Australia - The Land Down Under

David, are you referring to "Border Security: America's Front Line", or another show?

Something like that. It was a number of years ago, back when I was still a working man. I'd see it when I was in hotels - and I've stayed in a whole lot o hotels.

It was either on the Discovery channel or it was on MSNBC. I want to say it was the Discovery channel and mid-to-late ninties. It might have been early 2000s. I can't possibly remember the name. It was just background noise and moving pictures, fodder for my attempts to be mindless.

It was after the writer's strike and MTV's 'Real World' and under the fairly new genre name of 'reality television'. That's stuff that's dirt cheap to create. People seem to like it.


Huh... I don't think I heard anyone use any language about land size, other than like kilo for distance or maybe even square kilos for stuff. I'm surprised you didn't use hectare - which is really just a km^2 as I recall. Is using 'acre' common in Australia?

My fuzzy math says an acre is a bit less than one half of a hectare. I should use a search engine but the odds of me needing to know the exact figures are pretty low. Hmm... It's like 2.5 acres per hectare? Maybe?
 


""Opened in 1974, if the graffiti-covered pub walls could talk, they might explain why, back in the old days, every bit of furniture was bolted to the floor, including the ashtrays.""

It's a cliche and I only know of one that's left, but I have performed at bars while behind chicken wire.

I never had anyone throw a drink at me but I have had bodies thrown in my general direction and they'd have landed on the stage if the wire wasn't there. Oh, and there was an errant pool (billiards) ball thrown and that would have surely hit one of us.

We were regulars so the patrons were pretty good to us.

I probably have enough stories for a book.

Anyhow, that bar sounds like something you'd find in our Florida. We call him (a collective him) "Florida Man" for a reason.
 
My fuzzy math says an acre is a bit less than one half of a hectare. I
Christ this takes me back to my surveying classes some 50= years ago
so we start with 1 square yard then
1 sq rod [or perch] =30.25 sq yard
1 rood = 4 rods
1 acre =4 roods
1 sq mile = 640 acres
thankfully, I didn't have to learn French measurements but a hectare is about 2.25 acers I go to the garage to buy 5 gallons of diesel I want 5 gal not 50 lts .but my mind will watch the pump and instinctively stop me at 44.5 lts I look at the receipt and automatically see price per gallon not lts, why because my car dose 60 Imperial miles per gallon I have no idea of how many km per lt and don't care as I have no perception of a km
 
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1 sq rod [or perch] =30.25 sq yard
1 rood = 4 rods
1 acre =4 roods
1 sq mile = 640 acres

Yeah, the Imperial system really doesn't make a whole lot of sense today. I'm not 100% fluent with the conversions between the two. Heck, the Imperial system is now defined by its metric equivalent.

It'd be nice to move to the metric system in the US but that's not going to happen (outside of science/academia) any time soon. Then, you have other countries that will mix the two.
 
It'd be nice to move to the metric system in the US but that's not going to happen
You won't know if you're being cheated, mind you your gallon has been 20% less than an imperial gallon since well who knows :p
 
the Imperial system really doesn't make a whole lot of sense today.
in some cases it didn't back then, because when surveying we measured in Chains and links a chain being 75ft and a link 9 inches
 
You won't know if you're being cheated

I'm pretty good at doing math in my head, and pretty good at 'quick math' estimates. So long as everything is in metric, I'll be all good. I'll look up the references to ensure I know what to expect and adjust accordingly.

Our (legal) weed (and other not so legal things) are almost always in metric. You buy a gram of stuff - but then we do weird things and make 3.5 grams a 'quarter ounce'. If you buy a pound, you're really buying a kilo - which is like 2.2 pounds.

And, I forget why your gallon is bigger. A lot of the YouTube content I watch is about automobiles. When they give the MPG ratings, even though they're in the UK, they're usually using the same gallon we're using - or at least the numbers match up that way.

And, weirdly, you still use MPH on your roads.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I once went to England and rented a car. I was there for a while and the car was a manual. I much prefer a manual so I adapted quickly. I then took that car across the straight and into France. So, then I was driving on the right but in the righthand lane and shifting with my left hand. As I went into Paris, they have that giant cluster of traffic around the Arc de Triump (I think that's the name) and it was a rather surreal and frustrating experience.

After I got into Paris, I managed to find the hotel's parking garage and pretty much just used taxis for the rest of the time I was there.

in some cases it didn't back then, because when surveying we measured in Chains and links a chain being 75ft and a link 9 inches

Our road standards in some areas still are measured in rods. Like, the easement for the road might be 4 rods (or one chain, or 66 feet). That means that, from the center line, the government owns two rods in either direction.

(I modeled traffic. So, I've picked this stuff up along the way.)

Wait, I just noticed something in your post...

Hmm... I looked it up and a chain is 66 feet. So, I typed it correctly - at least here in the US. This being what it is, I'd not be even a wee bit surprised if your chain was a different length than our chain.



However, our land is typically measured in acres. Units of length are typically feet, yards, fractions of a mile, mile, etc... We have a large gap between yards and a mile.
 
The more laid back of us in Australia, more often refer to distance as ....Up the road a 'bit' ....or just keep going 'til you see a three legged cow in the paddock on your right (that's when you know they are having a loan of you)....but if they start describing the distance in chains etc then get the hell out of there....they probably found some stray weed somewhere and smoked it without reference to its origins...

I digress.

But seriously, I have been given directions out in the bush, where the giver has said....just go up the road a bit, and if you dont see the place you are looking for, then just keep going for a bit more......
I would not have dared to heap disdain on his directions......he was dead serious.

how did we get here ?

I'll clean this post up in a bit.....
 
he was dead serious.

When trying to find the plot of land I now own, I stopped and asked for directions.

Included in those directions was, "Go past where the barn burned down and then take a left."

The barn had burned down like 30 years before that. There was no way to tell where the barn had been.

I'm not entirely sure if they were serious or just screwing with me. Needless to say, there was a whole lot of gossip about me when I got here. Mainers are a bit different, but in good ways, usually.

I came and bought a giant chunk of land and then had a very large house built on it, after carving a chunk out of the side of the mountain. People in the village used to come park and watch the work going on while the house was being built. I could go on but there's a reason why Stephen King sets many of his books in Maine!
 
The Northern Territory , locate in the far north of Australia appears to share that distinction.

Not Steven King, but strange goings on, nonetheless.....certainly a 'different' crowd to those encountered elsewhere in Oz






 
and there's more:

 
The Big Boy...welcome to Australia.
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Kill it with fire.

LOL (Not really.) That it turns out to be a new species of funnel web might mean they can milk more venom from them and make more doses of the anti-venom.

Still, I do not want to meet one up close and personal.
 
Still, I do not want to meet one up close and personal.
Perhaps a look at the funnel web alongside the platypus ?

 
I'm good without cuddling with either of those.
 
The platypus is actually a cute little guy....who would rather hide in reeds or wherever rather than have a confrontation.....They are quite shy......unlike the funnel web.

Cuddle?....yeah ....that would need to be done 'carefully' ....but I prefer to leave them alone. Their continued presence depends on that.
 
I prefer to leave them alone.

That's pretty much how I treat all the wildlife I encounter, unless I plan on eating it. Platypodes are not n the menu.
 
Kill it with fire.

LOL (Not really.) That it turns out to be a new species of funnel web might mean they can milk more venom from them and make more doses of the anti-venom.

Still, I do not want to meet one up close and personal.

Where I live we don't get Funnel Webs but we do get many other species but that's life.

If I did have a backyard full of Funnel Webs...I'd buy a few Ducks who will eat them.
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Where I live we don't get Funnel Webs but we do get many other species but that's life.

I suspect I'd be 'used to it' if I actually lived there. We don't have anything really poisonous or venomous in my area. Well, we do have the brown recluse spider that has made its way into the southern part of the state, but that's it. They're not able to survive the winters. They aren't as far north as I am.

I did live in the south east for quite a while. They had stuff more likely to kill you, but none of them were ever a problem. I've also traveled where there are things that will cause serious harm and have so far been smart enough to not screw with nature to the point where nature screws back.
 

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