Well, its been a full 2 weeks now since we arrived here. In some ways we’ve been quite industrious, and in others we’ve been slow. It took longer than I’d thought to sort out a truck, and now that I’ve got new tyres on it, I can now hear the whine of the gearbox in top, which is a bit of concern cos whilst I’m not sure what It’s supposed to sound like… I suspect its not as loud as that when its new, so I think it could be (a bit) ‘crook’. Tommorrow I’ll put some oil in the gearbox, which incidentally is accessible without jacking the car up! Perhaps that’s all it is. The rest of the car is really fine, and today I took it off road slightly up a bit of land near here that is steeper even than our own, and it went up it without any trouble at all. It’s a really weird feeling when you go up a slope that’s really steep, because you lose sight of the land under the front of the car…so you have to sort of remember where things are and almost ‘feel’ for the undulations or obstructions that you saw a couple of seconds before…(that is unless you’re going fast, in which case its probably more a case of just hanging on as best you can as you get thrown about all over the place). I can see that it could be a lot of fun to test it out at speed.
There’s an election soon in Australia, and the cuffs are off. Its all the same sort of thing that you’re all used to in the UK, only it seems less sophisticated. I’m not really sure why it seems less sophisticated, but they do say some naïve things. For example, there’s a bit of a ‘blue’ going on about how to deal with the congestion that has become a major problem on the Brisbane road, which is a two lane motorway that takes all the commuters from all the new suburbs that have sprung up in places like ‘Springfield’ (gedit?) and several other places. There’s major development to the south of where we are about 2 or 3km away, where they’ve built a university and they are building enough infrastructure around it to support about 46,000 people. That’s just one development! As a Brit, I was very surprised to hear that neither party have any plans for public transport solutions for this of any significance. OK there’s a rail link, but its not that well serviced…and the solution for the road congestion by both parties is to make it wider!!!! We know that doesn’t work of course, cos it didn’t work in the London area, and all the cars just back up where the road is restricted, as it inevitably must be, when it reaches the city. Madness.
The incumbent prime minister is very Conservative, and I was impressed to learn a while back that the Australian economy is one of the very few that are not running a balance of payments deficit. Given the fact that the US is running one that exceeds 12 trillion dollars…its pretty impressive. On the other hand he’s not big on the environmental stuff, (Australia and the US are the only major countries that haven’t signed the Kyoto agreement for cutting carbon emissions) and sends (some) immigrants back…(phew) and some of you may think that’s a poor moral position. They do have good water re-use laws, and its against the law to fit a light bulb that isn’t energy saving, but on the other hand, every one (including both of us) is driving a car with a large engine…Daile’s is a 4 litre! Mines a 3 litre…but hey I’m carrying loads!!!!
Anyway, enough already….This is a joke about the leader of the opposition (Labour) and his 2nd IC…..
Kevin Rudd called Julia Gillard into his office one day and said, "Julia I
have a great idea! We are going to go all out to win the country voters.""
Good idea Opposition Leader, how will we go about it?" said Julia. "Well,"
said Rudd, "we'll get ourselves one of those Driza Bone coats, some RM
Williams boots, a stick and an Akubra hat, oh and a Blue Cattle dog.
Then we'll really look the part. We'll go to a typical old outback country
pub, we'll show we really enjoy the bush."" Right ,"said Julia.
Days later, all kitted out and with the requisite Blue heeler, they set off
from Canberra in a westerly direction. Eventually they arrived at
just the place they were looking for and found a typical outback pub. Walked
in with the dog and up to the bar. "G,day mate," said Rudd, to the bartender,
"two
middies of your best beer." "Good afternoon Opposition Leader," said the
bartender, "two middies of our best coming up".
Gillard and Rudd stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting,
nodding now and again to those who came into the bar for a drink. The dog
lay quietly at their feet. All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar
opened and in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stockwhip. He
walked up to the Cattle dog, lifted its tail with the whip and looked
underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar. A few
moments later, in came another old stockman with his whip. He walked up to
the dog and, lifted it's tail, looked underneath, scratched his head and
went back to the other bar. Over the course of the next hour or so another
four or five stockmen came in and, lifted the dogs tail and went away
looking puzzled.
Eventually, Rudd and Gillard could stand it no longer and called the Barman
over. "Tell me," said Rudd, "why did all those old stockmen come in and look
under the dog's tail like that? Is it an old outback custom?" "Strewth no!"
said the barman. "It's just that someone went 'n told 'em there was a cattle
dog in this bar with two arseholes!"
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