Secret Experiment

Just for the record, Melbourne had a real lockdown last winter. Only allowed to leave your house for one of four reasons, a night time curfew, could only travel up to 5 km from home, no on-site school etc etc. We went from >700 cases a day and an exponential growth rate to zero in about three months. Whatever one thinks of the politics, it worked.

Nice painting! However, I always thought that reef looked better with an Incat ferry stuck on top of it, surprised the artist didn't pop it in.

Yes, well I think I'd like the Beskell one too! I'll chase it up, thank you. While we're talking about Arctic adventures, here's an (old) post I like from Trevor Roberts who has sailed extensively south and north, and has overwintered in the ice several times. http://iron-bark.blogspot.com/2015/ Lots of details of the realities of freezing in - I wouldn't have immediately twigged that letting your mooring lines freeze into the ice could be a bad idea for when said ice breaks into large chunks each of which drift off separately into the distance. And who'd have thought that the ice was going to come inside the vessel? You can tell I'm from a warm climate I guess.

Tough crowd here! I really liked it, thanks Olaf for posting it.

Until the 1970s there used to be a slaughterhouse (abattoir is too nice a word for this facility) on the Incat side. The smell and the effluent had to be experienced to be believed. Add to that the sulphurous fumes from the zinc smelter and cadmium leaching from the roasted ore into the river and you had a real devil's brew. You could catch 12 inch flathead in Newtown Bay which weighed a couple of kilos thanks to the heavy metals (only joking). They tasted alright though, don't ask how I know. We didn't know better in those days.

ABC = SBS (Sydney Broadcasting Service). They think Paramatta is regional NSW and Tasmania is where they send foreign correspondents, if they had the funds now for foreign correspondents which they don't.

Great picture, great part of the world. So's Schuouten Island and surrounds for that matter.

Mallory and Irvine come to mind as well.

I see what you did there, well done!

"this is becoming a puzzle"!!!!! Masterful understatement, and not quite how I would have put it at the time.....

that's true, but at least you can put out a (smallish) metho fire by pouring water on it - isn't that what the kettle full of water is really there for?

Nah, the Maxie isn't pressurised, it's gravity fed. They're great stoves in my opinion. Dylan, probably best to not add too much more metho during the pre-heat, at least until the priming flame is on the ebb. But if you do, do it at night, the resulting rivers of fire can be spectacular (ask me how I know this!).

From http://www.maritimetas.org/collection-displays/may-queen/may-queens-working-life "Trading ketch races were a feature of many local regattas, particularly the Royal Hobart Regatta until 1954. The ketch race at the Royal Hobart Regatta was known as the Cock of the Derwent Race and there was intense rivalry between the ketches when they raced for the honour of flying the Golden Cock".

In Hobart back in the day when fishing boats and trading ketches were sail powered they would race around the cans in the regatta. The winner got the right to fly a rooster shaped device at the masthead for a year. At least that's how I understand it. Alternatively, Errol Flynn was a Hobart boy around then, the race might have been named after him?

Dreamer!!

Holy Sherlock, amazing what whoever wrote this thinks they can deduce from an accent. Wouldn't work in Oz, the Land of the Cashed Up Bogan.

Here's a couple... Or, Point taken that surf skis are not necessarily practical for anything other than surf (they're looooong, for a start!).

This fellow sailed (and rowed and dragged) his Mirror dinghy from the UK to the Black Sea, over 4,000 kms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unlikely_Voyage_of_Jack_de_Crow The book's good lock-down reading, by the way.

Agreed. I worked in a lab once that kept a continuously topped up 500 liter plastic tank full of distilled water in a dimly lit 4 degree C cool room. The little buggers even grew in that, where they got their nutrition from I have no idea.

^^^^How is that even possible?

Yep, good solution. And, if you run low on hull during that 12 hour thrash off a lee shore, you can always use your inbuilt back up system - amalgam filling/silver foil/saliva. It's a bastard getting the alligator clips in there though.

Back in the days when I was teaching neuroscience, there was always somebody who discovered that the neurotransmitter NMDA was really......

There's more to Oz than Queensland you know.

Totally agree. It's possible too that they were tolerated for a bit longer than sanity would have suggested because of the sheer amount of room they offered down below - particularly in the tumblehome era. Nothing like some of the quarter and half tonners which offered spacious accommodation for five plus the beer for the weekend away. Try that in your Farr 30 or whatever.

Very sad, and beyond disappointing if it was indeed arson. I've heard that the front section might be saved, hope this is the case (and that the insurance policies were in place). When the dust settles, should a rebuilding fund be established, I'd want to contribute something, time or money or both (if the virus leaves me with either!).