What if you lived in Australia?

[Arturo2nd]

I had to go through 200+ pages to find where I had put this & replace it. So here it is again. No need for the Australian tourist bureau to thank me or ship a saltwater croc C.O.D.

[bloke57]

It's 30/31 degrees C in London (86/88 F).

I consider this temperature a form of oppression and a denial of my human rights.

I demand a halving of this heat to sensible levels.

How do you Aussies cope?

[andw]

Originally Posted by bloke57

It's 30/31 degrees C in London (86/88 F).
...
How do you Aussies cope?

We eat our breakfast then wait for it to warm up to 40 C by lunchtime.

[blondifan]

Originally Posted by andw

... wait for it to warm up to 40 C by lunchtime.

or move to Mania.


(Please, it can get lonely here!)

[trailmaster]

Is the heat in Australia a dry heat,or a humid heat? Here in Chicago now it is summer and it get's quite hot outside and it's very humid, which makes it feel even hottter. Air conditioning or the use of a fan is essential. In contrast if one lives in Arizona, or Nevada, or New Mexico, or southern California the heat is a dry heat. These states also use air conditioning and fans, but that sticky feeling is absent in the air, because of the very low desert-like humidity.

[Sir Honkers]

Originally Posted by bloke57

It's 30/31 degrees C in London (86/88 F).

I consider this temperature a form of oppression and a denial of my human rights.

I demand a halving of this heat to sensible levels.

How do you Aussies cope?

Put on another jumper.

Originally Posted by trailmaster

Is the heat in Australia a dry heat,or a humid heat? .

Like America, Australia is a place of climatic variation. Dry heat, humid heat and everything in between heat.

[Hikarufan]

It's dry heat where I live but up North it's humid, like 100% in the wet season. 46C is the hottest day we've ever had around these parts, in 2009.

[effCup]

Originally Posted by blondifan

a kiwi (meant as a term of endearment as is common with most Aussies when refering to non-Māori New Zealanders).

So you don't call Maori people Kiwis? Do you just call them Maori, or something else? Just curious; not insinuating anything.

Some use the un-endearing term "Mossies" for Oz-resident Maori.

[blondifan]

Originally Posted by effCup

So you don't call Maori people Kiwis? Do you just call them Maori, or something else? Just curious; not insinuating anything.

Some use the un-endearing term "Mossies" for Oz-resident Maori.

It's an assumption, on my part. I have only met a few Maori and the one i've known longest prefered to be known as something else, which was puzzling at the time (in the nineties) and he claimed rightfully, i wouldn't understand, so i dropped it. As far as i know we're still friends. We played in a couple of bands together.

Better ask an Aussie

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by tmee2000

I think the numbers might be a bit less than that now. A 2015 Guardian article I read recently quoted

"The latest national livestock survey showed flock numbers had dropped by 3.2% to 29.6 million, but sheep still outnumber people six to one.
Sheep numbers have been on a downward slide since 1982 where they had peaked at 70.3m."

In Australia it is a similar story of declining numbers:

The same Guardian article:

"Australia’s trends have also mirrored New Zealand - the sheep population there declined from 170m in 1990 to an estimated 72.2m in 2014."

This is from a few years ago:

You could be right-the figure of 60m was from the last time I checked-as for the figure of 90m -well that was the industry figure (and realistically-we would know after all-it was our core business) from the mid 1970s. To put things in perspective-I indicated a season kill for Pukeuri of 4-5 million being typical in my day (bear in mind I was only working there during the university holidays-from Nov-Feb....which fortunately for us students coincided with the peak of the season) over the whole season-then multiply that over the whole of NZ-where there would have been 20+ Freezing works-and you might well be looking at an annual total kill of perhaps 30+ million animals-that gives you some idea of the scale of the sheepmeat industry in NZ in those days.

Just about every major town of above say 15,000 population would have had a freezing works in the vicinity-the one I worked at (just north of Oamaru) would have been rated as a large medium sized one-it ran four killing chains-Alliance, near Invercargill-ran 8 chains-though not necessarily for the entire season-its annual kill might have been in the 8-10 million range. Pukeuri, where I was-had a reputation as an industry 'heavy hitter' as it ran at a slightly faster rate-6.8 carcasses per minute IIRC than a lot of the others so generally achieved a higher than average kill rate for a works its size.

The reason there were so many is tied up with the shape and geography of NZ and the need to keep transportation times and costs down to reasonable levels-both from a economic perspective-but also for animal condition and welfare-bearing in mind we were exporting premium quality product-and still do-especially to the UK and middle east. Sheep do not travel well over long distances-so freezing works were generally drawing stock from no more than a days transport away-and off the main highways, NZ's back country roads are generally narrow, winding and dusty....

A bit of history: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/agricult...ustries/page-7

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photogra...freezing-works