| Author | Message | ||
     Richard Treacy Grand Master Username: richard_treacy Post Number: 3202 Registered: 4-2003 |
It could be Groote Eylandt. It could be Melbourne. Alice Springs. Even Broulee. May I introduce Australia to this Forum ? | ||
| Richard Treacy Grand Master Username: richard_treacy Post Number: 3204 Registered: 4-2003 |
35.8333° S, 150.1667° E https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Broulee+NSW+2537/@-35.8528214,150.15069,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x6b15ec37557c3a67:0x40609b490440760 Many a Bentley has cruised down Coronation Drive here. | ||
| richard george yeaman Prolific User Username: richyrich Post Number: 282 Registered: 4-2012 |
Hi Richard some of the rocky coast shots at Broulee are very similar to our famous Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland where the mythical Finn mc cool livedand no I haven't been at the mountain dew ha ha. Richard. | ||
| Geoff Wootton Grand Master Username: dounraey Post Number: 700 Registered: 5-2012 |
Richard Keep the place names coming. I intend to visit Australia just as soon as current family commitments allow, probably in two years time. Our plan (my wife and I) is to fly in to Melbourne or Sydney and first tour the local cities from Brisbane through Adelaide. The other places would be Alice Springs, Ayers Rock, Darwin and Perth. How practical is all of this? I have traveled back and forth across the US 5 times so far, so am used to 12 hours in the driving seat - I can cover 2000 miles in 3 days, so the distances involved don't faze me. It's just whether these latter places are worth the long drive. Is Darwin, for instance, just like any other city or does it have special attractions. Perth is on the list as I have a friend there, who also happens to be a Brit (or pommie b@#$%@d, as we Brits are affectionately known). Again, is it worth the drive? I'd also like to time the visit to coincide with a RR meet if possible. Are such events held and open to the public? Of course, no visit to Oz would be complete without spending an evening in a bar with Vladimir and the mad Scotsman. I was going to mention all this much closer to the date of our visit, but given Richard has named some places I thought I'd ask. Geoff | ||
| Richard Treacy Grand Master Username: richard_treacy Post Number: 3205 Registered: 4-2003 |
Geoff, Call me a wimp, but the longest drive in one stint that I have made was just 1700km, Sydney to Adelaide via Canberra and Albury in my R-Type Bentley to visit my brother when he was a student in Adelaide and I was a student in Sydney. I was 22 and he was 18. The Hay Plain is rather boring, but a stop at Mildura on the way back was interesting. Other than that I always catch a plane. My brother now lives in Darwin, and can exercise his silly 2015 6-litre W12 a bit on his weekly duties trip to Katherine (NT) as there are stretches with no speed limit on the way. A bunch of RROC(A) faithfuls have just done the Sydney-Perth-Sydney drive in the past week. One was an S3 (actually a rare R-R SC3 MPW) Chinese Eyes Continental with a newly rebuilt motor. 0km shakedown, and no problems on the long trip. I have lived in Canberra, Sydney, Perth, Moranbah (QLD) and Emerald (QLD), and have spent months in Darwin commuting to Angurugu on Groote Eylandt (Dutch for Great Island). Add twenty years in Zurich, a year in Geneva and two in Berlin, you may wonder why I love Broulee so much. Well, I spent my school weekends here floating on my surfboard waiting for that Perfect Wave that never came. No tourists, beautiful coastline. I rode my bicycle to the shop this afternoon before putting on the wetsuit and testing the surfboard again before dusk. Our South Coast of New South Wales is a bit secret. | ||
| richard george yeaman Prolific User Username: richyrich Post Number: 283 Registered: 4-2012 |
I was in Spain recently not that far away from Gibraltar during a conversation I learned that the annual classic car show was on Saturday ninth May in Casement Square Gibraltar So I set off on Saturday morning and was surprised at the number and the condition of some of the cars on display. There was a beautiful 1949 MK V1 Bentley Black over a very dark Maroon in Immaculate condition I asked him it age and he pointed to the Reg Number and explained that the six digits of the number Plate was the day month and year of the car a very nice gentleman and his wife she was there with another car in very good condition it turns out that he reads the posts on this Forum and he downloads information from the Technical library. There was also a very nice Mark two Silver Cloud in Black and a tidy 1974 Silver Shadow and there was also a car that I only seen in books when I was a younger man it was a Pierce Arrow Roadster an immaculate car there were lots of other cars that you wouldn't expect in a place only 2.6 square miles of area. Richard. | ||
| Vladimir Ivanovich Kirillov Prolific User Username: soviet Post Number: 267 Registered: 2-2013 |
Geoff, hope you do visit Australia, however visiting the cities is just visiting the cities not visiting Australia. IMHO true Australia only exists outside the cities and all cities in Australia are festering bastions of criminal activity. Those who own their homes in cities are sealed up like battery hens with many security devices to protect themselves from the many drug riddled dispossessed. Hence, the necessity of have swarms of police often seen in gaggles of ten or more swarming the public transport, interrogating the young as to whether they have a valid ticket to be on the train or running the drug sniffing dog over them to pounce on their pouches of cannibus or other substances they find necessary to medicate their mental health situation caused by insane costs of housing etc. Sydney in the 1960s was a lovely place - now its just a horror story unless you have mega bucks and live in upmarket electronic protected suburbs like a protected species. The trains in Sydney are covered with nonsensical graffiti and stink just as bad as New York's underground did in 1980. Tasmania apart from Hobart is well worth a visit. Whereas Darwin is an overpriced sweathole especially in the wet season - pretty but climatically oppressive. The Hunter Valley region and the Snowy Mountains are nice areas especially in little towns. Queensland country areas are the best and the Gemfest north of Emerald is a great thing to see. A drive up the eastern coast of Australia from Melbourne to Cairns used to be great - tons of lovely beaches where you could camp. Now you can't camp anywhere and have to be herded like cattle into caravan parks. Now this road is heavily patrolled by various police forces who are completely crazy about revenue raising via idiotic fines for being a few kilometres over the speed limit. Sadly, the millions spent on Keep Australia Beautiful anti litter campaign was a dead set failure and you will see litter along side country roads - just pretend that does not exist. South Australia has many interesting country towns to visit. Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria used to be great in late 1970s, it was just travelling through but had to spend 3 days in each seeing all the gold rush historical stuff there. My bet would be get a car with a bull/roo bar if you are going to see the real Australia in the country areas and try not to travel fast in early morning or dusk unless you want to experience a head on with a fast unpredictable marsupial. Mount Coolon (best visited in late May to early August to avoid the heat and insects) where my humble hovel exists is 3 hours drive from the coastal town of Mackay which you can either drive to or fly into at little expense from Brisbane. I can collect you and your partner in the Cadillac in Mackay and drive you to Mount Coolon - accommodation, food and booze will be provided at my expense as part of an evil, counter revolutionary, revisionist, bourgeois, bohemian attempt to preserve the edifice of "Idle Chatter" from the screams, cries and sooks of our technically rigid contributors. P.S. Do not pick up hitch hikers in Australia. | ||
| Bob UK Unregistered guest Posted From: 94.197.121.248 |
I like the look of Oz. I would love to spend 2 years driving around it. Range Rover. In Dorset we have the Jurassic coast. And the second largest natural habour. Sidney is the largest. A lot of Dorset is very old. A mistake often made is that the scenery natural. The whole of Dorset countryside is man made by farmers. It's differcult to drive huge distances in the UK The longest I have done is Aberdeen to Exeter. I suppose one could drive in huge cirles. I also like the names of places in OZ. (Message approved by david_gore) | ||
| Geoff Wootton Grand Master Username: dounraey Post Number: 705 Registered: 5-2012 |
Vladimir Thanks for the tips and place names that I can research when we prepare for our visit. I could not of course take up your offer of that level of hospitality, however we will definitely make it to Mount Coolon and look forward to meeting up with you at the local bar/pub. As I mentioned, it will likely be a couple of years before we visit, but it will be a definite as The Boss has a visit to Australia on her bucket list. Best Regards Geoff | ||
| Geoff Wootton Grand Master Username: dounraey Post Number: 706 Registered: 5-2012 |
Bob Aberdeen to Exeter is quite a jaunt for the UK. One thing that has surprised me is the sheer size of the US. We all know it's 2000ish miles across etc, but it's only when you drive it you realize the vastness of the Country. One thing I've learned is there is nothing particularly "macho" about driving large distances, it just means you haven't got a bad back. It's just a case of getting onto the interstate, setting the cruise control 5 mph above the speed limit and sitting back to enjoy the ride. In the US there is no point in trying to speed, you will be caught. I have the speeding ticket to prove this, donated by a police officer on an empty stretch of interstate in Nebraska. He was in fact very pleasant about it and even documented 10mph off my speed, to get me a cheaper fine. The point however, was made. When I do road trips in the US, I aim to cover 800 miles per day, which is all that is achievable if you want to remain legal. Road trips can be very interesting. My most worrying moment was in Western Texas (read, in the middle of nowhere) when I was low on gas. It was dusk as I pulled into a deserted filling station with just two pumps. At the side of the car park were two hicks peering under the raised hood of an old truck, looking menacingly across at me. At the same time a woman in a battered pickup was slowly circling the area for reasons unknown. I was willing the pump to go faster as it slowly chugged away. It really was quite surreal. It's at times like this I think maybe I should become a true American and buy myself a handgun, just in case. Another strange sight was when I once crossed the Arizona border. There were police bikes lined up about 50 yards apart with the riders just staring at the traffic. There must have been 30 or more of them stretching out down the road for more than a mile. I think they were just letting us know Arizona has a zero tolerance policy on everything. It reminded me of the signs they have in Texas saying "don't mess with Texas". I later learned from a Texan the signs were, in fact, part of a controversial anti litter campaign. Well, I certainly got the message. Another time I was driving through Louisiana when I saw up ahead the sky had turned black. A massive storm sitting above the interstate about 20 miles yonder. There was no avoiding it and when it hit, it was powerful. Lightning every few seconds and rain so heavy fast wiper speed had no hope of clearing it. The traffic had slowed to 5mph. It was slightly worrying when I realized we were on a raised roadway that stretched for miles across wetlands. I made a mental note not to drive over the edge. I look back and realize I've gone on for a bit too long. Apologies. Geoff | ||
| Bill Coburn Moderator Username: bill_coburn Post Number: 1565 Registered: 4-2003 |
I was posted to Washington DC in '68 for three years and used all of it to understand Americans. Despite Geoff's kind words on another post I will limit my rambling but his program for road travel in this country reminded me of a US officer buttonholing me to share his proposed trip to OZ which he hoped to fit in during a rare long weekend. His query was whether he could visit all our State capitals, starting at DC on Thursday night and be back at work in Washington the following Tuesday. He confirmed that he was in the Air Force so I asked him did his Service allow him to borrow one of their planes and was there any difficulty with arranging in-air refuelling? Americans generally don't follow my humour but I pressed on regardless. After some cursory thoughts on using our airlines, he finally realised the essence of my question and predictably explained without the slightest trace of humour that he couldn't borrow one of his Service craft and why did I ask. I explained and then pointed out a little known fact in that country, that continental Australia is only slightly smaller that the United States USA 9,857,306 sq km, OZ 9,008,1500 sq km! He was still thinking when I went to get another drink! | ||
| Brian Vogel Grand Master Username: guyslp Post Number: 1318 Registered: 6-2009 |
As an add-on to Geoff's and Bill's stories, I think that people often forget how large a given country or region is after they've been living in a country that's much, much smaller. My mother had a pen pal from Donnybrook, Australia, who actually came to visit us in the 1970s. Her son had left the farm (literally) to earn his PhD and was teaching in England at the time. At the end of her visit with us he came to join her and they were starting a road trip. We lived in Pennsylvania and he was contemplating a drive to the west coast. I recall him asking if he could make it there, and back, "in a couple of days." It was then that we all said something along the lines of, "No, it takes 5 days of driving to make it across the USA in one direction." That would include only stops for bathroom breaks, meals, and sleeping. Brian, who's now done more truly long distance road trips than I care to remember, and who now avoids interstate highways whenever possible | ||
| Bob UK Unregistered guest Posted From: 94.197.121.120 |
Even the British Isles including Ireland is not that small. I met a guy from Montana and his nearest neighbour is 30 miles. And a rifle and colt 45 1911 is standard wear because of bears. Its a different mind set. He liked Dorset he said it's like a compact car. Everything is there but smaller. 30 miles in Dorset goes from Hampshire to Devonshire. He thought it quaint that Dorsetshire has a Sheriff, Shire Reeve. The Reeve looks after Crown interests in Dorset. Now ceremonial. I hate motorways because everything is the same. Its like one long are we there yet. The service areas are a rip off. I ordered a pot of tea and got threatened with the police because it's one pot per person and I had "stolen" an extra cup for my wife. The police of course never showed up. The manager got the right hump. Now I take my little one ring gas stove. It does toast as well. Cup of tea and jam on toast. Could even do a fry up. The ring only cost £6 new. Butane 1 litre can Screws in. There are no Motorways in Dorset however we have some dual carriage ways When I go out in a boat into the English channel you look around and 15 miles out nothing but the crew and the boat. This I have noticed upsets some first timers. West is 3000 miles to land, America. France is 70 miles from Dorset. I have sailed around lands end due to the danger we sailed very wide of lands end. We are were 50 miles out. The Atlantic ocean is huge. We then sailed north east and into the Irish sea and on to the Isle of Man. A crew member fell in Douglas Habour. We dragged him out. After 2 days we left and sailed to Oban in Scotland where we got invaded by midges. So we sailed South zigging across the Irish sea from Wales to Ireland ports. Then Home to Dorset. It took 3 weeks. I caught mackerel which were nice for a snack. I had a go at the helm. Boring after 10 mins. Boats are so relaxing to travel in if the tide is wrong then just wait. No worry. (Message approved by david_gore) |
