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I've ridden a bike in Indonesia but I certainly wouldn't attempt it now; it's only for the brave or foolish. Some wild unofficial road rules there. Vehicles play a game of chicken pulling out to pass. Whoever flashes their headlights first has right of way, so the one that loses has to try and squeeze back into the lane or go bush to avoid a head-on. I remember once being in VW Country Buggy and we hit this chook at speed which sent the bird flying in the air. When I looked back it was gone; an old girl had snatched it off the road and was legging it with the dead chook while there were still feathers floating down. Pedestrians have to be as nimble as the motorists in that mayhem. The old mate who was driving the VW was well versed in that type of driving. He was a quantity surveyor for oil projects and spent eleven years driving in Nigeria before getting another two years driving experience in Jakarta. Needless to say, he was always the designated driver.

Sorry to hear of your bad experiences. Sometimes mother nature is a bitch. But when it comes to most of the resulting damage, blame your state governments.... all flavors if them. Tis a sign of poorly designed infrastructure. Design should allow for unusual but expected natural events.

We're up over the twelve inches for the month so far. A good start to BOM's drier than average spring forecast. In this region their long term seasonal forecasts have been totally opposite to reality for the last three years running. If they say drier than average, expect wetter than average and vice versa. Their day to day forecasts are generally fairly accurate.

Pete, you can have all of our thunderstorms if you want them. I hate the things. Flooding, erosion, power outages and infrastructure damage is all we get from them. Some summers we get hammered by them from October through to April. Half the year we're on almost constant disaster watch. I've had big killer bolts smashing trees 30 metres from the house, and sheet lightning making it's way inside the house with pretty blue streaks flashing around the stainless kitchen sink. I once had a blue bolt arc out between the saucepan I was holding and the stove I was about to put it on. Part of my aversion also relates to the traumatic experience of having our house smashed up in a tornado when I was a little kid. My mother and older siblings had to hold down the legs of the table we were sheltering under. I can remember stuff flying everywhere and getting sucked out where the roof once was. It was a struggle for them to hold the table down, the uplift force was that bad. I was too young to help out, all I could do is sit there and howl. So no, I don't like storms. I think another thing that encourages the sheet lightning is a tin roof. It hits the roof and the metal cyclone rods are only 6" below that and the lightning travels down the rods and arcs on any metal it can find.

The ALTERNATIVE could not be more disunited. Nev

Glad someone got some good out of it. One thing I miss from Qld, is the pleasure of watching a real thunderstorm come through. Darwin is also (or only) famous for beautiful towering cu-nim thunderstorms.

Knowing about his sexual behaviour is different from seeing it. Video of their President's corpulent body squashing some reluctant model might change the mind of some of his religious conservative voters

I think that’s very likely but Trump also sees Putin as the gold standard for the type of political leader he wants to be and wants to do business with, and is frustrated by being pushed to impose sanctions instead, and has someone in Zelensky who stubbornly won’t give him what he wants and was responsible for him being impeached.

I seriously think Putin must hold some compromising video on Trump. It's the only thing that could explain his treasonous behaviour.