Chris

This thread is pretty much dead now, Dotty. Originally I agreed with what you were
saying that Australia has its fair share of problems, however, once I saw that you
were greatly exaggerating the truth, I had to expose your exaggerations for what they
were and try to bring some reality back into the discussion. You started off okay,
but then you just got silly about it. Everyone exaggerates sometimes, but the refusal
to acknowledge one's own exaggerations repeatedly is not being honest. You also
upgraded from mere exaggerations to complete lies when you began fabricating things
about what I said. Again, I challenge you to quote me on where I threatened you, and
again I challenge you to quote me on where I argued Australia was perfect. If you
read back in this thread, you'll find me agreeing with you on some of Australia's bad
points. I do not, however, agree with your intentional exaggeration of crime here.

You are entitled to an opinion, and you are most free to put that opinion forward.
However, when an opinion is not based on fact, then someone should take up the job of
challenging that opinion and its factual basis. Your opinion has partial truth in
that all of the crimes you listed have occurred in this part of Australia. Where your
opinion becomes factually incorrect, is where you mislead people with intentionally
hyped up language (I have been over this part before) which would lead one to believe
that the *scale* and frequency of the crimes you listed is much larger than what it
is in real life. Do you believe lies should be condoned or tolerated? I do not.

The significance of misleading people in an immigration newsgroup is great. You have
the potential to adversely change the course of people's lives. This should not be
taken lightheartedly. People deserve to know the truth on such a newsgroup because of
the importance their decisions will have on their livelihood and family's well being.

What I agree with you about is that Australia is not a paradise. What I disagree with
you about is that your reporting of crime in this country is factually incorrect, and
your adherence to such misleading information can make your stance nothing but that
of a liar. The reason for this stance, though, has become clearer.

You are going back to the UK. You haven't had the best time out in Australia and
believe your quality of life has suffered as a result of being here. Initially I
thought it was good that someone was giving "the other side" of things out here,
however, you actually seem a little bitter about the place. So much so that you are
lying to reinforce your decision to move back home. You have exaggerated points on:

- the safety of the beaches,
- taxation, and
- crime,

and you have lied about:

- me threatening you, and
- me saying Australia is perfect.

You do not need to prove to people that your decision to move home is justified. It
is your decision and no one else can tell you that it was a "bad move". Whether it is
good or bad differs from person to person. What seems apparent now, however, is that
you are looking for even more justification to move home, either by convincing others
that Australia has too many bad points (and thereby creating some base of support),
or by even giving yourself some self-reassurance by exaggerating the reality of the
points which you consider bad. I think you might inwardly acknowledge the following
(though I understand you will probably not openly admit it, now that you have
cemented yourself into your current position):

- there are no drops of nearly 3 metres in just a couple of steps at the beach (from
2ft to 10ft I believe is what you said),
- the crimes you mentioned exist, but they do not occur with as great a frequency as
you would have everyone believe,
- the syringe hold ups (a crime I brought up by the way) are not such common
occurrences that the media doesn't bother reporting them anymore (an absurd
suggestion),
- if one wishes to provide facts, then one should use factual sources to back up
their claims, especially in forums where the information is considered important
to the decisions of other people.
- if one wishes to provide details on personal experiences, then fine, no facts
required (you did this for one of the crimes - great!).

Anyway, I know you probably won't bother reading what I write, as it seems you rarely
do read or absorb what I write, but I hope you understand my position a little better
(assuming you bother to read it). I acknowledge that I used bad language (crap, load
of toss, and BS - heaven forbid), but that is because your later responses deserved
nothing more. You can insist on misrepresenting, misreading, and misconstruing
everything I say to fit your purposes, but remember that what you write is available
for people to go back and see. We both know you are not adequately addressing most of
the points in your responses, and this is why I called you an "idiot" or suggested
you were playing dumb.

Misreading once or twice is excusable... making it a style of response is a totally
different matter.

Chris

Helena

Hi Vladimir,

Sorry for the late reply but my newsgroup provider seems to have had a great big
hiccup and many messages didn't get through. I was looking through Googlegroups for
something and saw that you had replied and asked more questions. I didn't want to
seem rude by not replying ...

[email protected] (Vladimir Menkov) wrote
    > Helena <[email protected]> wrote: ...
    > >Here in southern W.A., there are quite a few lakes. You can walk on many of them,
    > >or drive on them. Not much good for swimming. Some are amazing salt pans, ....
    > ...
    > >Rivers? With a few exceptions, most would be more appropriately labelled
    > >"streams", or "dry creek-beds".
    > ...
    > >During the summer, many rivers don't run, they just sort of dribble along, and
    > >there will be signs up telling you not to swim in them because you can pick up
    > >some awful bacteria that flourishes in the warm water. ...
    >
    > Well, that's pretty much what I expected to hear... Which means, I suppose, that if
    > you want to live close to a beach, you'd have to buy your house in a coastal town
    > or suburb, and pay a premium for that. (And which means that those who live in more
    > inland suburbs usually don't get to the water all that often).

Depends on which city. Perth's beach access is one of the best out of all the capital
cities. The city hugs the coastline from north to south, as well as the river, so
even the most inland suburbs are really not that far from a beach. Road access is
very good too so it doesn't take long and we don't have a lot of traffic problems
(mostly during rush-hour on weekdays). Just a rough guess but I'd say that at least
half of the residents live within a 20 minute drive to the beach. Sydney's another
matter as it is very expensive to live close to the coast. Melbourne is at the top of
a very large bay, so it depends on what sort of beach you prefer - the bay beaches
would, of course, be much closer than the southern coastal beaches, such as Torquay,
Jan Juc, etc., which would be over an hour's drive away. Brisbane is about 80km
inland on a river.

    > >In Perth, we've got the Swan River which is quite large and many swim in, sail on,
    > >windsurf, waterski, etc.
    >
    > Neat. So are there actual legal beaches on Swan River right in town, or people swim
    > "in contravention" of the rules and can be ticketed for the violation?

Totally legal, but not right around the business district and wherever the ferries
travel, and some other excluded spots. There are lots of residential areas and parks
along the river and many swim there. It's probably very clean, compared to many
rivers, since there's no heavy industry upriver. But it does suffer from algal blooms
most years, likely from leaching of fertilizers. The best place to learn how to
windsurf is on the river, along a very shallow bay. So if you fall, it's no big deal,
you can stand up and hop back on. And Perth gets wonderful winds for windsurfing.

    > > I don't know, to me there's nothing nicer than the ocean for swimming.
    >
    > I suppose I would have to agree, considering the local conditions of your
    > continent. But it's salty,

Shouldn't be an issue, as long as you don't drink it Helps you float better too.
There are plenty of showers available so you can wash the salt off before you get
back in your car.

    > and there are sharks (did not they eat one of your federal Prime Ministers once
    > upon a time? something that
    > Mr. Chretien would hardly need to be afraid of)

Yes, a fact of life here but I believe Florida is worse for sharks. Ours are bigger
and more noticeable perhaps. We had one tragedy last year, poor man, but very few
overall. They keep a good watch out. There's a plane that flies up and down the coast
during summer, looking out for them. And surf lifesavers also keep an eye out.

    > and jellyfish there!

Occasional problem. Little stingers - the clear ones - abound when the weather is
especially hot and windless. But very infrequent. The other type is the big ugly
brown ones that don't sting. They mostly hang around the Swan River, but the odd time
they'll float en masse out to sea. They're just yukky. As kids, we used to throw them
at each other. God help you if you missed and hit an adult by mistake! They never
seemed to find it as amusing as we did.

    > In Perth area, do you ever have any of those really dangerous
    > jellyfish that occasionally kill or severely burn people in warmer areas
    > (Queensland), or only those which are a minor nuisance? (Back when I lived in New
    > Jersey, I occasionally saw the waters off Atlantic City infested with those).

Deadly box jellyfish are found in the northern third of the continent, above the
Tropic of Capricorn, not any further south than that. And their season is during our
summer but people recommend you stay out of those waters between Oct and April to be
safe. The little stingers we have here can be fairly nasty, depending on the
person's sensitivity, but they don't cause the excrutiating, horrible death like the
deadly box.

    > > And I remember seeing another lake
    > [in Canada]
    > >where the only access to it was owned, and you had to pay the owner to use it.
    > >That bothers me. I'm glad we don't have that here.
    >
    > I assume you mean that the ocean coast in Australia, below the high tide line, is
    > public property. I believe that this is the case, at least theoretically, in BC and
    > Mexico too, in some US states as well. But if there are private waterfront houses
    > all along the shore, would there typically be rights-of-way between the houses for
    > people to reach the beach? (In North America, it's a mixed bag. In Kelowna, BC, for
    > example, there are frequent "beach access" paths between houses to Lake Okanagan
    > shore. In California, such laws are on the books, but access paths are frequently
    > not there.)

Well, Perth is pretty smart in that there is no absolute beach frontage allowed for
residential development. You have the beach, natural sand dunes, parking lot for the
beach, maybe a park and shower/toilet block, then a main coastal road. The closest
houses to the beach will be across the road. I mean, there's the odd exception of a
hotel/touristy area closer to the beach than that, but still, not much comes between
the beach and the dunes. People get pretty feisty over any change to that rule. From
what I've seen of other parts of Australia, and what I can recall, I doubt I've seen
houses right on any beach anywhere. So there's little problem with beach access or
rights-of-way.

Good luck,

Helena

Paul99

never doubted you for a minute!

glad you started as you meant to go on,

megawho

Spot the troll! Some person who's only just joined, and they're digging up threads from a year and a half ago Post under your original name buddy, and stop hiding behind your multiple personalities....