Checked your FR page ..... you guys run an air ambulance, yes?
Liked the map of Oz ..... esp. the "sharks with frickin' lasers" -- now that was good for a laugh!
Brisbane -- you guys are in the warm and trade-windy, rainy part of Oz, aren't you? None of that dreaded 10,000-year drought stuff where you are. But you aren't far enough north to start seeing jungly things. Tho' I guess you're eligible for funnel-webs and blue-rings and fer-de-lances and dingoes just about anywhere you go in Oz. At least the abos killed off the marsupial lions for you!
Where were you in the States before you went Down Under?
Think you're gonna stick?
Using atlases and different sorts of enviro maps (rainfall, ambient temps, etc.) I once determined, in a schoolboy way, that SW Australia would be the best-favored weatherwise and every otherwise .... meaning that part of the south coast east of Fremantle, opposite the Archipelago of the Recherche. Ever been there or know anyone who has? Let me down easy .... the archipelago is solid fer-de-lances eating funnel-webs and vice-versa, right? And the shallows are all stingrays and blue-rings, and the great whites come right up into the surf? (Steeling myself for letdown ....)
Another part of the Antipodes I thought might be interesting is Christmas Island, 400 mi. ESE of Christchurch, part of New Zealand, and the farthest-south of all the Polynesian Islands, and actually a temperate-zone island, about, umm, 40o S Latitude iirc. Fairly cool, moist climate, and some unusual weather effects (unique cloud formations). Long, long, nearly-deserted beaches. But has air service and a weekly ship from Kiwiland. Sounds interesting. (I once spent a year on an island while in the Nav .... it's a life one could get used to.)
Yes. The RFD provides air ambulance service in our area plus we have an EMT vehicle for local emergencies. Our main mission is to provide emergency service and airlift service to the bush (what Yanks call the outback).
Brisbane is pretty much like San Diego in a way. Cool in winter, rain, but gets bloody hot in summer.
And too, we do have the pesty critters, getting into everything, such as but not included
Sure cure for constipation they are.
I live on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.
Not sure If my contract will be extended. I like it here in Oz, met new friends, new culture. Depends on how work goes in the states, who'll get elected president and how long it'll take to turn things around. If Romney get in I sure hope he won't go and say he inherited the mess from Obama. That'd turn me off real quick.
Been up to New Zealand, over to Tahiti, Bora Bora ... interesting places.
Thanks for your post, Janey