Life In Australia

I didn’t notice anything at the weekend, but the Courier Mail says there was a drink-driving blitz by the police. After administering 50,000 breath tests, one of the peoople caught was a policeman – from the far north of Queensland.

It’s something I warn visitors about – once you leave Brisbane and the Gold coast, you’re entering the ‘wild west’ for driving. The death rates on Queensland’s rural roads is pretty high. Part of the reason for this, I’m sure, is that for many people in rural Queensland – and too many in the urban areas too – driving after a few drinks isn’t considered such a bad thing to do as we’d consider it in Britain.

Funnily enough, Australia has tougher alcohol limits than the UK has. The legal limit here is 0.05 percent while in Britain it’s 0.08 percent. The practical effect is that most men in Britain can get away with drinking a couple of pints of standard-strength beer and drive legally. In Australia, two pints would put you over the limit.

In the case of the of policeman caught at the weekend, he’d have been over the limit in the UK or in Australia – he was measured at 0.1 percent.

Oh, in addition to the hapless police officer, the blitz netted 614 drink drivers, 287 speeding offenders, 83 disqualified or unlicensed drivers and six dangerous driving offences. The Queensland police force is apparently going to stage another weekend blitz ’soon’.

I though I’d return to the drought theme. I haven’t written about it for a while, but it hasn’t gone away – in fact it’s now the worst drought Brisbane has seen in one hundred years.

Normally we would get storms in the afternoon or night in the summer but there were very few this year. There seems to be no relief in prospect. Winter is the dry season so everyone is hoping for a wet spring and summer.

The water level in the dams fell below 30 percent a couple of weeks ago, bringing with it a total ban on using hoses outdoors. I see today that the water levels are at 29.5 percent. We’re still allowed to water our gardens but it needs to be done with a handheld watering can.

One of our neighbours is having a tank installed to collect rainwater from their roof. It’s something we’re probably going to get done too.

The Australian Government has approved the $ 2 billion puchase of thirty-four MRH 90 helicopters to be built in Brisbane.

Delivery of the first twelve is scheduled from December 2007 through to December 2009.

It’s expected that somewhere around skilled 400 jobs will be created at the Eurocopter subsidiary Australian Aerospace. (Australian Aerospace is currently assembling the army’s Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopters.)

Australian Aerospace chief executive Joseph Saporito said:

“This decision creates the prospect of Australia becoming more involved in the global helicopter supply chain, more exports from Australia, more jobs, the development of new skills in the latest composite fibre manufacturing and construction techniques and more investment by Australian Aerospace.”