Big Country

On the same topic.
Our woodturners workshop is next to our Visitor Centre and we often have Asian tourists visiting us.
Here in WA they usually wish to see 3 things
1. Margaret River
2. Pinnacles/Cervantes
3. Dolphins at Monkey Mia
4. Broome
all in the space of a few days.

These o/seas tourists simply cannot envision the distances and the open spaces and when you tell them that M/River is 280km south of Perth, Cervantes is 250km north of Perth, Exmouth is about 1000km further up and Broome is another 1000km further north again, they say that they were never told that when they hired the people mover in Perth.
Scares you a bit doesn't it.?

Disco.

Disco - Ha ha, your story brings back a story I was told many years ago, about a car hire bloke in Carnarvon.
He used to run "weekend hire specials" - unlimited kms for the weekend for something like $100.
He'd worked out no-one could go too far in a weekend of touring from Carnarvon, and he was on a winner.

That was O.K. until a little Jap turned up early one Saturday morning for a "weekend hire special".
The Jap returned the car early on the following Monday morning - and he had done .. wait for it ... 3,800 Kms in the 48 hrs he'd had it!!

He gone from Carnarvon to Kalgoorlie to Wave Rock, to Albany, to Perth, and back to Carnarvon - all in that 48 hrs!!
He wanted to see nearly all of Southern W.A. pretty quickly - and he'd done it, in his limited available time! LOL

The car hire bloke was absolutely flummoxed - but he couldn't do a thing, a deal was a deal!
Needless to say, the weekend hire deal was very promptly modified as regards the "unlimited kms"! LOL

Cheers, Ron.

Howdy All

Another quick one - the other half and I were in Ireland around 1998/9 and were having a few quiet ales in one of those beautiful old Irish pubs when I overheard a couple local Irish lads in the next booth talking about their upcoming trip to Australia - had a bit of a chuckle when I heard how they were landing in Sydney at 6 a.m. - picking up the hire car and driving to Melbourne to have lunch - then onto Adelaide for dinner that night !Well, I just had to say something and gave them a bit of a run down on the flaws in their itinerery. They were very very appreciative of my advice and for the next few hours the Murphy's were on them - great night !

Happy and safe travelling

Gazz

Ps - No Irish jokes please as my wife is Irish !

This note was in the jar at the SA-WA border on the Anne Beadell Highway in 2006.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 Motorhome

The US can be a funny place - parts of it are as isolated as anywhere in Australia - we drove all day through Nevada seeing less signs of life than you would see along most bitumen roads in Australia
then theres places like Manhatten where is considered a big deal to leave the neighbourhood which is actuall about a 15 min walk - takes about 2 hrs to walk from one end of manhatten to the other going through countless neighbourhoods.
We were staying in New Jersey which was about a 30 min train trip to central manhatten - Probablly the equivelent of going from Midland to the City in Perth
people couldnt believe the lengths we went to and just the idea of going all the way to New jersey to alot of them just seemed amazing let alone there and back in a day

I'm not complaining either.
Australia currently ninth on the empty list!!!

1 _ Greenland _ 0.0267 people/km^2
2 _ Svalbard _ 0.0425 people/km^2
3 _ Falkland Islands _ 0.241 people/km^2
4 _ Pitcairn Islands _ 1.15 people/km^2
5 _ Mongolia _ 1.89 people/km^2
6 _ Western Sahara _ 2.27 people/km^2
7 _ French Guiana _ 2.87 people/km^2
8 _ Namibia _ 2.97 people/km^2
9 _ Australia _ 3.06 people/km^2
10 _ Iceland _ 3.35 people/km^2
11 _ Suriname _ 3.48 people/km^2
12 _ Mauritania _ 3.67 people/km^2
13 _ Botswana _ 3.7 people/km^2
14 _ Libya _ 3.72 people/km^2
15 _ Guyana _ 3.87 people/km^2
16 _ Canada _ 3.88 people/km^2
17 _ Kazakhstan _ 6.19 people/km^2
18 _ Niue _ 6.2 people/km^2
19 _ Gabon _ 6.31 people/km^2
20 _ Central African Republic _ 7.64 people/km^2

221 _ Aruba _ 606 people/km^2
222 _ Mayotte _ 617 people/km^2
223 _ Barbados _ 641 people/km^2
224 _ Mauritius _ 654 people/km^2
225 _ Taiwan _ 724 people/km^2
226 _ Jersey _ 832 people/km^2
227 _ Guernsey _ 844 people/km^2
228 _ Maldives _ 1117 people/km^2
229 _ Sint Maarten _ 1185 people/km^2
230 _ Bangladesh _ 1201 people/km^2
231 _ Bermuda _ 1293 people/km^2
232 _ Malta _ 1335 people/km^2
233 _ Bahrain _ 1828 people/km^2
234 _ Vatican City _ 1907 people/km^2
235 _ Gibraltar _ 4490 people/km^2
236 _ Gaza Strip _ 5045 people/km^2
237 _ Hong Kong _ 6976 people/km^2
238 _ Singapore _ 7768 people/km^2
239 _ Monaco _ 15254 people/km^2
240 _ Macau _ 20924 people/km^2
(2010 and 2012 estimates)

Yes the penny dropped for me when I was in Istanbul and the city had nearly as many people as Australia.

I reckon you invented some of those countries, Equinox!!

Seeing i was just in Tasmania for 6 weeks over summer and wearing a ski jacket much of the time, no i can't Michael....lol. We did get the odd t-shirt and shorts days thrown in aswell, but geez the jacket and long pants got a work out on that trip. If you got out of the wind and were in the sun it really was quite warm, but the breeze really cuts through you down there when you are used to Qld summers all the time.