monkeysarefun

Here they all use double-sided tape, but Ive never found a brand that'll last a whole Sydney summer stuck to the windscreen.

I've seen a couple of shots of it taken from around here last night so the clouds must have parted briefly. Apparently it happened around 8:15 or so but it looks more like a pink sunset then anything, and I'd have assumed that was what it was. The best shots from down here are from southern Tasmania, especially given the clean air and lack of background light pollution down there.

And once you get to the sign that says "Welcome to Kakadu" you've still got long drives inside the park itself to get to the various places of interest (cave paintings, waterfalls etc.....)

Weeding out the simpler folk!

16.7 degrees here, I've got the heating on!

For the same reason the Aurora Australis is supposedly visible at the moment as far north as Queensland , not for me though because its raining... Clear skies further south gave a good display going by all the pics online.

Not universally applicable down here at least, so dont go picking them up, @polybear! Inland Taipan, "worlds most venomous snake": Coastal Taipan "worlds second most venomous snake": Eastern Brown Snake - "worlds third most venomous snake": Tiger Snake "worlds seventh most venomous snake" The ranking of "most venomous snakes" differs depending on where you look, one difficulty being that it is open to interpretation, depending on whether toxicity, venom load or number of deaths caused is used, amongst several other metrics. For instance some African and Indian Snakes may have less potent venom than those above but are the worlds "deadliest" because they kill many people each year, whereas the Inland Taipan above inhabits the western desert regions of Queensland and Sth Australia and is rarely encountered. One thing for certain though, a bite from any of the above four if untreated with anti-venom will result in death.

I saw this parked up on the side of the Melbourne to Sydney freeway on the way to the shops earlier today. It consisted of 3 pulling trucks, and 2 behind to push. Internetting just now shows its the third of three transformers that form part of the Waratah Super Battery facility being built on the Central coast, north of Sydney. The component and traction units all up are 125m long and weigh 477 tonnes. Built in Victoria, its a 1005km trip to its destination, travelling at nighttime at 40km/hr. I imagine reverse-parking would be a fine art!

I quite regularly end up with this kind of thing after the second guess: S H A ? E But then it becomes a case of whether I happen to luckily guess the right one out of SHARE, SHAME, SHAPE, SHAKE, SHADE, SHALE, SHAVE etc before my remaining goes runs out.

Australia has two Taipan species, the Inland Taipan and the Coastal Taipan. The inland Taipan is considered to be the worlds deadliest snake by venom potency, it is in a magnitude greater than even sea snakes, it has enough venom load per bite to kill 100 humans and every bite is envenomated. Luckily its remote habitat in outback regions of eastern Australia means that it is rarely encountered. In contrast the Coastal Taipan is found from New Guinea down to northern NSW and can grow to over 2.5metres. Although it is placed 3rd in the worlds most venomous snake list (after the Inland Taipan and the Eastern Brown Snake) it is more feared due to it being an angry snake and the fact that unlike the Brown Snake, every bite is envenomated. There was no anti-venom for the Taipan bite up until 1955. Prior to this no Taipan had been captured to enable it to be milked. In 1950 a man called Kevin Budden went on a quest to find a Coastal Taipan so the venom could be collected. On July 27, Budden captured a 6-foot Taipan near Cairns. He carried the snake by hand, caught a ride from a passing truck, and took the snake to another local snake catcher, where it was identified as a taipan. While attempting to bag the snake, Budden was bitten on his left thumb but successfully placed the captured snake in a bag. Extracting a promise from the truck driver that he would get the snake to someone who would transport it south to researchers, Budden was taken for medical treatment. Not having any antivenom for taipans, Budden was given tiger snake antivenom. Although that helped counter the coagulating effect of taipan venom, it did not overcome the second effect of the taipan venom, which paralyses the nervous system. Though doctors initially hoped he would recover, he died the following afternoon. Budden's captured snake was sent alive to the Commonwealth Research Laboratories in Melbourne where its venom was successfully milked by zoologist David Fleay, who was at that time the director of Healesville Sanctuary. Venom from the captured taipan was instrumental in researching and developing an antivenom, which became available in 1955, and saved the life of an 11-year-old Cairns boy before the year was over. The story of Budden and his sacrifice spurred efforts to capture other snakes and produce more antivenoms, including the Brown snake in 1956, death adder in 1958, Papuan black snake in 1961, Sea snake in 1962, and polyvalent snake antivenom in 1962.

The making of the first one is a classic tale. For instance the bad bloke in the opening scenes (The Nightrider) being chased by the police couldn't drive a car. He only told the director on the morning of the shoot, so they got a stuntman to lie between the front seats and work the pedals and gearstick while the actor did the steering. The scene where his car ends up in a fiery explosion was aided by a JATO that someone managed to secretly liberate from the Australian Airforce. Apparently in response to a request by the director along the lines of "how do I use this thing?'" some bloke turned up at the shoot and convinced George Miller that he was a rocket scientist and so could get the JATO to do its stuff. Turns out he wasn't and he couldn't and the JATO assisted car headed straight for one of the camera crew, before spinning sideways at the last second - luckily the footage was captured by another camera and wasn't wasted.

Yeah don't tell @Gwiwer but Melbourne would be the city to pick to live in if one wanted to move here. Sydney has the harbour and is the better place for a tourist visit, but Melbourne has a better feel to it, its hard to put into words but it feels comfortable whenever I go down there. Plus it is the home of AFL, the best sport in the world. And it also has penguins.

You need to do your homework before attempting any serious outback trip.

Its not about a statement, its about the practicalities of breaking down 1000km from anywhere and discovering that the only manufacturer that offers support within 500km is Toyota. That's how it is down here. If you want to go seriously outback, buy a Toyota. British Leyland is probably nowhere to be found west of Parramatta. And I'm not a Toyota fan boy, Ive never owned one but after 40 years working with both the oil industry and Defence in remote areas, I can tell you that nothing else is considered to be up to the job. For making a statement parked outside your garage in the UK though, a Range rover would be perfectly capable.

Tasmainia and Norfolk Island are the two obvious ones. Both were sites of secondary punishment and both are incredibly scenic. Tasmania is my second favourite state after NSW and I've spent more time there than anywhere else, even including work trips to the northern states where our defence bases are. Tassie slideshow: I loved the thinking behind this lookout. The locals obviously realised that this position gave a great view of Mt Whateveritwas, but figured that if they built an elevated viewing platform we'd be able to get an even better view. Over on the East Coast is the Freycinet Peninsula, this is WineGlass Bay, though from this angle you cant see the wineglass shape. Its remote and suitably beautiful though. Some parts of Tassie do have an uncanny knack of looking like what we imagine England looks like, if England had kangaroos snakes and spiders. If chocolate comes from a chocolate factory, and cars come from a car factory, where do females come from?.... I found the button that starts up the female factory and this one popped out. . Turns out it comes with no instructions, warranty or return policy.

Definitely UnAustralian, though you are excused from not seeing Mad Max 3.

Snake ID is a fascinating art, - I got drawn into it here when I found a small brown snake, but when I called a snake catcher to take it away I learned that brown snakes (of which we have many species and they are not necessarily all dangerous) are not the same as Brown Snakes ("worlds second deadliest snake!") of which we have a lot everywhere too. Its all in the capital letters!

Yeah but he's UnAustralian too. Speaking of which, our version of Kevin Shakespeare or whatever his name was - George Miller - has finally released the fifth part of his Mad Max saga . I still recall being at the drive-in one night with my mates back in 1981 or so when the ad for the first one came on - the whole place went mental with beeping car horns and excitement and we've never looked back when it comes to the fine arts thanks to him. Release date here 2 weeks today - I'll be sneaking off from work for the 9AM session! Looking at the trailer I have absolutely no idea what is going on, but all the stunts are old-school genuine stuntmen rather than CGI and it was filmed here which will give our tourist industry a boost because it highlights our nice scenery etc.

What - pirates!?! I'll admit to downloading The Arctic Monkeys first album from a dodgy website back in the days before Spotify, but hanging me in Wapping for that is a little bit harsh I reckon, maybe transportation to Australia would be more suitable. Oh, wait.....

AS per The Night Mail, probably a "Green And Yellow Snake" (see, we arent the ONLY country with lame obvious names - Brown snake, Blue Ringed Octopus - Great Sandy Desert, etc!) https://www.infofauna.ch/fr/services-conseil/reptiles-karch/les-reptiles/especes/couleuvre-verte-et-jaune#gsc.tab=0 The obvious pupils evident in your pic help give it away...

The Toyota Landcruiser blew them away when it to came to reliability and capability- in that era only the insane went seriously Outback and chose a Rangerover to do it in instead!

Green Whipsnake? (Also called some mumbo jumbo in French that translates to "Green And Yellow Snake") https://www.infofauna.ch/fr/services-conseil/reptiles-karch/les-reptiles/especes/couleuvre-verte-et-jaune#gsc.tab=0 Its single layer of scales between eye and mouth, as per the one in the stock picture below helps identify it. If so its non-venomous and therefore UnAustralian. On the bright side even @polybear would be able to give it a bit of a tickle under the chin without fear of dying in screaming agony 5 minutes later.

I often get fruit bats (also called Flying Foxes) going overhead in the evenings off to feed wherever it is that they find fruit or flowers. Best seen on an overcast evening when they show-up against the clouds. They do have the potential to carry two very nasty viruses - the Bat Lyssavirus and the Hendra virus so injured ones should never be handled. Bat carers have vaccinations against the Lyssavirus but there is none available for the Hendra virus, though that one at least does not transfer directly from bat to human, but goes via horses who have eaten grass with faeces from an infected bat, who then pass the virus to humans via secretions.

Meanwhile here the Bureau of Meteorology is hosting a "Pretend we are living in England" week.

I have no idea if that is a good thing or not! If this is a better guide, here's a ute, part of a long term collaboration with another rmweber who is providing me the details I need to draw it up in Blender and print it, and an N scale brick test piece drawn up in Sketchup (I've learned which 3D tools to use for what!). Bricks are 1.5mm by 0,5mm, mortar gaps are 0.1mm, painted using that nifty battery powered airbrush I got last week, mortar is spakfilla rubbed into the joints,, slight practice-weathering applied, I need to brush up (LOL!) on my painting skills. If you can draw it up in 3D, you can print it - 5 stars.