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My wife worked for Transurban Citylink before she retired. The Burwood line has been extended to Vermont South Shopping Centre for years, and they have talked about extending it to Knox City, also for years.

It's madness to now the way they're still just hammering out new free ways and tunnels left and right in Melb to. All that's doing is just encouraging more and more and more cars and trucks. They should've been de'couraging all that the last 10yrs now and making the whole city more people, living, pt, and environment friendly.

Yep spot , they're absolute bloody idiots they way the handle all that and yet don't even look after our own people. Apparently they're back up to their other old trick again to now and back to selling the place off in bits and pieces left and right to China and Japan atm too.

London has a population of c. 9.5m; Melbourne has a population of c 5.56m. Yes, there is an urban sprawl as, including the morningiton peninsula now considered part of Melbourne, it is around 5 times bigger than London - according to Google. However, the suburban sprawl doe snot mean we should be solely reliable on the car. Rail loops are one thing. A decent hydrogen bus service is another. Trams also can be built (The line to Bundoora is Loooong, as is one to Burwood). Coming off ICE cars would have put Australians in a much better position -if only the government had foresight - oh, it did, it just chose to be beholden to the fossil fuel lobby groups. At least the government is trying something to reduce the cost. Hopefully, it will return to keeping the IEA's agreement of 90 days reserve. Maybe we shoudl tap our reserve in Dallas.. Oh wait, it was smokescreen thanks to Angus Taylor - the now leader of the oppo. Dog help us

Yeah you prob all know by now but that property was the only neighbour down the roads, brother. But he was over in Tassie 3 or 4 mths fishing so old Dezi must've stumbled over his place and moved on in. He must've still be very secretive though even though it looks like it's very away and isolated bc l dunno how far away his brothers place is but he knew nothing about Dezi being there so. But yeah speakin of empty properties, tbh for me l was more thinking hobby farmers and business men weekender properties. l kinda grew up around all that stuff because we were in Melbourne but dad had a few farms over the yrs too and we'd all go up to on wkends, holidays and stuff. But up where we had our place there were 100s of others scattered all through also owned by people from down the city and some would be empty all yr round. Some people hardly ever went up to the properties after awhile or maybe only once or twice a yr. l'd imagine all up through the mountainy areas where Dezi was there' be 100s of wkenders too , not being used or at least quite a few. So added to what onetrack was saying then yeah, you'd imagine someone hiding put could find something.

Meantimes, with hardship in most parts of Australia, bartering has returned!

We're all set for a fuel-restricted long weekend on the water!!

How he got that far away from his original point of habitation is going to be the subject of a lot of inquiry - especially when hundreds of police were combing the area around where he shot the police, almost straight after the event. He obviously got a ride straight away from a good mate, and he would've been hidden in the vehicle. I wonder what else the police will find? More "sovereign citizen" bunkers or hideouts, and arms/food caches? A lot of these SC fruitcakes are "preppers" as well and believe in preparing and stocking up on "last days" events. We've had some in W.A., this "preppers" setup in the far SE of W.A. is incredible. I think the area is SE of Norseman.

Sovereign citizens add nothing of value to a community. But they do cause an unbelievable level of disruption to accepted and legal court processes. Their problem is, they believe no laws of any kind should apply to them, and they believe all taxes are illegal. So they want all the infrastructure that civilised society offers, but don't want to pay for it. "Sovereign citizen" is a concept born out of the gun-toting craziness of the hicks of backwoods America. They place their faith in firearms, and nothing else. They claim they have faith in God, but they don't trust him either, so that's the reason they worship guns. As in the case of Dezi Freeman, we've seen where that idiocy leads.

That's why the Victorian government is approving and encouraging multi storeys, up to 18 levels, of home units, close to railway stations. Towers in Box Hill. Many owned by Chinese, possibly unoccupied. Similar is happening near Blackburn, Mitcham, Glen Waverley, just to name my area.

It's a shame we all couldn't be sovereign citizens, even just a skerrick of sovereignty would do. We can have a say about things, but it will only fall on deaf ears.

I went out at dusk to put some recycling rubbish in the bin. It is collected about 6:00 am tomorrow. I was nearly deafened (more than usual) by a cacophony of crickets.

At least today's occurrence put one small locality, there's no township, on the map - Thologolong. I'd never heard of it. The location of Thologolong. A street view of the buildings in Thologolong. Dezi's camp.

Now you're talking rubbish.

Sovereign citizens??????

One thing I notice is that the parents of the Baby Boomers are mostly all dead, and the Baby Boomers who inheirited to family farm are retiring and selling off their farms to younger neighbours who are consolidating smaller farms into large acreage units which can be farmed more effectively with modern machinery. The improvement in roads means that a trip to a larger centre for shopping can be done in a shorter time than 50 to 70 years ago. Therefore the independent shopkeepers in small towns do not have to customer base to remain viable. I guess that the most common "small town" businesses in my town are the hairdressers, followed by motels. Motor mechanics are disappearing, mainly due to retirement. There is very little industry, and what there is, is servicing agribusiness in various way. I'm not including the service stations because they are there to service highway traffic.

Twenty-five cents per litre. We have 30 to 40 days' reserve supply of fuel, although reports are that we are getting refills from Asia. The removal of part of the excise won't be much good if there is no fuel to purchase. Regarding public transport: The horse has well and truely bolted since we accepted the idea of suburban sprawl. You need roads to get to public transport hubs and infrastructure to provide parking for vehicles going to thjose hubs. If there is one thing that public transport illustrates it is the concept of Economy of Scale. Because of urban sprawl, there is not the scale in terms of population to make public transport economical. It does work in the older parts of our cities where popultion centres were developed before the expansion of car ownership, but those centres only house a small portion of an urban area's total population.

Peopel are whinging because the government - some of whom the people elect and pay for, the others whom the people have no visibilit or accountabilioty of, but the people still pay for (i.e. the public servants) don't seem to be doing what they say on the tin - serving the public - at least properly. We have, since the days of Howerd, run down our emergency fuel reserve and then outsourced it to Texas. We give away our gas to foreign companies and nations (Japan, it is alleged, made USD$1.1bn of reselling our gas!!!), yet we don;t properly charge those entities for ou r resources nor properly tax them, you know, such as places like Norway, Qatar, Saudi and the like. Quite frankly, the way our government and public servants rip is off, the whingeing and whining is very tempered.

The problem is the tolls aren't a tax, but a charge from private companies that, admittedly paid for the infrastrucutre - or some of it - and were awarded significant monopolies that provided a very handsome return - much more than if the government borrowed and paid it back Themn aas per the Mt Alexander Road "calming", the government spent tax dollars to fund roadworks to make alternatives to the toll unpallatable. On another note, on the BBC radio this morning, Albo will be halving fuel duty to help. More and more people want out of the UK and when they hear this, they want it even more.

I use Farcebook for the marketplace, but often eBay and Gumtee are also good. with fewer scams. At a bit of a loose end last night, I decided to scroll through posts. My dog, what a load of toxic bull shite! Seriously, if MSM had posted most of this stuff defined as facts and news, even our tootless regulators would find the teeth to bite. Made Sky/Fox news seem like totally objective and fact ridden.

No , They have been under scrutiny because the have always bent or broke the rules even to the point of been completely illegal. PHON doesnt believe rules apply to them nor their billonaire mates

And mining and farmers have long been given a excise free ride on diesel before any tax deductions. Never seen a toll road in the country areas but big cities are full of them. I say the country folk get a very fair deal.

What do you want? Gold-plated major infrastructure built in tiny, dying country towns, with only 20 or 30 people? The Govt expends money where the population is, and where it can be paid for by those residents, on an affordable basis.

It's a topic for a new thread. What you've just posted is only half of the more recent history of Rural Australia. The other half is much more disturbing and treacherous to Australia.

That little scumbag who owns Faecesbook is in a pile of steaming manure anyway. It appears he's got plenty of lawsuits to deal with. "As of late March 2026, Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing significant legal and public pressure regarding the company's platforms, with courts delivering major penalties and verdicts. Recent developments include: Child Safety Fines: A New Mexico court fined Meta $375 million over allegations of failing to protect children from online sexual exploitation and harmful content on Facebook and Instagram. Addiction Liability Verdict: A California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for causing a young woman's mental health issues by designing addictive products. Court Testimony: Mark Zuckerberg testified in a historic, multi-week trial where he was questioned about internal decisions, including the lifting of bans on beauty filters and the targeting of young users. Legal Challenges: Meta is navigating over 2,500 lawsuits related to youth addiction to social media platforms"