Rugby Lad

Was out at the Showground / horse racing track yesterday and there was a mob of kangaroos well over a hundred strong. Driving on the Pillaga road the other night there were thousands of the suicidal bastards. Went for a long walk with the kids and dog today. Saw loads of Kookaburras close up as well as pelicans, koalas, kangaroos and numerous birds of prey.

Plenty of places. If you want to be near the beach but don't need to be in Sydney you have a huge coastline to choose from. You say you want to be within an hour of a city - how do you define a city? Some prettty small places in NSW are called cities. I really like Newcastle. Hamilton is a nice suburb as are all of the beachside areas, a hell of a lot more bang for your buck than Sydney as well. The Central Coast is suburbia really, depends if you like that or not. Heard that some parts can be quite rough (from guys that work there but in my work we see the worst of any area.) Saying that there'll be tonnes of work for a podiatrist on the "Senile Coast". What about places like Coffs Harbour, Tweed Heads, Kiama, Batemans Bay, even The 'Gong etc?

I really don't understand why people are getting so het up on this thread. Take the emigrating to Australia out of it. Imagine he asked "I want to resign from my job and start a joint business with my wife / I want to adopt a child / I want to take out a huge 100% mortgage to buy an investment etc. but my wife doesn't want to do it" He then goes on to say "it will give us and our 2 year old a much better quality of life and more income" but doesn't give any reasons why or any detailed thinking about what could go wrong and what he has put in place to mitigate against this. Any sensible person would say that it is up to him to persuade his wife and that if he can't then it would be foolish to try and proceed. That's not pissing on anyone's parade.

Perhaps the government could find jobs for the layed off Australian workers building a motorway from Scone or Aberdeen through the Hunter to Newcastle. The New England Highway is an absolute joke. My parents decided there must be an RSL somewhere where they pull the speed limits out of a bingo machine as they bear no resemblance to road conditions whatsoever.

You're right but people do seem to be believing this. On Wednesday I drove from Newcastle to Walgett so threequarters of my journey (Newcastle to Narrabri) was through the NSW coal-mining areas - including both Gunnedah and Boggabri. The "No mining camp in Maitland/Singleton/Gunnedah/insert name of town" signs were just as ubiquitous as the "This gate is locked to Coal Seam Gas Mining" signs are from Narrabri onwards and all around Walgett. There were a few handpainted "No 457 workers here" signs as well. Sometimes things don't need to be true, they just need to be believed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Australian politics.

Pretty much this. The system itself seems designed to achieve this though. As a federated Westminster system with a Senate (elected on a State representation basis) as the upper house and a transferable vote system hugely favouring the two major parties but with strong States rights it appears to take the best from both the British and US systems. In reality it seems to end up with the worst of both. It has the pork-barreling, constant electioneering and State/Federal impasses of the US combined with the two party hegemony (and factional infighting), neutral civil service blocking real change and dumb voting fodder on the back benches of the British system.

Done 9 of them. Normally I'm fairly poor on lists like this. 8 of them in 2001, one in 2011 (Tasmania) and some like Barossa and Sydney Harbour numerous times. Haven't been to Uluru. I'd probably rate Cape Tribulation as the best.

Nothing to do with Sir Les being Australian, Anderson is a swing bowler, that is just a fact. Look he's no slouch but the main reason he's the fifth fastest bowler of the last ten years is that there are fewer out and out speedsters than in the past, it's a lot more about movement now (in the air in English conditions or from the pitch in sub-continental conditions (yes I know this is a gross generalisation)). Doesn't make him a worse bowler because he's not ridiculously quick.

Naseem Hamed? Saying that really liked Sheffield every time I went there (co-incidentally every time I went there was for boxing - Froch and Hatton, not Hamed).

Bill afterwards. Certainly in NSW. I can't imagine any paramedic asking for insurance details, there's far too much going on initially to do that. So ring the ambulance - then get into a sh1t-fight with the finance department later.

I particularly like the claim that the top tether strap will make the Australian standard the safest in the world and the evidence given is: "Unlike some overseas systems, the standard will still require the use of top tether straps for child restraints, in addition to the mechanism for attaching the seat to the car at its base. The use of a top tether strap has been a requirement of the standard since it was first published." No, that just means that that's the way it's always been done in Australia. If you had a valid reason for why the top tether strap improves safety you'd surely have given it in the quote.

I don't mind them either (except Hadley), I actually really like Gould, but the cross-promotion (stay tuned for the Block where they'll be........), the odds being spruiked and the ads do my head in so I listen to the ABC. Saying that found out how hard all that stuff is this morning. Filmed an advert that's going to be shown on Imparja and WIN during the Footy Show, Friday Night Football, Sunday Footy Show and Sunday Football for the rest of the season. I could use the excuse that I didn't know I was going to do it, I was working all night and driving home at 0830 this morning got stopped and told "go home and get changed, we're filming down at the Oval". But in reality I was just terrible at it. I'm not going to take the piss out of those crappy Aus ads any more.

When I was in Sydney the boys would go out on a Thursday night as people who lived in Sydney or nearby went home at the weekends. When the DS asked us where we'd been out the night before I said "Scruffy Murphys" at which point we got a long, boring and pointless spiel about how it was the pub in the state that had the most emergency service call outs, the most assaults etc etc. But I enjoy the place and as long as you have a bit of nous about you it's fine. There's some good places on and around George St; it's just another media beat up like the King's Cross stuff last year or the Flinders St (Melbourne) stuff before that.

It's on Channel 9 so the best thing to do is watch it on mute and listen to the ABC Radio commentary. COME ON THE BLUES!!

The biggest problem is that there is pretty much nothing that the Australian economy/government can do about the strength of the dollar. It is completely dependent on the US economic news. News on US stimulus, GDP or unemployment is what affects the AUD.