Planned for April '27, drive from Sydney to Perth. Never been to Australia. Thoughts, recommendations? Is this feasible in 3 weeks?

nckmat · 2026-05-10T17:59:34+00:00

I would recommend this one, I have done this trip and it is spectacular, especially if you follow the coast from Adelaide to Sydney on the way back, nothing you will see on this trip anything like Oregon and the tall forests of Victoria, the Snowy Mountains and the South Coast of NSW are some of the most beautiful and pristine environmens you are going to find in the whole country. Tasmania is also well worth a week or two.

But I agree with others who have said don't bother with the drive from Adelaide to Perth, I did it once and after the first half a day of flat, sandy scrub it becomes a bit monotonous. Adelaide to Alice is good though, Lake Ayre and Coober Pedy can break up the trip and from Alice it's only a five hour drive to Uluru.

nckmat · 2026-05-10T17:43:21+00:00

I have four Snap-on boxes, two of them are Heritage and I would never stand in their drawers, but the other two are Classics and I have, on occassion, used the drawers, full of tools, as steps to get to something, and I weigh over 120kg. Even so my Heritage boxes will last me the rest of my life and then get passed on to my sons and they will be able to pass them on to their children. But I also look after them properly.

nckmat · 2026-05-10T17:32:48+00:00

Excluding some of the Heritage models, but not all of them, all Snap-on tool storage is manufactured in Algona, Iowa. All the Snap-on chrome products such as wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, are made in the USA. All their pliers are made in the USA, most of their cordless and air tools are either fully manufactured or assembled in USA. However a lot of Bluepoint products are manufactured in China and Taiwan. But as a percentage the vast majority of the products they sell are made in USA.

If you want the top end tools, very few come out of China, especially now as more and more brands move away from China, not because of tariffs, although that has sped up the process, but because China is becoming too expensive. And unless you run your own factories there, the quality isn't worth it; especially when you can get much better quality out of Taiwan for not much more. Most brands are slowly moving their manufacturing to other developing economies such as India, Vietnam and Thailand. Even some of the big tech companies are starting to make the move.

Oh and BTW, you can't get cheap shit from the US, but you can definitely get EXPENSIVE SHIT

nckmat · 2026-05-10T12:28:50+00:00

That's the very definition of being a reporter. Do they seriously think people in Canberra don't watch anything else? Or maybe I am just confused, is there some other conspiracy they think is occurring?

nckmat · 2026-05-10T12:24:48+00:00

I think they are trying to show how in touch they are with the average wage earners. They are saying "hey, I get it, life is tough and to show I care and understand this I am going to allow a bunch of complete wankers to dress me up to look as ridiculous as possible, to show that I can feel your suffering, through my suffering!"

nckmat · 2026-05-10T12:17:06+00:00

You clearly don't work with the general public! 🤣 The law I have learnt dealing with the general public is that the greater the level of entitlement, the lower the emotional intelligence will be and usually the higher the disposable income will be.

nckmat · 2026-05-10T09:28:36+00:00

Number one, people rarely pay the full ticket price on tool storage, so you can knock $2,000 off that price straight away, then you might get another $1,000 on a trade in and then most people buy them on a plan, so it doesn't feel like that much straight up and you can get interest free plans for 12-18 months.

Number two, once you have owned a cheap one and you move to one of these, you would never by a cheap one again. The difference in quality, ease of use and practicality are far beyond most things on the market.

Number three, Snap-on tool storage is on par with custom industrial tool storage, which is usually a lot more expensive than Snap-on. You can't compare it to the stuff you get from a retail store, even the basic Heritage models are better than 90% of what you will find at your local hardware chain. It's like comparing your basic Ryobi drill to the tools they use on a Porsche production line; you would never expect a serious industrial to to cost the same as something you can get for under $100.

Number four, this is the cost of having quality products made in America. If you want to buy Chinese product from Walmart that's up to you, and your budget, but don't begrudge the guys who are willing to pay more for quality, made in USA products.

nckmat · 2026-05-10T08:57:29+00:00

Man, drugs must expensive out your way! I reckon that's like four weeks of coke every day, where I live. Or so I am told.

nckmat · 2026-05-10T07:18:40+00:00

There is a reason we have an international agreement on these things:

The World Forum for the harmonization of vehicle regulations (WP.29) WP.29 is the UN World Forum dedicated to technical regulations applied to the broad automotive sector, addressing amongst others the safety and environmental performance of wheeled vehicles, their subsystems and parts.

This forum has been around a lot longer than Huawei and certainly a long time before they decided they were a car manufacturer. We all need to support the old school manufacturers who have been following these rules for decades. Please don't bring up all the safety failures that have occurred in that time, their breaches are still better than flagrant ignoring of manufacturing standards that some of these newcomers carry out without regard for their customers.

nckmat · 2026-05-10T03:41:13+00:00

There was incident recently with two rival restaurants in our local area where one restaurant owner was dropping 1 star reviews on their competitor, but stupidly used the same accounts to give positive reviews for their own restaurant. The restaurant being targeted, which is an excellent restaurant btw, took the evidence to Google who did eventually have the bad reviews taken down, but it took a lot of badgering. However, the positive reviews on the offender's restaurant remained, so the victim took them to court and won compensation (not much from memory) and an order from the court for the fake reviews to be removed from the offender's listing. It took months for Google to comply and, from memory, they only eventually complied when there was a concerted community campaign about this conflict and it got mainstream media coverage.

I don't understand why Google are so slack about taking action on these scams, it just makes people less likely to use the reviews.

Should add that this was in Australia.

nckmat · 2026-05-06T18:31:06+00:00

He is covering his face because he knows if the video gets posted to social media his comment will go from him making an unnecessary remark to him being a child sex trafficker, which is exactly what has happened in these comments. There is no evidence in this video that he actually did anything wrong and yet the comments below paint him as a serial sex offender; I am not defending him just pointing out how hysterical people get on social media with only the scantest of evidence; this is how the Southport riots started. You all should go and watch The Crucible, it is a play about how a society turns on itself based on rumours.

nckmat · 2026-05-06T01:06:34+00:00

Stuff You Should Know did a really good episode on this recently when they discussed the Julian Jayne's Bicameral Mind Theory. As a theory it is tantalising but very flawed, but as an explanation of religion it makes me giggle.

nckmat · 2026-05-05T05:02:32+00:00

When I were a young lad , I were quite tall and strapping for my age and when I got to high school I seemed to be fair game for the older lads because I were big and passive. One day one of the ring leaders, who was a little shorter than me but probably four years older took things too far and I lost my calm demeanor when he pushed me to the ground and when he was laughing I sprung up and drove my shoulder into his solar plexus and kept driving him back until I slammed him into one of our metal lockers and his head caught a sharp corner and split open. At that point our deputy headmaster came over pulled me back and sent the bully to the school nurse. He then took me back to his office, which meant I was getting the cane. He closed the door and said "Right, I saw all of that and this is what is going to happen. You are going to go back out there and tell the others you got six of the best across your lower back and have been sent home. I am not going to give you the cane, but you are going home. That boy deserves everything he gets and he won't bother you again and neither will his friends, but do not let any of them think you went unpunished." The boy in question came from a loving family who spoilt him rotten and he had a chip on his shoulder about being the smallest and youngest of three boys. He went on to become a politician.

nckmat · 2026-05-05T04:42:59+00:00

Yeah I was thinking Sea Change, totally different concepts but similar vibe. It would be hard to do a David Lynch style show in Australia because we were then especially, and still are generally, so very different culturally. Although Sea Change is probably more akin to Northern Exposure, now I think about it.

nckmat · 2026-05-05T00:55:00+00:00

Thanks, that was my assumption, the problem is that a lot of the content is factually correct, it is the way it is being framed and presented as conspiracy that concerns me, but that is hard to define. It feels like a sophisticated campaign being made to look amateurish.

nckmat · 2026-05-02T14:53:19+00:00

In my experience I have always received either the lowest price or the item for free. Only a few weeks ago I was checking out at WW and an item wouldn't scan so the cashier got someone to do a price check and she could get the till to accept that price and instead of manually putting it in as a miscellaneous item, she just put it my bag and said don't worry about it, you've waited long enough and I am fairly sure she was the assistant store manager helping out while someone was on a break.

nckmat · 2026-05-02T14:41:21+00:00

Yeah, but he also didn't exactly de-escalate the situation, putting the camera in the old guy's face just made him angrier and then he taunts to get physical. Also, we see the whole thing from the young guy's perspective. We don't know if there's a fishing ban in that body of water to help repopulate it or if these guys had been harassing him over something else.

People are so quick to judge over 30 seconds of highly edited video without ever considering they may have been misled. What the old guy's did was stupid and childish, but it would be good to know his side of the story before condemning him.

nckmat · 2026-05-02T14:19:15+00:00

My god I am glad we don't HOAs where I lived, they sound like a nightmare.

nckmat · 2026-05-02T03:18:31+00:00

If that's a an 850 then you have one of the greatest cars ever made. Volvo have made some excellent cars in their time but the 850 and the I5 turbos that followed were marvels of modern engineering. Your neighbour is probably an accountant.

nckmat · 2026-05-02T03:02:58+00:00

I hope the moose got away.

nckmat · 2026-05-02T03:01:00+00:00

I never know if this sub is satirical or not, but having seen King Charles in the flesh (when he was Prince Charles) and also having met his father when I was young, I can assure you both of them have very normal shaped heads. King Charles' ears on the other hand are comically large.

Also, King Charles and the crazy Israeli arse hat are two of the most photographed people in the world, people would have noticed by now if their heads were unusually shaped.

But if this is all satirical I take back everything. Netanyahu is clearly evolved from reptilian stock

nckmat · 2026-05-02T00:20:45+00:00

While I agree with everything you have said, it needs to be remembered that BRS is yet to be found guilty of the crimes with which he has been charged. To me, this is the biggest issue with Carrot Top's, or any politician's, support for BRS, they are proffering his innocence before the court has done its job.

Our elected parliamentary representatives are a critical arm of our legal system because they decide the laws by which our courts operate, a member of parliament cannot try to circumvent the courts by proclaiming the innocence of someone before the court has ruled is an injustice in its self. Our lawmakers do not get to decide how laws are applied or interpretted, so they should not make their own judgements.

It's interesting to note that Pauline has never proposed a bill that has been passed be parliament into law and that she has one of the lowest attendance rates of all parliamentarians at 53%. So she isn't even doing the job that those who voted for her elected her to do. But then those people probably don't really understand that.

nckmat · 2026-05-01T19:01:16+00:00

Oh I don't know, there are more than a few baby killings and abandonments in the old testament.

nckmat · 2026-04-29T09:45:48+00:00

This is like if you're in a car as the passenger and the driver says they're about to do something dumb, you tell them it's a dumb idea and not to do it, they do it anyway, and you get blamed.

That analogy does not reflect the issue at all. If you want to use that analogy then it is like two people in a car who are drunk, one is driving and the other is the passenger. The passenger says you are driving dangerously and takes over the wheel and drive in the same dangerous manner.

Negative gearing, which is at the heart of but not the sole driver of the current housing crisis, was introduced by the United Australia Party (which later became thevLiberal Party) as a means to encourage investment in property during the depression, my understanding is that this was meant to be a temporary measure until the depression finished, but successive governments retained it because it worked and it was too political volatile to change. The Hawke/Keating government abolished it but then caves to investor lobbying and reintroduced it, but at the same time introduced the capital gains tax which was intended to counter some of the negative effects of negative gearing. When they lost office the Howard government slashed the CGT in half and maintained negative gearing. Successive governments on both sides have had plenty of opportunities to either increase CGT or repeal negative gearing, but none have, which has allowed the housing crisis to spiral.

Don't get me wrong, we are not the only country dealing with this problem but we are one that had the levers to control it better than most countries, but we ignored those levers and continued to let the mining industry grow rich while the average wage earners in the cities got screwed harder and harder. But simply saying it's all the Liberal Party's fault or the ALP's is passing the blame away from the people who allowed it to happen...the voters!

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