A discussion at lunchtime today about travelling in other countries and the distances we are used to - and many others aren't - was highlighted by a graphic I spotted on Facebook just after I arrived home. I tried to find it on the greyhound.com.au web site to link to it but failed miserably. Accordingly I did a screen print to file and have added it below.
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attachment=313]
It illustrates how big Australia really is...
Left click on the image to see it in a larger window.
Something that is lost on some overseas visitors.
We had a couple here in Melbourne who when asked what were their travel plans next, they said they were thinking of hiring a car and driving to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock, thinking it would only take a couple of days ....
G'day!
Well, did ~13 000 km in four weeks in April 2016 going from Sydney to Cairns, then via 62 and 63 back to Charters Towers (due to flooding), Three Ways, Alice Springs, Uluru and Kata Tjuta, Adelaide, Mt. Gambier, Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, Wilsons Prom., Bright, Canberra and Sydney.
I loved every km of it and would love to do it again. But driving in Australia is VERY easy compared to many other places I have been. Longest stint was Mt. Isa to Alice Springs in one day. However, it was not planed to be in one go. Going 1155 km in one day here in Europe is painful to say the least.
The real OZ
Bo
You forgot to include that there are no passport requirements and checkpoints as you travel throughout our continent, unlike some other continents around our globe.
Many of us don't think too much of travelling 500KM in a day (single driver, Brisbane to Rockhampton) yet on our last trip to NZ, one B&B owner was truly astounded that we had travelled 100KM in one day over there. Apparently it's just not done. Same story when we self-drove around the UK, the lodgings people didn't believe our travel rate.
That image really illustrated what we Aussies take for granted on a daily basis.
Doug
(17-04-2019, 07:30 AM)VK4ADC Wrote: [ -> ]yet on our last trip to NZ, one B&B owner was truly astounded that we had travelled 100KM in one day over there. Apparently it's just not done.
Not just NZ ... here too.
When I lived just outside of Launceston I occasionally drove down to Hobart and back on a Saturday for the Salamanca market. It's just over a 2 hour drive each way.
Some of the locals were aghast - it seemed like the mainland equivalent of driving Sydney to Brisbane and back in one day.
And overseas amateurs wonder why signal propagation to the different parts of VK is so variable.
The "why can't I work all VK prefixes at once ?? " seems common.
The distances between here (Brisbane area) and Perth is thousands of KM and even on HF that is a major distance. On VHF it becomes impossible without sporadic E propagation. Even tropo won't get you to VK6 from VK4 - too far and no real paths.
In the EU or USA , that represents a lot of amateurs who could be worked.
Whilst it is "normal" to travel long distances in Oz I think the downside of doing so is you miss the details that you might otherwise find if you took your time.
When we visit relatives it's 350km one way.
I've been driving to Canberra on a regular basis, that's 742km one way.
I would dearly like to stop and explore some of the places along the way but there's little time for that (besides safety breaks) because it bites into time spent at the destination.
From a radio perspective and since we're at the arse end of the world (Who said that?) I suppose you could say that a southern hemisphere DXCC is more difficult to achieve than a northern hemisphere DXCC.
For me a contact with VK6 which is about 3,000km rates as DX. More so when on qrp cw al SOTA for example.
My nearest ham shop is in melbourne so i would have to drive 4 days to get a pl259 plug and a new ts590s. [if i wanted to look around in the shop and drool HI]
That would be driving say from 730am to 5pm or 6pm each day. [not pushing it]
its a long way...
vk6ro
e&oe
Everyone is correct about the difficulties of communications here in Australia. A DXCC takes a lot of work and have been listening as of late to some of the IOTA activations.
Just about straight impossible with the poor band conditions we are suffering at the moment.
More so when the kilowatt joes climb into the pileups.
Its interesting to check some of the remote receivers in Europe at times, and have a listen to 80 & 40m for example.
In some respects we are lucky i.e. to be away from the pileups, but also unlucky due the distance away when chasing DXCC etc.
(17-04-2019, 08:48 AM)VK3ALB Wrote: [ -> ]Whilst it is "normal" to travel long distances in Oz I think the downside of doing so is you miss the details that you might otherwise find if you took your time.
...
I would dearly like to stop and explore some of the places along the way but there's little time for that (besides safety breaks) because it bites into time spent at the destination.
It's nice to take the time to "smell the flowers" but sometimes that is not possible. We try to do that one-way and low-fly the return (or vice versa). But if you need to get somewhere - not a very close somewhere at that - then it becomes amazing how far you can drive in one day and there is usually a lot more distance beyond that to further destinations.
Towing a caravan alters the perspective a bit too. Not the speed because you can tow at 100 or 110KPH with most vehicles without too significant a fuel penalty but because you can stop at will and have a morning cuppa and then, later, a lunch break, self-hosted. Plus we tend not to travel for as much of the day so can spend time at intermediate destinations thus "smelling the flowers". Last year we did a trip nominally Brissy to Rocky, about 1300KM up and back the Pacific Hwy, but we took the round-trip scenic route adding about 1000KM extra to the trip along with about 2 weeks of looking around. It's great not to be in a hurry
all of the time.
Go back to that original image (Post #1) and see how many countries you would have passed through doing a couple of thousand Kms.
Yes, my doctor who is a recent immigrant was amazed when I told him that we were driving from Gladstone to Brisbane on the weekend. He assumed that I would be flying. I didn't have the heart to tell him that we have driven down there and back in one day on several occasions. 550km is just down the road!
A former partner from Canada once said it was (when they lived in Canada), quite a regular thing to travel a couple of hundred kilometers to go to the beach for the day.
So we are not the only nation to think that sort of distance is 'just down the road'.
My wife and I went with a friend to Robe (South Australia) for the day (400km round trip) last week just to transport a yacht between abodes.
Very pleasant being able to look at the scenery for a change, although it was all eyes open watching for deer, kangaroo's, sheep and cattle on the road on the return leg of the journey.