patham

I thought that was pretty typical weather from my grand total of 2 weeks in the country (in a November if I remember right). Not 4 seasons in a day, but 4 in an hour.

/S = ON Slowbee- did you not get the memo from Matt & Admin ? You're gonna get this thread locked up by using the C word and bringing up current events (a double no-no)- and then where are we "when-we's" of the good old hub days meant to go? /S = OFF

I miss old Torpedo 7, they were my go-to online shop here, just a shame they decided to pull out of Aus.

I use a Thule Easy-fold XT3. Back in SA I had a Thule hatch hanger-on style and I really didn't trust it for long trips or heavy loads (more than 1 bike). As I now carry 3 x dual-suss, I don't want that load on the sheet metal. The in-thing now in Aus looking at the trail head car-parks is to buy an expensive 4x4 dual cab, and put a tailgate pad on !

Slowbee, all I know is that NZ trails are typically one or two levels up (in terms of technicality) from what I ride here in Aus, which is a level up from Gauteng. My answer is that I used my 100 mm full sus XC bike for 2 years here, but I lost confidence after an OTB and a suspected dislocated jaw (PS - no-one tell the wife - that was an unreported injury). I then moved to 140 mm travel and slacker geometry trail bikes which I think are better suited. My son has had enough of 140 mm, and is waiting for the next batch of 160 mm Jeffsy's to arrive,, but I think I am at my gnarly comfort level. Having said that - it depends where you are on the [skills/ability/confidence vs nominal bike capability] matrix. There is one dude I see on my trails on a custom built zero-suspension touring bike (relies on thick tyres and a flexy truss -shaped front fork to absorb the knocks), and he seems to do fine. He said after doing many, many thousands of km on that bike, it just feels natural to him and he can't consider changing. And there are one or two XC hardtail race snakes who zoom past me (twice- because they do laps!), and they just have the skills to handle the terrain with the bike they know. So in short - the Epic probably not ideal, but you could make it work on selected rides. I do think you will be able to sell it in Spez & marathon mad SA for far more than if you sold it in NZ.

My first full-suspension bike was bought nearly new (on the hub nogal). I had done the research, it was a bit of a boutique Canadian brand, but there were agents listed in all the big cities. A few months afterwards, the brand (or its distributor) withdrew from the SA market and I was left unsupported. Back then I had enough spare time to be my own maintainer, could trawl the internet for hours searching for equivalent hangers, could find some-one to custom make vesconite pivot bushes and hardware etc. So I got by, but with needless effort. So there is a downside and a hidden future burden to having an unsupported brand bike. The experience has also made me steer clear of boutique brands, I am now sticking to brands that are too big to fail, and have a dealer in nearly every suburb. What a pleasure to go into the LBS, ask hopefully if they have a replacement bolt for part XXX, and they just reach into the random reclaim box and give it to you.

This is my philosophy on other drivers who are too hesitant and in so doing create their own hazard. I can handle good drivers, I can try and accommodate the errors of bad drivers, but its hard to deal with someone who can't make up their mind and is hence unpredictable.

I agree on this part- its the random boxes of junk that are the worst. Far more trouble than the beds etc. In our rental on arrival we had an entire room filled with boxes of stuff. And in the end you realise that if you could live without the stuff that's in the boxes for 6 months, you probably didn't need it in your life anyway.

To follow on from this. Yes, most furniture from SA is too big for houses in Aus & NZ. But certainly in Aus, furniture is either cheap flatpack rubbish, or expensive Indonesian rubbish, or ultra expensive. So weed you stuff out for size and quality, but try and bring your quality stuff over. Life is too short for flatpacked, wobbly kitchen tables. I don't regret brining the rhodesian teak outdoor set, the kiaat dining room set (which is now the lockdown office furniture) and buffalo leather couches. But I will admit that these possessions can limit suitability of the available housing. In Aus, most older houses do not fit reasonable family sized fridges. What many people do here though is have the daily use "slim" fridge in the kitchen, and keep the big fridge/freezer in the garage. As theft rates are low (but certainly not zero), many folk in the suburbs park on the street and use the garage for storage. Don't bother with the dishwasher (I think) - looks like many are built in. We used a 40 ft container, but the guys packed very efficiently into the front half, so there was loads of room left over. And I will admit we brought too much. You have to weed out the boxes of university correspondence that you haven't looked at for 20 years before you move! Garden tools, ladders etc we all left behind. Mainly for bio-security - those items often get pinged and then you get charged a cleaning / disinfection fee that is too high relative to the replacement cost.

I reckon this is just a Darwinian stress-test to weed out the weak - so good work so far! But I have heard stories of people that have had to get into Aus or NZ recently needing to do unreal amounts of arrangements and planning up to practically the last second to get flights, COVID tests, quarantine accommodation and visa's to line up with not only the eventual destination but also the intermediate transfers/stops along the way. Especially now that reasonably direct flights don't exist any more. For example, it now seems easier to route from Europe to the US, then to Aus rather than via Asia.

Looking back - the ideal time to emigrate is when you are young, with no commitments, and bullet-proof. Although for many people, that also means you don't have the skills to qualify for migrant programs (if heritage/ancestry pathways are not available). I am also from Zim, and my move to S.A. was a soft one (went to study there, and never really went back), and was painless seeing as my belongings fitted in one suitcase, and one up from the Hitchhiker's Arthur Dent, I also had a towel and a duvet. Easy-peasy. Next move to Aus, when its house, spouse & dependents and 20+ years older was orders of magnitude more difficult. But no regrets on the move, or on the timing. Sure life would have been easier/better if we had moved 5, 10 or 15 years earlier, but its pointless beating yourself up about it. We're not fortune-tellers and we all made our decisions with the best intent at the time.

Congrats. Be ruthless with chucking things out now. From our own experience, I wonder what kicking off migration with a 2 weeks confinement feels like? Its a given that with young kids it would be a nightmare to keep them happy, for our first few weeks the local park was well frequented. With Brisbane summer heat and the effects of jet-lag, late night excursions to the park were invaluable. But purely from an adults point of view, maybe it has some postives as long as you have a suitable internet device. It's possibly a chance to do all the last minute arrangements, research, get a feel for local traffic, transport, media, ads, shopping and brands all whilst the basics of life are being tended to by others. Because there sure isn't enough time on the S.A. side to do that in the last few weeks.

You could be waiting a while. The little travel bubble to anywhere in Aus has also well and truly popped.

Cheers Gummi. I may not make a formal exit, but I think I am slowly drifting away into the void (being anti most other social media formats).

Yup, you know things are bad when the Sydney-siders start mentioning about the cost of living and house prices.

Us BrisVegans just squeaked into the top 10 over here, the poor second cousins of the antipodes. I might just have to binge-eat some reasonably priced tropical fruit to console myself....????

At least it looks like the corporate budget was spent by the R&D team on the flavour and not by marketing on the label imagery.

Ditto. In Aus Year 1 I got a whole (gutted) snapper that I wanted to stuff & bake. All I needed to do was de-scale. Its been so long since I descaled a fish that I didn't have an inkling, and both me and the kitchen ended up covered in loose scales. Haven't been brave enough to try it again since.

Cool. And getting someone to do the hard yards of filleting is even better. My fav snapper recipe is mix salt, pepper & dried herbs in flour, dip the fillet in egg, coat with the flour & pan fry. Drop some garlic prawns in the same pan in the last few minutes - gives a little cross-pollination of flavours.

Confession time people. How many of you read this simple statement and immediately the taste buds were triggered, and you started salivating? I can't be the only one surely ?

Comps for the Doors were practically a unit of currency in my uni Res, and were traded, bartered and when the funds were low, begged for !

I think my Doors days were 93 to about 95. To stick to the thread title, who remembers the gig the Mission played there ? I still remember waiting in line to get in to the gig when a V8 re-engined tow truck bakkie came past on idle and let out the loudest backfire - and half the queue dropped for cover ! Quite the neighborhood.

Change of continent, but I did some work in Vietnam for a few years. Hanoi was absolutely crazy as well. The mine's expat staff, who all had local licenses, were only allowed to drive in the location of the mine, for the trip to the airport to Hanoi they had to have a local driver. The airport run got better when a new dual-carriageway highway opened up, as most of the hot spots could be avoided. But with my own two eyes I saw a truck going down the wrong carriageway once. He knew he was in the wrong, and was concerned enough to be in the slow lane with his hazards on, but that was the extent of his caring....

I started typing a long reply exactly about Maputo, got distracted, then my browser lost my text entry. Here is attempt 2. Most of Maputo I though was OK, but there was one crazy intersection on the EN1 heading north, close to the outskirts of town. It was multiple lanes and has/had bus and taxi ranks on all corners, and was a total mess of vehicles pulling on, pulling off, with traffic, against traffic, pedestrians running everywhere, you name it. It was the one place where driving defensively would not work - take the offensive - spot a gap and put foot! On one memorable occasion I (in my pretend Landy - Freelander) was in convoy with a very unreliable Jeep Grand Cherokee (their diesel injector issues started just after the border). Typical symptoms were kangaroo lurches and pull-backs as the fuel came and went, sometimes followed by intermittent cut-outs. As the sweeper, I could see them up ahead of me lurching haphazardly (fitting in quite well to the local driving pattern), but I had already made up my mind that no way was I towing them through the intersection if they broke down- we would both end up getting totalled. If it died, I would rescue the people and their belongings, but their car was going to be sacrificed and left behind. Luckily - it didn't come to that.... Fun times indeed. I still remember in that trip having to do an unplanned overnight stay at Xai-Xai whilst the Jeep had a bit of an emergency fuel system clean. An unfinished back-packers, the only place we could find, was a mosquito pit from hell. Karma was working though - the owner of the jeep won the prize for the most mozzie bites at over 160.

Agreed. I realised I can do a pretty good steak after a few times of eating out and reflecting that my steaks are better than the average restaurant's ones. However, the high end specialist steak restaurants that source great meat, dress and age it appropriately etc. are literally a cut above what I can do, so I don't mind paying those high end prices for a rare (pardon the pun) treat.