An American's Impressions

"Alan S" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:23:27 -0600,
.. wrote:

Janet, did you take a flight from your nearest airport to either one
of: DFW/SAT or IAH then to LAX and then a direct flight to ? [SYD].

This would make it an extremely long trip. I never have done it i.e.

But the direct flights are much better than years ago.
When Continental used to fly the route, their route was LAX to
Honolulu to Auckland then to Sydney/return same.

At that time, other airlines went via Honolulu, Rarotonga or Tahiti.

Cath

In '67 I went SYD-NAD-HNL-SFO in a 707. On the ground for
re-fuelling at both Nadi and Honolulu. Returned the same
way.

In '03 SYD-LAX was direct 13 hours. I prefered the broken
reverse trip in '06, LAX-HNL, three days in Waikiki, then
ten hours in daylight HNL-SYD. But if you use that one, make
sure you fly Qantas, not Jetstar. Same route and timing but
different carrier on different days of the week.


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia
http://loraltraveloz.blogspot.com/
latest: Mossman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest

PanAm in the 1980's did both the Sydney / Auckland / Hnl / SFO route and the
Sydney / LAX direct routes.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:39:08 +0900, wrote in
:

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:21 GMT, kangaroo16
wrote:
sNIP sNIP Snip.....
the attention of customs officers. After all, a lot of things
could be hidden in a jar of opaque black Vegemite. :-)

Not sure that it is that much of a "secret" either. From memory,
British "Marmite" is very similar, and think it was invented
first. However, easily checked.

AFAIK Marmite is a "Beef" product, not from yeast like Vegemite

Well, you know me, Alan, I like to be accurate, so am pleased to
actually check ingredients as well as when introduced.

Just did so. Score one point for me, unless you can find
conflicting info :-). See:

http://www.marmite.co.uk/love/nutrit...gredients.html

You are still ahead on points, so I welcome your challenges, or
any constructive criticism for that matter.

I do sometimes receive other criticism, but I don't define some
of it as "constructive".:-)

In passing, any particular local time of day that you check
posts & reply to same?


Yep, Marmite invented in 1902, Vegemite invented 1926. No
longer an Aussie company, as Kraft Foods bought the
company several years ago.


Cheers, Alan, Australia

Regards,
Kangaroo16

Kind regards,
Kangaroo16
1539 hours [3:59 PM] AEDT
Current time zone offset: UTC/GMT +11 hours
Time zone abbreviation: EST - Eastern Summer(Daylight) Time

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:01:04 GMT, kangaroo16
wrote:


Well, you know me, Alan, I like to be accurate, so am pleased to
actually check ingredients as well as when introduced.

Just did so. Score one point for me, unless you can find
conflicting info :-). See:

http://www.marmite.co.uk/love/nutrit...gredients.html

You are still ahead on points, so I welcome your challenges, or
any constructive criticism for that matter.

I didn't realise there was a competition.
http://www.lucinda.net/bill/vegemite/


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia
http://loraltraveloz.blogspot.com/
latest: Mossman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:17:58 -0800, "Calif Bill"
wrote:


"Janet Wilder" wrote in message
. ..
Frank Slootweg wrote:
wrote:
We have just returned from our 3 week cruise-tour of Australia and New
Zealand. W
Great report and thanks!!

I live in the States and have never been to Aussie land
but want to someday

A warning: Only do it if you can afford to come back!
Our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia was in 1995. Next year we
will go on our seventh-in-a-lifetime one! :-) It's a sickness and -
luckily - there's no cure. So don't say 'we' didn't warn you!

What will keep it a "once in a lifetime" trip for us is the plane ride.
Don't think we can handle that again.

--
Janet Wilder
Bad spelling. Bad punctuation
Good Friends. Good Life

Just a long flight. I think 2nd longest timewise in the world is Sidney -
LAX. You can have my quota of Vegemite. I used to travel to Oz on
business. Business Class eases the flight time. One trip to Hong Kong /
Singapore / Sydney and took the wife. She said it would be good to get to
Oz, and be able to understand the speech better. She changed her mind when
she got there. Said was easier in Asia to understand the English. Have not
been back for a lot of years now, and am planning a trip to NZ and
Queensland next year. Get to see the Great Barrier Reef and do some diving
there. Business, you only get to see a town for a couple of days when you
are there, so get limited sightseeing. So not counting on Perth and Sydney
this trip. What to do for a week in the Cairns / Port Douglas area for a
week? Or schedule 4 days and more other places.

See if this helps with some ideas:
http://loraltraveloz.blogspot.com/se...opical%20North

Cheers, Alan, Australia

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:55:38 +1100, Alan S
wrote in :

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:01:04 GMT, kangaroo16
wrote:


Well, you know me, Alan, I like to be accurate, so am pleased to
actually check ingredients as well as when introduced.

Just did so. Score one point for me, unless you can find
conflicting info :-). See:

http://www.marmite.co.uk/love/nutrit...gredients.html

You are still ahead on points, so I welcome your challenges, or
any constructive criticism for that matter.

I didn't realise there was a competition.

A highly informal, and admittedly undeclared one. I didn't
realize you desired a formal declaration. :-)

http://www.lucinda.net/bill/vegemite/

Did click on the reference, but too many graphics with no actual
information.

I only have a dial-up service at the moment, by choice. I'm set
up to ban most graphics.

I don't even use HTML. I usually send messages in ASCII,
sometimes in ANSI.

I would be just as happy, if not happier, if all of "Usenet" went
back to these old standards. It would save a whole lot of
bandwidth, after all!

I'm only really interested in ordinary text communication. Not
"HTML" colour on text. Not text consisting of two or three
syllable words. Definitely not colored moving images, musical
accompaniment, etc.

Do you really think I would get more people to read my posts if I
opened with a screen full of dancing coloured kangaroos
accompanied or followed by me singing "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo"
before the reader even saw any text?

Or when I sent text, all letters were of different colours?

If so, sorry, not my "target audience". I enjoy reading your
replies, Alan, and some others, but if you are offering all these
frills and fripperies with your posts, my system filters these
out and I just see pure text.

No music, no colours, no movement, no advertisements. All this,
if offered, is filtered out before I even see it.

As to

http://www.lucinda.net/bill/vegemite/

It took me less than two seconds to tire of the non-informative
slow loading graphics. If you want to copy actual information
from the site and copy it, fine. Just text facts, no
embellishment.

Am really only interested in references that present pure factual
unadorned text with no color, music, or whatever. If a site
cannot put its factual information up front, why should I wait
for it to come up with actual, and hopefully factual,
information?

Most sources manage to produce understandable text when I click
on them. I look for "hard information" not what passes for
"entertainment" these days. :-)

Did you understand the ingredients of Marmite? :-) I would hope
so.

If you wish to counter the list of ingredients I found, get more
technical, not less technical.

Perhaps needless to say, this isn't particularly directed to you,
but to all readers of the group. I do have some spare time, but
not enough to watch images, listen to music, etc. before I can
assess the textual information.:-)

Cheers,
Kangaroo16




Cheers, Alan, Australia

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:14:43 GMT, kangaroo16
wrote:


http://www.lucinda.net/bill/vegemite/

Did click on the reference, but too many graphics with no actual
information.

It's a song roo. One that every Aussie kid probably knows by
heart...let it load.


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia
http://loraltraveloz.blogspot.com/
latest: Mossman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:14:43 GMT, kangaroo16
wrote:

Do you really think I would get more people to read my posts if I
opened with a screen full of dancing coloured kangaroos
accompanied or followed by me singing "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo"
before the reader even saw any text?

No, but more would read past the first para if they could
see that it stopped at the third.


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia
http://loraltraveloz.blogspot.com/
latest: Mossman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest

kangaroo16 wrote:
On 15 Nov 2007 12:45:10 GMT, Frank Slootweg
wrote in
:

Alan S wrote:
[...]
You seem to like wandering the outback too much:-)

AFAIC, there's no such thing as "too much". Next year is already a
'compromise' because that time we will be driving a 2WD campervan, so no
unsealed roads. We will concentrate on the *towns* in outback QLD and
NSW which we 'had' to skip on this year's 12,000 km trip.

[...]
I wouldn't think that the "rule", if there is one, could be
absolute, as if crews are working on a stretch of highway and
have a detour set up, it will usually be unsealed.

Yes, we have experienced these situations quite a lot (like on the
Nullabor, where there is no other road anywhere (for a few thousand kms)
!:-)). The rental companies obviously mean a road which *normally* -
i.e. when it's not under repair - is sealed.

The rental companies' rules for not driving on unsealed roads are very
strict, IMO way *too* strict. Most of them even have penalties when
there is *no* damage to the vehicle.

[(very) much deleted]

You probably know much of this, Frank, as you have been in
Australia before. Other readers might not know, though.

Yeah. We've done many of the remote 'tracks' like the Strzelecki,
Birdsville, Oodnadatta and Tanami tracks, Gibb River Road, Great Central
Road, Plenty 'Hwy', Darling River Run, etc., and several 'unnamed' ones
and lots of other outback areas.

When I mentioned this to the nice gentleman from Main Roads QLD (who
helped us with our enquiry about the road from Eromanga to Nockatunga/
Noccundra and) who warned us about outback travel, he replied "You have
seen more of outback Australia than I have....". We hear that a lot when
we talk to Australians on our trips! :-)

Frank "We *love* the open spaces!" Slootweg

Well, Frank, plenty of open space here. In 1990,
Alaska had a population of 1 person per square mile.
In the continental U.S. Wyoming in 1990 had 4.7
per square mile.

Australia has about 6 per square mile, but this is misleading
as around 85% of the population is in the major capital cities.
Get about 75 km from the coast, and inland areas might
have an average population of 1 to 1.5 people per square
mile. The large inland desert areas used to be marked on
maps as "uninhabited".

So for any traveler who likes to get away from it all, this is
the place! :-)

It sure is!

Calif Bill wrote:
What to do for a week in the Cairns / Port Douglas area for a
week? Or schedule 4 days and more other places.

Make dinner reservations. Port Douglas is a very busy tourist place.
Cairns, where the airport is, is quite far from where the diving and
snorkeling stuff is. We went on a big pontoon boat which anchors out on
a platform by the reef. They supply diving and snorkeling equipment and
a very nice lunch, too.

If your travel-mate is not a diver, they have a boat with a deep glass
hull that will take passengers for a look at the reef without getting wet.

Between Port Douglas and Cairns is a place called Hartley's Crocodile
Experience. It's a nice place to see local fauna. I thought it would be
one of those gross places where some jerk wrestled with a croc, but it
is most definitely not. They farm crocs there, but they also have quite
a few that live in protected lagoons. There were different birds and
other critters. We really enjoyed it.


--
Janet Wilder
Bad spelling. Bad punctuation
Good Friends. Good Life

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:48:46 +1100, Alan S
wrote in :

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:14:43 GMT, kangaroo16
wrote:

Do you really think I would get more people to read my posts if I
opened with a screen full of dancing coloured kangaroos
accompanied or followed by me singing "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo"
before the reader even saw any text?

No, but more would read past the first para if they could
see that it stopped at the third.

Perhaps, Alan, but I tend to write off the top of my head.
Editing and condensing takes time, and is somewhat tedious.
I could, of course, write a two paragraph post. This would be
easy enough. However, the paragraphs might each be 500 words
long.:-)---- In fact, I could write one paragraph posts, using
dashes as separators, but I don't think that this would
necessarily make them more readable :-) ---- I'm striving to
provide information to readers who might be interested, and
I reckon if they are interested enough, they will read
them.----Were I writing an article or book for publication,
then I would always proofread for possible errors, ensure
that each word conveyed the best possible information,
and possibly even condense it a bit, but probably not much.---
One of my favorite novels is "Gone With The Wind" by
Margaret Mitchell. I have no idea if anyone has done
a "condensed" version, but I doubt that it would be as
good as the original. I've seen the movie version, which
was pretty good, but still, IMHO is still inferior to the
original book.---- My parents used to subscribe to
Readers Digest Condensed Books, but it didn't take
me long to read each quarterly issue from cover to cover.
If I liked a particular condensation, then would usually
get the original version from the library and read that.
Of course, this is just a novel. ---- Suppose we consider
The Second World War (Six Volume Boxed Set) (Paperback: 4736
pages.) by Winston S. Churchill . Do you think it would
be improved by condensing it to, say, half this length? I
don't! --- Or consider "The Merck Manual of Diagnosis
& Therapy" My 16th edition (1992). It is printed on
19 pound Bible paper, most of the text is in 9 point Times
Roman, runs to 2,884 pages including index. 203 mm tall,
140 mm wide, 70 mm thick. Could it be "condensed"? Not really.
The first edition in 1899 only had 262 pages, but medicine
has advanced a lot since then. A new edition comes out
about every 5 years. The contents of the 17th edition are free
online at
http://www.merck.com/mmpe/index.html
if anyone wants a look at it. I doubt that anyone would be
remotely interested in a "condensed version" :-)---
If I wanted quicker access to information, I would
work on improving my reading speed, which is
already pretty high. --- I'm amazed at computer users
who still use the 2 finger "hunt and peck" system
when there are excellent touch-typing programs
available.

So there you go, Alan. One paragraph above. It
contains Total Words: 421, Total Punctuation: 68,
Total Other Text: 16, Total Characters: 2418
---- No, I didn't count them. My Note Tab Pro
program includes this feature.:-)
---- I'm sure I could increase my readership by
only using words of two syllables, or by
providing an audio message so that readers can
listen rather than read. However, it would take
me more time and effort. I'm really not interested in
trying to get everyone on the group to read my
posts. If anyone is interested enough to read them,
they are invited to do so. If they aren't, they aren't
required to do so.:-) --- Anyway, mate, this is
an example of a two paragraph post, as per your
request. :-) ---- Incidentally, I get most of my
news from net sources, or the radio, as much less boring than
watching the nightly news on T.V. which actually covers
far less material, and worse yet, includes sports coverage
which I personally don't consider news at all.

Cheers,
Kangaroo16

I


Cheers, Alan, Australia