Australian Content

[haverfordwest]

Mike.

[haverfordwest]

Mike.

[haverfordwest]

Mike.

[haverfordwest]

First thing you do when you are 12 years old, is assimilate into the new place that you now live. Pembrokeshire Welsh accent (there are regional differences even in a small country like Wales), was dropped as soon as i could. Started talking like a London\Berkshire hybrid, so now i do not sound Welsh but have a sort of generalised Southern England accent. You don't know who Lionel Blair is Bruce !!! you need to get out more buddy 🤣🤣. Jap cars in the 1970's were all rust buckets., probably due to our climate. Mind you so were all the UK built cars 😂. Oh nooooooo an MG Midget, that was a woman's car buddy. Only back then the description was a bit more fruity than that, language wise.

Mike.

[seagoon]

Aaah! Thanks for the explanation, Mike. I never would have guessed that, not knowing who Lionel Blair was!
That Honda Civic was a lovely car.....at least it stayed together and always kept running, unlike the bloody MG Midget which it replaced!

[haverfordwest]

Lionel Blairs = flares Bruce, cockney rhyming slang. Half the population of Langley and Slough, the area we moved to from West Wales in the early 1960's, were London overspill families. Re-housed in huge London County Council housing estates. Anyway another lovely story from down under and some great photo's of you both. Mind you blotted your copybook by owning a Honda Civic 😁😁. Great stuff Bruce, thanks for sharing.

Mike.

[seagoon]

What are "lionels", Mike?
She's was wearing flared jeans (as was every young adult in 1975!) and sandal type footwear. Are "lionels" some brand name or a Welsh nickname for clothing?
Okay.....here are a couple more shots from that trip.

We drove over to Perth from Sydney. Still 400+ miles of dirt "highway" across the Nullabor and it had rained heavily the week preceding our trip.
Our brand-new Honda Civic was very un-new but I managed to strike a cavalier pose in the middle of nowhere.....



We had decided to blow what money we had left on a first-class cabin from Kalgoorlie....didn't want to do that return drive across the Nullabor.
So boarded the train at Kalgoorlie the morning after taking the car down and loading it onto a flat car. It left at night so the car was at the other end ready when we arrived.
One and a half days of first-class comfort and meals, best part of the trip. Picked up the car in Port Pirie, drove to Adelaide and spent a week there before returning tyo Sydney and back to work.

Wife Shirley in the cabin then me.
Happy days!

[haverfordwest]

Lovely memory Bruce, i see your good lady is wearing lionel's 😂😂.

I have to say the prototype looks far broader across the front, than the Hotbox payware model. Or maybe it is just the camera perspective.

I always enjoy your little stories from back in the day, cheers buddy.

Mike.

[seagoon]

In 1975 my wife and I travelled from Kalgoorlie to Port Pirie on the Trans-Australian train service (which ran between those two cities) behind a sister to that locomotive.
Ours was, at that time, CL1 and it eventually became CLP (for Passenger) 15 and went into ANR ownership. It has since been scrapped.

Here it is, at Port Augusta. The crew are having a chat and, further down the platform, is my young wife of two years sitting on the bench in the sun.
That was a fabulous trip. Fond memories.

[haverfordwest]

Far too seeeexy.



Mike.

[haverfordwest]

Same as in the UK then, Bruce. Except in Wales where the railway has sort of been pseudo re-nationalised, under the Transport For Wales banner. Also same here with British Rail, which was on the up when privatised. But being the Tory governments ideological enemy (all nationalised industries, BR at the top). They had to be buggered about with and broken up piecemeal.

I felt i had messed you about Bruce sorry. Eric is a mine of information and off topic posts, worse than you, Vern and myself 🤣🤣.

Mike.

[seagoon]

So have your railways gone all privatised then, like here in the UK ?

Sadly, yes, except for several state-owned passenger services.
All the freight operations are now in private hands and long-distance passenger services, such as the Ghan and the Indian-Pacific, are also privately operated.
I say "sadly" because back in the days of government ownership and operation passenger services were pretty good and the fares were kept at reasonable levels.

Anyway.....re: FO4, don't be silly! You didn't mess me about....I was pleased to try and help.

ERIC: I never knew that! An interesting tid-bit. Thank you.
It still surprises me today as to just how many people mis-spell the word "Qantas" by putting a 'u' after the 'q'.

[eric]

Off topic.... Qantas used the name QUBE for their reservations system from 1996 to 2007.... the company I worked for at the time did its replacement.

They probably still do a lot of that "starting things with a Q" simply because of their name.

[haverfordwest]

Due to all my messing you about with Fallout 4, Bruce.

Oh i see, how very Australian 😂😂. Thanks for the info link buddy.

So have your railways gone all privatised then, like here in the UK ?

Mike.

[seagoon]

Yes, I'm still talking to you. Why did you ask that?

It's just a quirky way of spelling "cube", Mike. As in a "cube of sugar", or "ice cube" or "Rubik's Cube".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qube_Holdings