Cure for homesickness

[ChrisGreaves]

Wattle I do if I get homesick for Western Australia?

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60 Canon Bayley Road is five doors past the brown house with white trim on the other side of Highway #230.
Cheers
Chris

[Rudi]

Before you take the road, could I comment that the landscape looks a lot like Western Australia.

[ChrisGreaves]

Before you take the road, could I comment that the landscape looks a lot like Western Australia.

Ha hah!
There is a 90-mile dead straight and earth's curvature flat stretch of highway between Caiguna and Balladonia.

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Dead-flat because "Nullarbor Plain" as in "no trees" because "no rain", so no gullies, culverts, or mild dips.
Nada
Bonavista's longest straight stretch is in the Foodland Parking Lot ...

Cheers
Chris
P.S. even my little driveway turns out to be serpentine

[Rudi]

My comment related more to the scrub than the stretch of road.

[ChrisGreaves]

My comment related more to the scrub than the stretch of road.

Oh.
Right.

If I am not wearing my spectacles the spectacle is quite convincing.

Optometrists please copy to your in-house journals this valuable marketing tip:-
"Spectacle prescriptions to cure homesickness"

Cheers
Chris

P.S. Rudi: I would imagine that you have wattle bushes in your area, too?

[Rudi]

We do. Terribly messy!!

[GeoffW]

Most of the flamboyant wattle has disappeared until next season, but there's still some varieties with gentler colours still on display.

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[ChrisGreaves]

We do. Terribly messy!!

Hi Rudi,

In what way messy?
I've never thought of wattle bushes as being messy.
Not a problem when you drive past them at 60mph, of course, but also, not a problem in a back yard.
They drop dead material, as does most vegetable matter, but messy?
Cheers
Chris

[Rudi]

Unless i'm thinking of a different tree, don't they mess all that yellow stuff?

[ChrisGreaves]

Unless i'm thinking of a different tree, don't they mess all that yellow stuff?

I was not aware of it.
The wattle I grew up with had furry little (or little furry in this hemisphere) fluffy balls, about one quarter inch diameter.
I suppose that they fell to the ground, but I would not have considered them messy.
Perhaps you are thinking of the Australian Drop-Bear?

Cheers
Chris

[Rudi]

I doubt!!!

[ChrisGreaves]

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The mind is fascinating. I have crossed the road on my way home (I walk facing the oncoming traffic) to show where the "wattle bush" is. The fall-coloured leaves have fallen, and the bush is a desolate scrub of brown, behind Grant Keat's #5 school bus.
Now I will cross back to my proper side and continue my walk home.

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That's better. I walk home three to five times a week this way; it is for me a frequent path. I know that when I reach the other side I'll step over that white rock and continue to walk on the gravel.

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Almost across and so almost back on non-slippery gravel. I remember how that "wattle bush" used to peek out and greet me every day. There's the white rock.
(continued in next port)

[ChrisGreaves]

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Ah hah! All these months I have been drawn to that feeling of "Australia my homeland" and never realised I was not stepping over a white rock in the roadside, but was flying over Uluru, or Ayer's Rock as it was known when I was a kid.
Cheers
Chris

[GeoffW]

I was not aware of it.
The wattle I grew up with had furry little (or little furry in this hemisphere) fluffy balls, about one quarter inch diameter.
I suppose that they fell to the ground, but I would not have considered them messy.
Perhaps you are thinking of the Australian Drop-Bear?

Cheers
Chris

And speaking of drop bears ...
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ ... index.html

[ChrisGreaves]

And speaking of drop bears ..
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ ... index.html

Thanks Geoff; Good read on two counts

(1) "... visiting soldiers from the UK and US would come over to do exercises out in the Australian bush ..." it has long been my belief that the joke originated with US soldiers on R&R from Vietnam, and since the mid-70s I believed that that was the origin of the joke. Now I see that it might have originated much earlier than that in the context of remote farmsteads in the 1800s when fear had to be used to corral children in a bush-hostile area.

That shows me that sometimes we falsely believe that the true origin of some fact might be clouded by the first origin that enters our brain. If, for example, you had been told it originated in the January 2020 video, then you would have siezed that as the true origin and then you and i could have had a fierce (grin) discussion about who was right. (A third party would have sworn that Paul Hogan started it ...)

(2) The touch of "would chuck the visiting soldier a jar of Vegemite " is glorious and we know that when someone tosses something to us, we try to catch it, and when that thing is in our hands, we are tempted to use it. The jar of Vegemite would be a cinch to jungle-trained soldiers who are used to smearing camouflage paint on their faces.

(3) The "Archaeological^(?) evidence" is credible because evolutionary advantage would have accrued to a creature that could harvest energy by a leisurely climb of a tree, and then harvest that energy with stunning(!) effect hours later.

Cheers
Chris

[GeoffW]

And another drop bears story (involving gullibility)
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/th ... -drop-bear

[John Gray]

And another drop bears story (involving gullibility)
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/th ... -drop-bear

Right, that's this year's tourists put off completely!

[GeoffW]

Tourists? People travelling from other countries?

I can still remember when that happened.