we had a town meeting here yesterday for our particular area. There is a fire directly east of us. apparently the bush in our area is currently at 4.2% moisture -an unheard of dryness. Coastal tea tree and Banksia scrub is the most flammable type of bush there is , the main reason is because there is solid vegetation from the ground to the tree tops. The fires is being directly influenced by the sea breeze every day even when the wind is blowing against the fire the fire is slowly creeping forward. Weather conditions have been cooler which is helping slow the spread of the fire. They explained to us that they are trying to do a backburn right where the bush comes out into the grasslands ( farmlands) but they have to be so careful to get the wind right . It is basically their last fall back area before private property. They said IF they are successful then we will be safe and clear. they have this week of the right weather conditions, they will only light up the backburn in the evening to avoid the afternoon sea breeze. last night they tried and we had a few mm of rain that meant they couldn't get the backburn started. tonight there are meant to be thunder storms, so I guess they wont do it tonight - but I really don't know. So we are hopefully that the backburn will work. they seemed very positive that they will get on top of the fire. they did say that most of the fire line directly north of us is out or remaining pockets are in well burn over areas so not a threat to us. which is some good news Ds 22 was allowed back to his house yesterday. He said there has been no power for the whole 3 weeks. That the inside of his fridge was so bad he had to chuck the whole fridge out. ds 25 still has lots of active fire in his area and is very busy

the local primary school here has 18 students total the primary school I sub at has 87 students total the high school that covers years 7 to 12 has just over 100 students total

not completely correct. My FIL was German, from Prussia, He has told me about how bad it was getting in Germany and how practically the whole population of Prussia fled before the Russian invasions

I don’t know, we learned about the massacres in grade 4 of primary school. But that might be because one happened in my area and there is a grave memorial to the person who started it right beside a road in town. That would have been around 1980ish ( when I was in grade 4; not the massacre

Boy I must have lucked out at my high school. we had a great history curriculum , first sumer, and the Fertile Crescent, then Egypt, then Greece, then Rome, then English history up until the turning Australia into a penal colony, then heaps of stuff on convicts and the struggles of early settlers with farming and drought. That was 3 years worth. The following year was Australian politics so I stopped talking history. Though I did do an elective on Australian history In the 20th century at university. no history of North America though

Wasn’t my definition. It was the definition that was found in a quick google search. It wasn’t me misusing the word. I looked it up to learn what the difference are.

Sorry, I wasn’t saying that multiculturalism was superior. ☹️ I was trying to explain it is different to melting pot based on my google search . I wasn’t meaning to suggest that we are perfect or anything. Sorry if I worded it poorly

Actually there is a big difference between melting pot and multiculturalism. A quick google search will point out the main difference . I checked multiply sources to make sure that it wasn’t just a translation difference between US English and Commonwealth English. USA apparently is a melting pot, where people are encouraged to conform, or are viewed negatively, many US citizens on this thread have stated that the attitude of people they know is if you don’t like it there then leave multiculturalism is quite different. And is found in countries like Canada and Australia

I am starting to think the key difference is we have a very diverse multicultural country, where we embrace others cultures etc, whereas many people on this thread have stated that USA is a melting pot , I guess meaning that people have to melt off their culture and conform. off to research the difference between multicultural and melting pot

Please note it wasn’t an Australian who brought in politicians. Us Aussies mostly know you can not judge a country by their politicians. In fact it is a national sport here to have a go at politicians. I guess left over from being a penal colony.

A bit confused here, are you saying the non US citizens are bigots because we have a different view or are you saying the US citizens ripping us to shreds for having views are bigots? or are you saying that the rest of the non US world are all bigots? I have never had a conversation where that word has been used. I have only read it In literature. I am not sure if you are trying to be insulting or not. I have checked the dictionary def and are still confused.

And you are completely correct. Most Aussies cannot spell. It has been whole language since the early 70s and that means current school teachers teach what they learned, whole language. And we hate forms and paperwork. I have heard many stories of people completely messing up their paperwork on purpose because they feel it is ridiculous to do it in the first place. my Canadian DH would add that Aussies have so much trouble spelling because they cannot pronounce the words properly in the first place and so they fail to hear the sounds correctly. he gives the example of almond. Which here is pronounced armond . he use to get a kick out of asking people to spell almond and found they just about always left out the l.

Most Australian mammals and marsupials are nocturnal. there are lots of reptiles and birds in the day

there are no native cats in Australia. Cats are the number one destructive animal in Australia

state of disaster does lots of things, including allowing the army to be deployed to help, allowing incident controllers to take control of things and act instead of being bogged down by paperwork and having to get superiors approval, allowing the release of emergency funds to residents that are affected, allowing a lot of resources to be shifted to the affected area. the mandatroy evacuation is just the one people hear about

They have a state of disaster here in my area right at the moment. They are still not doing mandatory evacuations. At the town meeting just over a week ago the police were asked directly about this, and they said they do not and will not do mandatory evacuations

We don’t have mandatory evacuation in Australia. People are able to stay and risk being burned if they wish. The police just get them to give a statement that they are aware that nobody will be coming To save them. If they leave then the police can stop them going back in this year they are trailing differing levels of road blocks. Some are completely no body allowed, some require a special permit, some allow local residents that can prove residents in.

I guess we thought we were talking to friends

The quoted above, plus I am rural Australian, they tend to be a bit more straightforward in Conversation

Ah I see, here blue is information level. Used on the buffer regions blue=information yellow=advice orange= act and watch red = either emergancy evacuate now, or emergancy too late to leave go inside fire imminent .

A person from Sri Lanka is well aware that Australia knows about the ethnic cleansing and genocide that happened just a few years ago in their country. We took many of the refugees from that genocide. We Aussies wouldn’t need to stereotype, we would just state facts.

The message is currently yellow, it was orange overnight.

do you mean a singlet? We all wear them in winter under our clothes . never in summer though. way to hot

All well here. We went to watch and act during the night, but are back to advice today as the weather is cooler. They are doing another row of backburns today closer, to try and stop the previous backburns that got out of control yesterday. Lots of helicopters flying over, including some chinooks much to the twins delight. We have had a roadblock on the main road, immediately after our road turn off for the last 2 weeks. the road is closed, though they are letting farmers in to feed animals . They now have 3 police cars there. I don’t have any idea why they need 3 police cars, there is hardly any traffic to stop. Funnily the other day they dropped off one of those portable toilets there for the police at the roadblock.