Skani

"Embracing my Englishness" ...I'll remember that if I need to justify forking out for my next case of the local (Tasmanian) elderflower sparkling.

It depends what they are after: if it's resources or land then international insignificance wouldn't matter.

Not a good place if you are trying to avoid heat. Being so far inland it can get very hot in summer: January and February averages are over 30C and it has had extremes into the 40s in recent years, in every month between November and March.

It's very rare to get humidity associated with heat in Tasmania. I've lived in both northern New South Wales and Sydney and we don't get humidity like that. The odd 30+C days we get in summer are the result of strong northerly winds blowing down from inland mainland Australia so it's a dry heat. It cools as it crosses Bass Strait then heats up a bit again as it travels south over land (which is why Hobart has a few more 30C days than Devonport on the north coast where Toots lives. It may even be years since Devonport had one of those). Coastal areas generally get a cooling sea breeze in summer.

Definitely not as hot as country Victoria. We have the odd 30+ day in parts of Tasmania - not the northwest where Toots lives - but it only lasts a day or two. We've had a total of 7 30+C days in Hobart this summer - but the average max. for both January and February was only 23C.

It's true, as InnerVoice said, that Devonport gets about half the annual rainfall of Cairns, but it is spread more equally throughout the year. Summer months are on average drier than the rest of the year and winter months are the wettest but there is not as great a difference as in Cairns where so much of the annual rain occurs in just a few months - mainly January and February. This Youtube video of a leisurely flight over northwest Tasmania shows what it looks like most of the year. It has to be green because it is major dairying country (about 20% of Australia's milk production) and the cows won't produce if it's not green. Wandering Foxbat - NW Farmlands and Dial Range - YouTube

That's because Richmond is close to Hobart so is a commuter town for people who work in Hobart.

Someone having chest pain is advised to go to the E.D. at the hospital. And no one was ever discouraged from going to E.D. for a serious complaint, which includes chest pain.

Yes, my only memory of Gates related material is that his Foundation was donating money for research into vaccine development and for assisting distribution to low income countries/populations. That was back in 2020.

Where did that happen? I don't recall that ever being mentioned in Australia. It certainly didn't here in Tasmania. Epidemiologists study health statistics of population groups, they have nothing to do with the personal health of individual patients.

We sure must get our news from different sources. I don't remember any pronouncements of Bill Gates. I'm not denying he made them but he wouldn't figure in any list of Covid talking heads I can remember.

Yes, they are lovely if you can get a reliable supply of good wood and somewhere dry to store it. We had one for 30 years in this house (3 bedrooms and a quarter of the way up Mt. Welllington so sometimes snow in winter) and it kept the place really toasty. But since I'm now widowed and getting a bit ancient I have replaced it with a pellet heater. I do miss the log burner though.

With that sort of experience I don't think he will have trouble finding employment if you are living in a rural area. One of the problems lately in the Tasmanian rural sector has been the difficulty in finding accommodation: the vacancies exist but housing is the problem. However somewhere like Latrobe/Devonport will be easier than more remote areas like Smithton. I 've heard road transport people here on radio say that finding truck drivers is a problem so having an HR licence is a good start. Hospitality has a similar problem here - so many residences have been converted into Airbnb's that staff required for hospitality can't find accommodation. So if you can land a house for yourselves I don't think you'd have trouble finding employment. I can empathise with the reasons for wanting to move. I landed in Tasmania (Hobart) as a child because my English mother couldn't stand the heat and humidity of the north coast of NSW - so not even as extreme as far NQ. Even my Australian father found the climate there - where he had grown up - difficult after several years in the UK. We have quite a few "climate refugees" from Queensland. A friend of ours visited a mate of his near Mole Creek (out the back of Deloraine) and said every property on the road, except his mate's, had been bought by expat Queenslanders. Yes, Tasmanian homes have electric heating - usually called " heat pumps" here but generally known as reverse cycle air conditions - but many, especially in rural areas, have wood burners instead of/as well as.

They criticised Robodebt because it was obvious it was a rort - obvious to anyone who understood how the Centrelink payment system worked. And you didn't have to be a genius to understand it.

Robodebt has been investigated and criticised by Guardian Australia and the Saturday Paper continually since its inception. It's not difficult to find articles from early 2017 - that's 6 years ago for those up the back - describing it as a "debacle" and "scandal" soon after it was announced to the public in December 2016. The problem in Australia is that the media is dominated by News Corp which was a propaganda tool for the Liberal coalition and complicit in supporting its appalling behaviour. Unfortunately, the other large media organisation, the Nine Entertainment/Fairfax outfit, was equally as fawning.