Adventure Ausrama Blog

Motor cars rapidly became popular in the bush when Henry Ford introduced mass production lines that reduced their cost to within everyone’s reach. Farmers used their car to carry all sorts of ‘junk’ - from pigs to ploughs making a mess of the inside, so they resorted to cutting the back end off and fitting a tray behind the front seat. This worked, but was not very safe for the goods on the tray and dangerous when carrying livestock. In 1932 an enterprising farmer wrote to the Australian branch of the Ford Company telling them that like most farmers he was unable to afford both a car and a lorry. He was fed up with cutting his hands and his farming goods on the rough edges of the tray fitted to his makeshift car/truck. And his wife continually complained about riding to church in her Sunday best in a smelly vehicle. He asked Ford to design a purpose-built vehicle, one that he could use to take his pigs to market, pick up stock feed during the week and drive to church in comfort on Sun...

Though the protected bars on the front of rural vehicles is called a bull bar, it was originally designed to stop damage from hitting a kangaroo. These animals are as common as muck in Australia. Indeed, they are a native pest if ever there was one. Countless kangaroos invade farms all the time eating grass meant for food animals and drinking water pumped out of the ground. It is unusual for a driver to hit a wandering cow. Because they are valuable they are generally safely penned in. On the other hand, kangaroos wander freely. If they can't jump over a fence they will run through it. Several years ago I saw the remains of a kangaroo paw hanging from a fence wire. Obviously, the animal had survived and bounded on his way. Volvo Australia is studying kangaroo behavior on the roadside. They intend to fit a radar sensor to cars that will scan the road ahead. When a kangaroo is detected directly ahead within contact range the brakes will be automatically applied to a...

There is a stupid, idiotic "thing" going around the Internet at the moment. It is the selection process for the one-way journey to Mars. In my opinion this will not be allowed to go ahead. If and when a spaceship is built common sense will come to the fore and those wanting to commit suicide will be prevented from going. Let's ignore the moral perspective for the moment and think about the ship itself. A secure, life sustaining environment inside a space vehicle for such a long journey is not yet possible. Man reaching the moon was probably just a fluke. Alas, things did go wrong. Apart from the well known ballpoint pen in the circuit-breaker hole trick by Buzz Aldrin, there were dozens of problems that mysteriously were all solved - divine intervention? Well, we will never know. A trip to Mars will be a chain of continuous problems. For a start we do not know what the real space environment is like out there. Astronauts could die of radiation in a few months of ...

Having a blog means information is sent to you from many sources. The following story should interest you. So SuperCheap is a trustworthy chain of stores selling automotive products and it honors prevailing return of faulty goods laws. Think again. They do not refund money on faulty products. A customer purchased an electrical item in a completely sealed box. When he got home he opened the box and assembled the item. He was shocked to discover that he had to go back and buy an accessory made by the item's maker in order for the machine to run. This is an offense in itself.  To make things worse the product didn't work with the new add-on. In the legal case of Fisher and Paykel versus the Australian High Court in regard to breaches of warranty obligations, the judge found against Fisher and Paykel. The judge said that items must be complete and work straight out of the box with no further purchases necessary. Furthermore, any electrical product that plugs in...

We are moving toward a safer driving future. It is not just the development of driver-less cars. Special highways will have to be built for these, so it some time away before it is in common use. Just how "hoons" are going to get their fix with no risky overtaking existing anymore is anyone's guess. No, it is all the research going into improving existing vehicles. Bosch Australia is working on a system whereby people walking behind a car will automatically trigger the brakes on a reversing vehicle. One company is already going ahead and selling its own version that can be fitted to older cars. Considering rear beepers have been on cars for years would the average driver buy the product? It would be easier to modify existing beepers to apply the breaks and have an override switch. Then, I am only a consumer not a developer. How do I know what I want? It would be useful if a toddler could be detected in a driveway for example. The family car market could certai...

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Calls from New Zealand to cover up one's hand by wearing gloves when driving a car is silly to say the least. This may be something to think about if one is a delivery van or a truck driver but ordinary people don't drive enough to warrant it. They say the belief that glass provides protection from ultraviolet radiation is a myth. Sunscreen maker "Oasis Beauty" has suggested putting sunscreen on hands before driving. This is sound advice, coming from a producer of sunscreen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer says drivers should wear gloves, long sleeved shirts and sun glasses. Unless one is a professional driver this is a bit much. Car producers state that laminated windscreens do block UV radiation: 80 percent of UV-a. It is side windows that are dangerous, though 37 percent of UV-a and 97 percent of UV-b are blocked. From these data obviously the New Zealand Cancer Society and Oasis Beauty are wrong and car glass does offer protection. Furthermo...

If you drink alcohol your ability to drive a motor vehicle is definitely negatively affected.  What about other drugs though?  A US attorney Matt Abel claims that "stoned" drivers were much safer than those who did not use marijuana.  The attorney is leading a petition calling for the decriminalization for people 21 and over. He cites research studies that show marijuana affected drivers moved more slowly.  Their body actions were slow.  This, he claims makes them safer drivers.  If a driver has another car speeding toward him from the rear, he would prefer that the other driver had extremely fast reflexes, not slow ones. Some research has found that some marijuana smokers performed as well as they did without the substance, but there was no improvement.  Most studies, however, show clear negative affects on driving from marijuana intoxication.  In Australia marijuana smokers were most likely to be at fault in motor vehicle accidents.  Like...

You may think that having a drink and riding a horse is perfectly alright, but you would be wrong! If you are over the alcohol limit (the level for drivers of motor vehicles) then you will be charged for "drink driving". A hydraulic-hose fitter in Mount Isa has been fined $900 for riding a horse after drinking. He thought he could get around being disqualified for three years for driving his car while intoxicated. He had already gone home. Yet he chose to go back for more drink. That is when he was caught by police. The man has now got the message and will not ride the horse while intoxicated again. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Society

A NASA space vehicle, New Messenger, has reached Mercury and is beaming back information to CSIRO's Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. It has taken nearly seven years to get to the hot inner planet. A Mercury day is six Earth months long while its year is only 88 days. There is no possibility of humans landing on this little planet as the temperature reaches 430 degrees. Its minimum is extreme as well, minus 180 degrees. The sun would look three times bigger than on Earth if you could stand on it surface and look at it that is. An earlier exploratory vehicle, Marina 10, only gave a cursory look at the innermost planet. The whole planet is to be mapped this time. It will show whether there is ice at the poles. The sun never shines into pole craters. A mystery to be solved is why Mercury is composed mainly of metals. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/...

"This vehicle stops at all stations." http://vistacomputersolutions.blogspot.com/ ~~~~~ Funny Animal Photos ~~~~~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .