It's warm and sunny in Chile

ours houses don't come with lethal spiders, nor crocodiles in the swimming
pool

 

More to the point, European houses tend to built to withstand more
than a slight breeze and a gentle shower of rain. If you build houses
out of cardboard, they're bound to be cheap.

 

Housing seemed really cramped and over-priced to me. Food prices blew
me away as well. They were the two that stuck in my mind.

 

Where's the fun in that?

 

Ummm, you don't think we get cyclones here? Up north near the tropics,
Darwin was pretty much obliterated in the 70s from a tropical cyclone.
Like destroyed, the whole city.

Down south in Tasmania, where I come from, the weather crosses the
Indian Ocean and builds up some pretty fierce shit at times. Bass
Strait between Tasmania and the mainland of Australia is one of the
wildest bits of water in the world. I know, I've been in it lots.
Sydney to Hobart yacht race a few years back had 6 people die from
different yachts going down. This is a race that starts on Boxing Day
(ie - middle of our summer). They all went down in Bass Strait. Check
it on wiki. I've been caught out in there in a 30ft fishing boat where
we put our diving gear on as we thought we were going to go down. In
the middle of summer. We managed to get to a small island but were
trapped there for a week. Thankfully with a dive tank compressor so we
could go and get food.

I've been in there in a 500 passenger car ferry. Big stabilised ship.
It got so rough, they turned the ship into the west and rode out the
weather for 6 hours before turning north again to get to Melbourne. I
was in the bar at the time as I had broekn ribs and couldn't sleep as
the ship was slamming down onto the waves with such force it would
hurt. The waves were going past the window of the bar. On the top
deck. Dunno how high that was but has to have been at least 20m. The
good thing was that everyone on the ship was so seasick that they
couldn't move (including my wife) so I had the bar to myself and got
really good service. And free drinks. The loos near the bar had backed
up from the pressure of the waves forcing water back up them and stank
like hell so the few people that tried to make it to the bar ended up
throwing up when they got to go past the loos as they stank like hell.
Lot's of free drinks for Kevvy as the bar staff were bored. Thankfully
I've never suffered from sea-sickness.

You guys aren't the only ones that get the rough shit. It's different,
but just as nasty.

By the way, I've never seen a crocodile or a red-back. Couple of
snakes. Do rabbits bite? If so you lot can have them back thanks. The
little buggers are invading the place.

This is getting a bit long innit? Bored while installing Win7 on
netbook I guess

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Kevin Gleeson

Absolutely. Awful place.

Tell all your friends.

Please.

 

My house in Indonesia survived an earthquake last year

Not sure this one here would survive the same tremor

 

Same as Tassie. Everyone thinks it is awful. I love it and wish I was
back there. No place is perfect. It really did some cramped and dirty
to me. Maybe I lived in the wrong places.

Trust me. I wish I was in either the UK or Tas at the moment. Needs
must though. So Melbourne it is at the moment. **** knows where next.

 

Yes. That's kinda my point. If they'd built from brick and stone,
rather than matchwood and paper, it might have survived.

No, we _don't_ normally get really rough weather. But when we dom the
buildings generally survive mostly unscathed.

 

Yup, same here. You lose a few roofs maybe. Darwin was an insane event
in an unusual city at the time.

I think you missed my point. We don't live in poorly built houses here
in general. The media image of Australia is far from the truth. As is
the image of most countries. We all get stereotyped. My point was that
the places I was in the UK surprised me. I guess I'm used to more
space.

Oh, and crocodiles, spiders and sharks apparently. I'll let ya know if
I spot one tomorrow.

 

Small island, lots of people living on it. So not much land, and they
ain't building any more. Apply the laws of supply and demand and reach a
conclusion.

 

Good job your house in the UK isn't likely to encounter a noticable
earthquake then, isn't it.

 

Oh yeah - can see why it happens. It just made me somewhat
claustrophobic when I was there. I know the logistics of it. I was
there for work. But jeez did I like flying back into a blue sky and
lots of space. I guess if you've lived there all your live it becomes
something you take for granted. I just felt really cramped. I was so
glad for my mate taking me up into the moors and Holy Island and up
along Hadrians wall and up to Keswick and stuff like that. It was
fucking awesome. So different to here. Even living in Blackpool for a
few months was just so different. It reminded me of the summer park
from The Who's Tommy. It seemed stuck in a time warp. But I had a ball
there. First pub I stumbled into was the Blue Room which has a great
music history so the guys there were pointing me at some good gigs
around.

The history blew me away. Staying in Durham just was fucking awesome.
My mate lived up the road in Blackfell (Washington) and just took it
for granted. It was just down the road. He'd grown up on Tyneside so
it was just another town (yeah - I know it's a city coz it has a
church and uni or something like that). But I was wandering around
there just fucking gobsmacked. What beautiful town. Fer fucks sake
don't let any of your pollies allow it to get messed up.

We all take what we have for granted sometimes. I had to move away
from Tasmania and go back to realise how beautiful a place it is too.

 

Not really - plenty of land, just a planning system chocking demand.
Laws of regulation, not markets.

Rob

 

.....and it's not often you hear someone say that.

 

Well, yes, there's plenty of spare land in Dartmoor, the Scottish
Highlands, etc, but there really isn't much spare below, say,
Manchester.

And very little in London, the Home Counties and the south-east, which
is where most people live. It's densely populated by anybody's
standards.

 

I still found it dense up north as well. I spent somt time in
Manchester and Sheffielf as well. It's just different is I think what
I'm trying to get across here. It's what you are used to I spose.

I'd love to go back and work again for the company at Blackpool (check
wwww.realtimeuk.com) especially as there is a special lady back there.

Shit timing of life does not allow that though. Melbourne will do for
the moment.

 

No fucking idea. But if you come up with something, run for
parliament. If you read my other posts it's just I found it so
different that it seemed living in the past. Which to a certain extent
it is. But from someone coming from a country that has no buildings
more than 200 years old, it was to be expected. But your population
density is way higher than ours. And that was tiring me out a bit
after a while. The escapes up into to moors and the like were awesome.

 

Interesting you say that.

Is it coz it is taken for granted as you guys have lived there all the
time. I know the Geordies are taken as what we call Bogans over here.
But I just thought it was such a pretty city. I was blogging my stay
over there and would take photos but then research areas like
Lindisfarne and Durham to find out the background. The more I poked
into the past there the more it fascinated me.

 

That's more or less what I said, wasn't it