brits1

My dad “did” the trip in 2009 but from Perth to Sydney he had always wanted to make this trip on the Indian Pacific and was glad he did but he did say it was pretty boring scenery after a while and the evenings were made much better as another passenger had brought his guitar so entertainment was to be had. I do know it cost him cheaper booking in the UK where he lived than it did me at the time living in Perth.

Gordon Barlow

I was never tempted to drive across to or from Perth. I read somewhere there is - or was - a petrol filling station every 200 miles! And imagine breaking down along the way!

The best drive we did back then (1971) was a "safari" of seven or eight cars from Perth to Port Hedland on the "inside" road via Marble Bar. The settlement had a hand-painted sign at its southern entrance reading "HOTTEST PLACE IN AUSTRALIA". Something to brag about, I guess...

spouse of scouse

I've driven across the Nullarbor four times, The longest distance without a fuel stop is about 190km/120m (Norseman - Balladonia).

A vehicle in good mechanical order, plenty of water, food, a first aid kit, a couple of jerry cans of fuel and Bob's your uncle. I did the trips prior to mobile/satellite phones, but even without them you'd never be stranded for long as your fellow travellers would stop to help, or if all else failed they could get a message to the next road house.

Gordon Barlow

Here's a shrimp that might attract the attention of some of the old codgers among us. (Who knows? Every topic can't be a winner.) One of my (younger) brothers is about to give up living on his own, and go to his daughter and her family. He reckons he's too frail to look after himself. The other brother is doing the same sort of thing. I'm thinking of selling out here and moving to where my son is living (South America), or my granddaughters (Europe, in a NATO country). Any such move will probably be our final rite of passage.

I'm comfortable living alone, and healthy enough, but old age is what it is. We never know when the door will slam shut behind us. I have a kind neighbour who brings me food ("I cooked too much") and takes me shopping ("I need the company"), and finds excuses to phone me. I can't trust her to let me fall down and not get up. She gave me a hooter that's loud enough to shake the island. If I could make it to where I keep the hooter...

I'm sure there must be some BE codgers in the same boat.

Gordon Barlow

A while back, our government in this Caribbean island legalised cannabis oil for medical purposes. Linda used it for her cancer, and found it very helpful. I got some for when my hips get painful. The prescribed dosage is 0.3 of whatever (millilitres, would it be?), taken out of the little bottle by a syringe. A few weeks ago I was at the end of a bottle, with just a bit of liquid left in the corner where the syringe couldn't reach. I reckoned that the quantity was about a third of a teaspoon, and equal to the prescribed amount, so I chugged it down and read a book in my recliner.

Half an hour later, I realised that I had miscalculated. My "third of a teaspoon" was apparently more than the permitted 0.3 (the mixture was half-and-half CBD & THC), and that I was - for the first time in my boring life - actually "tripping out"! I knew if I stood up I would fall over, so I did the sensible thing and just waited it out. That took 30 or 40 minutes, and I gave it another half an hour or so before very gingerly making my way to the kitchen and scoffing some food.

My son and his girlfriend were hugely amused, when I told them. the idea of an old codger doing what he should have been doing sixty years ago... Sigh... No respect.

Gordon Barlow

There was a song about that many years ago: "Love's more lovelier, the second time around..." Something like that. I thought it might be a good title for a BE thread..

Linda's sister fell in love with one of the lecturers at her university in Melbourne, as I expect many impressionable young women do. He turned out to be a control freak, and they divorced after years of tension. No children, fortunately. She later married a professional casino-croupier from Italy - what a contrast, eh? - and was blissfully happy with him for the rest of her life.

My brother married a girl who worked in the same auditing firm, both in their twenties. Three children, there, but he went off the rails and moved to Malaysia. Now, he's blissfully happy with his Malaysian wife, and is the loving grandfather of her daughter's kids.

My son... well, that's a story for another time. It has a happy ending, that's the main thing.

Gordon Barlow

Here's an expression I haven't heard lately, and I wonder if it is still used in idle chats around an Australian barbecue... Somebody says "But am I allowed to do that?" And somebody else says "I don't see why not. You're free, white and twenty-one." Has that expression been chopped like a statue of Captain Cook, or is it still acceptable? Could it have fallen out of favour when the age of majority was lowered to 18? Or did it fall victim to the current "woke" fashion, and is now considered racist? I'd really like to know, before I blurt it out one day and find myself howled down.

old.sparkles

Gordon, why do you still have the blog link in your signature? Surely after 8 years. it's a bit stale.

Gordon Barlow

Yes indeed: it is stale. Still, no staler than BE members' avatars and nom-de-plumes, surely! I stopped writing my blog in 2016 because I reckoned I'd said all I wanted to say. But I still (today) post links to relevant articles on other forums (not BE). Yes, my BE signature does link to the last blog-post, but on its right-hand side there is an index giving access to the 200 or so earlier items, for anybody patient enough to bother.

For twenty-odd years after 1990 I wrote weekly columns in one of Cayman's local newspapers, and then a friend persuaded me to "go international". So I expanded the focus beyond local issues to cover personal topics about childhoods, financial issues, and (my favourites) travels with Linda, hitching through the Middle East and driving behind the Iron Curtain in the 1960s. All fun topics, but not earth-shattering.

As you know, I got into trouble with BE's censors early on because I thought that the ban on blogs applied only to live blogs, not dead ones. That was dumb of me, but not malicious. Live and learn, eh?

Pollyana

Not necessarily. Many people in real life know me as Pollyana, and I fail to see how a witch having an avatar of a witch can be accused of being stale

Gordon Barlow

Here's something to talk about while we're waiting for our shrimps to cook on the barbie... electric cars! Do any of you think that maybe they've run their course? That they're a busted flush? There is a lot of disrespect out there about them - all kinds of bad news reports of them blowing up, or catching fire for no visible reason, or accelerating without being asked. The other day a woman drove hers into a lake (it didn't say why), and she died there because she couldn't break the window from the inside. It was made of special glass that couldn't be shattered from the inside. Okay, that's something that doesn't happen every day, but it's just one more disadvantage. What do you reckon? Will petrol cars see them off, some time soon?

christmasoompa

It was driver error. https://www.businessinsider.com/ange...ccident-2024-3

For most of the world, petrol car sales will be banned soon, so highly unlikely to 'see them off' when you won't be able to buy a petrol car anyway. Personally, I've had an EV since 2007, we couldn't get one when we moved to the US last year, and I really miss them. I'll be switching back to an EV at the first opportunity.

Gordon Barlow

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article...ly-adopted-evs
You may well be right, although it's early days... Here is a link to a BBC report on EVs in the USA, from a few months ago. The situation may have changed a bit since then, of course.

My son has a Tesla in Norway, where he adjusts his re-charge needs to his daily routine. But it has broken down a few times, so he has a Nissan Leaf for just-in-case!

spouse of scouse

EV sales are booming in Australia.
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...the%20industry.

old.sparkles

I would agree based on what I see at work.