Happy New Year everyone

Don't forget, Alison, it *always* rains cats & dogs at least one day at Gulgong. I'm not going this year, but now that I know I could have met up with some mudcatters I wish I was.

Selene, what exactly do you want to know about Oz?

I think that Rule No. 1 is that every straight faced comment is more likely to be a joke than to be serious - as Shula once put it, it's the Australian "drop dead" humour. Maybe brushing up on some Australian humourous music might help, like Eric Bogle's "Nobody's Moggy Now" or Judy Small's "IPD", among others, all sung with dead serious faces, but secretly the singer is rolling around the floor laughing.

Helen