As an NZ resident, I am morally obliged to point out that Australia is a horrible place populated by criminals and terrible rugby teams, but I did live there for two years and in reality, it's not actually that bad.

Yes, their government are a shower of complete dickheads both in their own right and in the fact that they have their collective head shoved so far up Americas arse they can practically see the back of uncle sams tonsils. The immigration policy is pretty much barbaric and they seem hellbent on ruining the country as fast as humanly possible. And I haven't even gotten started on how unbelievably racist the country as a whole is (this is a country that only got rid of it's "White Australia Policy" in the 70s).

Border security, while they can be complete arseholes are not nearly as bad as they're portrayed on those TV shows. They do have a lot of idiots flouting the biosecurity laws (Johnny Depp is the least of their problems), but in general as long as you don't make the mistake of not being white, they're far more interested in any fruit you might have than any bills with coke on them. (side note: don't bring cash to Australia, almost every transaction is electronic there).

But the country itself has some great things going for it. Some of the scenery is amazing, the parts of the reef that aren't bleached are stunning, the food in the cities is amazing (as is the coffee, especially in Melbourne and Sydney).

*downunder (Hamish Blake and Andy Lee work for FOX FM in Melbourne)

At least near the centre of London it can also be quicker to just walk instead of taking the tube for a few stops. The density of stations must be part of the slowness.

In Melbourne the fare for travelling anywhere as far as the end of zone 2 (about 30 kms out of the city) is $A3.90 (£1.94/€2.55 today) although there is also a one off $A6 charge for our inferior oyster card equivalent (called Myki)... but even that $A9.90/€6.46 euros/£4.92 is closer to German prices than London.

There was only the plume of smoke the first day - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-11/industrial-fire-sends-thick-smoke-across-melbourne/7080002

Somehow I managed to miss it, despite my office having almost the same view of the city that the thumbnail of that video has, and despite living 1.5kms from the fire! In my defence though there is terrain in the way. It is a 10 minute and 5 km drive, but that's because there is no direct road... have a look at the map, https://goo.gl/maps/PxVBFJWaLA92 and the problem is the western ring road, 400m to the south of the fire.

Can you see the smoke http://digg.com/video/melbourne-tire-fire

Is this only the crap-standard American coffee? Because I've never heard of this "effect" before - and I dont know a single person that suffers from this. And we're massive coffee drinkers here in Melbourne.

Another Great Song of The 60s, my High School Years here in AUSTRALIA. SIMPLICITY of "beat" and able to sing along and simple jive at the the disco clubs so prevalent here in the 60s.
WOW ! The girl in the video, Gorgeous, and those simple gyrations just blow me away. Amazing that the " short shorts" are the "In item " for the girls in Summer. My kids now their 20s - 30s LOVE the 60s Music. Whoever the girl is: Liz Derringer , take a bow
Best regards
Billy Bob Melbourne AUSTRALIA

You're welcome

That's a great aarvark story I'm actually quite happy to be associated with such cute little fellows.

I don't think our zoos have one though

According to my on-line dictionary they're maasika in Finnish, but I assume they're not terribly common there

That's the corner of Bell St and St Georges Rd, Preston, in Melbourne - https://goo.gl/maps/0YqGp

In Streetview, face east on Bell St. The google car was on the other side of the road going west, but it's unmistakably the place.

Approx 20 mins drive from me.

Your video, Red Bull F1 vs V8 Supercar vs C63 AMG (Melbourne, 2014), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Red Bull F1 vs V8 Supercar vs C63 AMG (Melbourne, 2014) has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.

I've only seen half the telecast... it was shown in the middle of the night, so I taped it. The part of the race I've seen, and all the reports, were excellent. This one race should have put the haters back in their box... there was plenty of racing, plenty of action, and all it needed was someone to be excluded and have an appeal pending for the final outcome and it would be exactly like the F1 of old Only better!

Actually, given that Dan Ricciardo's appeal for 2nd place from Melbourne is still outstanding, I think we can even take that.

*backup=[...snipped...]

Thanks. I'm from Melbourne, and it does seem to depend on the day whether Vimeo will be awesome or sucky. Even on bad days though, it does have the advantage that vimeo embeds are very rarely region blocked... even if they might take a while to buffer (and then mysteriously fail and go back to the start 20 seconds before the end). Also, there is some really great stuff there.

The reason that youtube and dailymotion seem better in comparison here is that they have caches in our local ISP's, iiNet in my case, and Vimeo doesn't seem to have the same agreements.

Well you know what cheating mongrels us Aussies can be when there's a sporting competition involved... like the infamous underarm ball - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_FnSfVSG6c

It's really the team and not the driver though. This year each car is required to be fitted with an FIA fuel sensor to ensure that they don't exceed the maximum 100kg/hr fuel flow. In this case, the team found that the sensor was reading a bit high, so complying with it would mean a loss of power... so they changed the ECU settings to ignore it and go with their calculated values instead. They had been told to use the readings from the sensor, but with an offset applied, but chose not to because they felt it was still inaccurate.

The basis for the steward's decision to exclude the car was that "it is not within their discretion to run a different fuel flow measurement method without the permission of the FIA"

I imagine that the basis of their appeal against this decision will be that they did not actually exceed the maximum, it was a sensor error that made it appear that they did so, and that they therefore gained no advantage.

My sources for this are mostly these two articles - http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ricciardo-excluded-from-melbourne-result/ and http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/red-bull-confident-of-winning-fuel-flow-appeal/

It will be interesting to see how combining an allowance of 5 engine blocks with totally new engine works out... particularly after the results of testing.

In the pool amongst my friends, I have 12 cars managing to finish at Melbourne.

Anyone know off hand whether the turbo counts as part of the "complete engine unit?"