong in southeastern Victoria state.

In Germany the idea of a teenager spending a few months abroad looking after someone else's children while she studies or travels has given rise to a new concept -- the granny "au pair".

Newspapers now explicitly solicit applications from older women rather than students with ads such as: "Family living in Australia with two children aged 4 and 2 seeks German replacement granny for three to six months".

Australia's major alcohol brands on Tuesday launched voluntary health warnings on their labels targeting children, pregnant women and excessive boozing in a country famed for its binge-drinking culture.

DrinkWise, an industry body representing 80 percent of Australia's big alcohol names by volume, said new labels would be phased in on beer, wine and spirits carrying warnings on underage drinking and tippling during pregnancy.