We can also drink most men under the table. 
What a shame that yourself, pldenisson, and caiata are all arriving at slightly different times - we could have had an ANZUS dopefest.
Hey, Aghris!
Of COURSE I missed you mate, in fact I just thought about you last week [sub][sup]as I was standing in O’Reilly’s on the Paleisstraat[/sup][/sub] 
Sorry to hear you got laid off, and hats-off to the OZ Trip initiative! Having never been there myself, I can only say: have a great time, and maybe we ought to get together for a beer again when you get back?
And when I get back, of course. I’m on the other side of the world as well, albeit in LA.
So is anyone coming to Brisbane? Ever? One day we surely must have a dopefest which I manage to get to.
Go to Auckland by all means. Just don’t try to recharge the batteries on your cell phone. The whole erm… “city” was blacked out a couple of years back when an American tourist decided he wanted to have a shave. I think somebody else was trying to use a reading light at the same time (probably just looking at the pictures though), and the whole power grid collapsed. 
[sup]Sorry Wolf, I just can’t help meself.[/sup]
Aghris
Trust me when you arrive back home with a big grin on your face and a better outlook on the world/life suddenly you will feel to urge to laugh uncontrollably that you could ever have been worried about visiting Oz…that is of course presuming you ever do go back home (it’s a hell of a lot harder to leave than to go there).
Of course we won’t mention certain rather recent water crises in certain large cities in Oz, shall we, mates? Or bushfires near certain metropolitan areas? Or the snakes. Or the spiders. Or the weak beer.
No. No, we won’t mention these things, ‘cause we’re ANZACs, an’ all that, eh?
[sub]No worries, TLD! No worries![/sub]
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ice Wolf *
**
These are good points, but you forgot to mention the Kiwis! They’re EVERYWHERE in Sydney. Ewwwwwwww, getemoffme, getemoffme, getemoffme!
[sub]No worries, Wolfie![/sub]
Aghris, as you may have noticed, the Aussies and New Zealanders like to have the odd riendly “dig” at each other. A lot of this humour involve sheep, but we won’t go into that here. Anyway, these jokes quite ok for us Aussies, coz we have that warm inner glow of moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority over that trans-Tasman bunch, so we don’t mind humouring 'em.
[sub]You still love me Wolfie, right? Right? Hello?.. Helloa?.. um…Anybody there?[/sub]
Ice Wolf
maybe you can help me with a dilemma. On Dec 3 I can become an Australian citizen while retaining my NZ citizenship as well. But if I take out Aussie citizenship, will I turn into someone like TLD? Of course if I have citizenship then I can actually vote in the elections…
Man, I was just scanning the typos and grammatical brainfarts in that last post of mine…
Hmmm.
Must be the fact that my non-Kiwi brain is so highly tuned, eh Wolfie?
Primaflora, I might have known, I might have known.
Gaaaack! they’re taking over!
Careful, treasure. I think that “warm inner glow” is coming from all that weak beer …
Nah, Aghris, Kiwis and Aussies love each other! We even give each other hugs! Now and then, the hugs end up involving hands wrapped around the throat, but really! We’re just playing!
Seriously, though – check out TLD’s site in his sig. Well worth a pop over and look. He’s worked very hard on that – and he even lets ol’ lupine fleabags like me play there!
Gad! You want to vote for politicians? Australasian politicians (note, I’m lumping our crowd in as well, here)?!?
You must be a kind soul!
Convince TLD to run. Or woolly. Then I’d definitely say – go for it!
[sub]And because I secretly admire TLD – turning into something like him can’t be all bad. It’s survivable, so I hear.[/sub]
See, that’s what I’m worried about. Here in Holland all we have to look out for are rabid cows or so. (And foot and mouth of course)
Ack! Weak beer?? I can handle poisonous beasts and above boiling point temperatures, but weak beer?? Maybe I chose the wrong country afterall…
Ah well… No NZ for me probably. I only have about 3 months before my visum expires and hadn’t planned on going there actually. Three months is short enough to travel such a huge country as OZ is, so I chose to do NZ in a few years from now. But no worries, I will definitely drop by sometime. I have vowed to myself that I have travelled the entire northern hemisphere before I’m 30 and the southern before I’m 35. So you will be seeing me most certainly.
And the banter back and forth between you guys is not strange to us Dutch guys. We have the same thing with our Southern neighbours the Belgians and to a somewhat rougher extent our Eastern neighbours the Germans (but that goes without saying ofcourse ;)). And I had the pleasure of working with both an Australian and Kiwi sometime ago and I fondly remember their ‘frank’ exchanges back and forth
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ice Wolf *
**
Arrrrr-OOOOOOOOO!!!
[sub]Sorry, it’s a lupo-canine hijack thing.[/sub]
Now returning you to regular programming…
Aghris, you’ll be welcomed over here in NZ anytime you can come by.
Not to mention the parties at Coldfire’s house, right? Geez, I knew I was going out on a limb thinking you were American. Your English, in hindsight, was waaaay too good for that! d&r
To all of our wonderful American friends out there who felt the slightest bit insulted by the above remark –
– relax. He’s Australian.
That should explain everything, m’kay?
Heh, if you guys are representative for the OZ and NZ people, I think that I feel just at home there…
Anyway, another question for you Aussie people: When I’m in Darwin I plan to travel to Perth a few days after that. It’s quite a distance (about 3000 kilometers or so?). What do you think will be the best mode of transportation to use? I’ve been browsing the internet and found some interesting tours that take you from North to South through some of the parks and the outback, but I’m a bit worried that that will be a bit too touristy and won’t actually let you experience anything, not to mention incredibly expensive. On the other hand, it’s too far away to rent a car and travel all by myself (I don’t trust myself all alone in a car in the desert, I know too little about engines to get stranded). What do you think?
Agrhis, one of the joys of backpacking is that you will probably make friends very quickly, and those friends may well become travelling companions. So, teamed up with a jovial Scotsman, a beery Londoner, a horny Dane, and some bloke with a maple leaf on his backpack, you’ll be bound to have at least one among your number with enough mechanical experience to enable you to confidently buy a car. This isn’t as silly as it sounds -many tourists buy an old car for one or two thousand dollars, keep it for six months, and sell it again to the next batch of suckers… erm,… backpackers when they fly home. It seems a paticularly popular choice for the Europeans for some reason.
The above option does have its risks, and I’m by no means trying to talk you into it, but it is worth considering. If you decide to do it, whatever else you do, TAKE PLENTY OF WATER!!!.
Ahmmmm. A short piece of advice about the Wet. There’s only one guaranteed way to get from Darwin to Perth at that time of year, and that is to fly. You really don’t want to rely on the milk runs and you don’t want to even try going from Darwin to Perth by road. (actually, since Ansett went broke I don’t think there even IS a milk run anymore).
Much as I love Katherine, Broome, Exmouth, etc - just don’t. Either take the train (the Ghan - extremely expensive) or take advantage of the fact that when you’re flying in from overseas you normally get a couple of internal fares at dirt cheap prices. There’s even this really cute thing - we can probably book you domestic travel (assuming that it isn’t offered on as an extra on your fare) at a far cheaper rate than you can purchase it for from the US (for some reason, even though our money is worth half of yours, we still pay much less for return airfares to the US that you pay to come here).
If you can only get one “free” link on your ticket, make it Darwin - Perth. It’s a trip you never want to do by coach or car, especially in summer and during the Wet. Trust me, you’ll find enough fellow travellers to get the rest of the way around our great nation at that time of year, but even though it’s only 3,000 k on the map as the crow flies, it’s a LOT further if you want to travel on ROADS.
let’s not tell him about the dropbears, m’kay?