I’m still alive.

OK.  Is it safe to come out?  It seems safe.  Nobody’s died in over a week.  Well… nobody I know, and nobody famous.  But somebody somewhere is bound to have died.  It happens a lot.  Only I don’t tend to cry quite so much if it’s a total stranger. 

Alrighty then.  Back to our scheduled programming.

I’ve been sitting on half a story about my bike for a while.  But it still isn’t ready to hatch.

So here’s a reminder about how big Australia really is.  I’ve covered this before, but I got a bit of junkmail from my little sister this week and it is a very graphic depiction of how huge this place really is.  Someone has inserted a scale model of Europe into Australia – quite a painful procedure unless you use a water-based lubricant or a general anaesthetic.  The picture is a copy of a postcard, so we’re stuck with the cute animals.  And, yes.  If you’re planning on visiting Australia, all 3 animals pictured have been directly linked to the deaths of tourists.  But they’re still cute in a we-don’t-care-much-for-the-idiots-that-get-too-close-to-the-fauna kind of way.

How big is big?  And how little of our wide brown land do we actually use?  Here’s a hint.  Australia’s population is just over 20 million.  According to the highly esteemed and trustworthy CIA, the European countries in the picture have a total population of over 570 million.  But I guess they don’t mind body odour too much.  And that’s necessary because there are nearly 30 times the people crammed into about 70% of the real estate.  Stinky-poo.

And in case you’re wondering, I live on the coast near Romania (between Brisbane and Noosa).