Australia apparent rules?
- Everyone is no more than one degree separated from knowing everyone else?
- You just keep getting handed wine?
- There are many bizarre things to hit in the road while walking, biking and driving. Yesterday we hit a boat motor.
- It’s 9c and people are barefoot?

@hacks4pancakes 1. Yep pretty much. Every industry is small.

2. Yep pretty much. If you’ve got a wine glass in your hand or on your table, someone will always offer you a top-up or another. You’re allowed to say no thank you.

3. Yep. Wombats are especially dangerous to hit at speed.

4. Yep. Shorts and thongs (flip-flops) are 4-season wear.

@jpm @hacks4pancakes wombats are presently the bane of my existence, with 2 separate individuals having decided to dig under my fence and into my yard after 4 years of leaving us alone. They can *have* the entire remaining 99 acres ffs.

I am about to start an attempt to trap and relocate them.

And yes, they will *very* fuck your car. It's not the least reason people around here drive lifted 4x4 utes.

@trib @jpm @hacks4pancakes I remember a ranger a Eildon telling me about how every camp season at least one person ruins their holiday speeding down the campsite at night and encountering a wombat.

Hitting a brick wall has more give

@sortius @trib @jpm @hacks4pancakes they're notorious for tearing the drive train out the bottom of cars as they act like little mobile bollards
@Taco_lad @sortius @jpm @hacks4pancakes today's wombat/bollard as I arrived home.
@trib @Taco_lad @jpm @hacks4pancakes hehehe, at least that one's keeping you on the track

@sortius @jpm @hacks4pancakes an interesting fact/comparison about where I live (a rural area with high wombat numbers): about 90% of our roadkill is wombats, which should mean the panelbeaters are swimming in insurance money, but the proliferation of lifted 4x4s probably shifts that.

By comparison, in Canberra, where I used to live, the same proportion of roadkill is eastern grey kangaroos. Whether you drive a ute or regular car, they will mess your vehicle up.

The only possible out when hitting a kangaroo being you have a bull bar (which many here in the Bega Valley do). But it's not guaranteed.

@trib @sortius @jpm @hacks4pancakes Roo's are the most common road kill around me, I see a dead roo every month or 2 when walking my dogs. Not even out in the middle of nowhere, the other side of the road has some shops and less than 100m from traffic lights.
@trib @jpm @hacks4pancakes To be fair, they were there first…

@trib @jpm @hacks4pancakes it's mildly gross and might get you done for exposure if the burrow locations are visible to neighbours or the public, but you could try pissing around the entrances. It's worked well for me :-)

Or you could take Banjo's advice and put in a swinging gate so they can come and go without damaging stuff. Especially if you don't mind having them elsewhere on your property. Make the gate heavy so that other animals will be unable to get through.

"The strongest creature for his size
But least equipped for combat
That dwells beneath Australian skies
Is Weary Will the Wombat.

He digs his homestead underground,
He's neither shrewd nor clever;
For kangaroos can leap and bound
But wombats dig forever.

The boundary rider's netting fence
Excites his irritation;
It is to his untutored sense
His pet abomination.

And when to pass it he desires,
Upon his task he'll centre
And dig a hole beneath the wires
Through which the dingoes enter.

And when to block the hole they strain
With logs and stones and rubble,
Bill Wombat digs it out again
Without the slightest trouble.

The boundary rider bows to fate,
Admits he's made a blunder
And rigs a little swinging gate
To let Bill Wombat under.

So most contentedly he goes
Between his haunt and burrow:
He does the only thing he knows,
And does it very thorough."