Buckshot Bear

I feel pretty cowboy when I look down the barrels of my CZ

No, they're dogs.....they'd eat anything starting from scat to right up to human babies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain I live very rural, the daily/nightly roadkill is enormous. The crows, dogs, foxes, cats etc have a daily easy pickings smorgasbord.

We have a (rough estimate) 2 million feral foxes, its a delicate balance. When they expose the rabbit population to a new strain of calicivirus or a massive baiting/shooting/TNT etc cull the foxes turn to native fauna. Dingoes (before Europeans) took care of any old, sick or injured roos.

I must admit 'biscuits & gravy' sounds a bit like the bloke I knew once that had an iced finger bun with sardines filling for lunch everyday.

Nothing is indigenous we're told except for the ones that walked here naked and starving for 60,000 years (and that number keeps increasing).

Brumbies - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-11/landline-brumbies-rehomed-as-population-wild-horses-expands/103800406

“DUELLING” - 1800’s There was a time when a gentleman's reputation was worth dying for. In the 1800s when powerful, educated men determined to defend their social standing felt they had no other choice, they would meet on a duelling ground, weapons in hand. Duelling was a means of protecting one's honour. A process of ritual and rules. A form of dispute resolution so valued that, although illegal, lawmakers often turned a blind eye to it. Words that can kill Sometimes it only took one word or phrase to set two men on the duelling course. Slurs such as "liar", "coward", "rascal", "scoundrel" and even "puppy" were "serious insults that somehow or other got to the core of who you were as a gentleman, and often necessitated a visit to a duelling ground," Professor Freeman tells ABC RN's The History Listen. "As counterintuitive as it may seem, duelling was not about killing. Duelling wasn't about revenge. Duelling wasn't about trying to gun down your enemy. "It was to redeem an insult that had been made against you by proving that you were willing to die for your honour and enabling the person who gave the insult to go out onto the field redeem himself," she says. Duelling was always illegal. "Society tolerated it, even though theoretically to kill somebody in a duel was murder," Dr Banks says. "You actually find that, for instance, judges in trials did everything possible to ensure that the defendant acquitted." Dr Banks says the powerful in society – judges, lawyers, army officers and parliamentarians – all shared an honour culture. At times, honour was a quality successful careers depended on, says University of Sydney historian Catie Gilchrist. "If he was a gentleman involved in commerce, his word was very much something that he relied upon," she says. "In the military, an officer was always a gentleman and so if he felt his status as an officer had been impugned, then his gentlemanly status had been impugned as well." Duelling in Australia Perhaps the last duel in Australia was between Major Sir Thomas Mitchell and Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson in 1851, in Centennial Park, Sydney. Thankfully both men walked away with their lives, and only Donaldson's hat was damaged in the altercation. Dr Gilchrist says Australia even had its own particular set of duel-inducing insults. "The worst thing to call a gentleman was a 'black guard', which meant a lowly menial person," Dr Gilchrist says. "Consider yourself horse whipped", is another insult that comes from this time. "Don't forget everyone rode horses back then ... the horse whip was an instrument of social placing. A beast, a convict, a child and a slave might be horse whipped," Dr Gilchrist says. The 'fundamental absurdity' of duelling It might seem paradoxical, but duels were actually intended to reduce violence, rather than increase it. "It's so framed by rituals. You're not supposed to look angry or act out of anger," Professor Freeman says. Dr Banks describes duels as a "halfway point" between the medieval world of generational feuds, think William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and the modern mindset. "What the duel does is it says, there's been one moment of encounter to determine a particular issue and after the encounter's over, that matter is solved," he says. "It marks a period between the indiscriminate violence of the medieval period, when say, homicide was about 10 times as common in the UK as it is today, and the modern way. It's a transition point." Slowly, duels began to be seen as "ridiculous" in Britain, he explains. As the Church increased its power and influence, duelling presented a growing contradiction to its edict, "thou shalt not kill". From 1810 the Church campaigned against the practice. American political scientist John Mueller says at this time many began pointing out "the fundamental absurdity" of settling differences with duels. And while Dr Banks concurs that duelling is "a ridiculous way of solving human problems", he doesn't see that as distinguishing it from many other practices. "All societies have belief structures that are not rational," he says. Perhaps not all of them, however, have such very high stakes.

Cobb & Co. coach and horses outside Harcourt, Warburton, Victoria . Circa 1880s . MV On 30 January 1854, American businessman Freeman Cobb and three associates started a passenger coach service to Castlemaine and Bendigo. The passenger service left the Criterion Hotel, Collins Street every morning (Sundays excepted) at 6:00am. The coach stopped at Essendon, Keilor, Gap, Gisborne, Woodend, Carlshrue, Kyneton, Malmsbury and Elphinstone. Through spring to autumn they arrived in Castlemaine before sunset. Connecting services to Bendigo and Maryborough left from the Victoria Hotel Castlemaine at 6:00am the following morning. Their business proved so successful that routes were expanded across Victoria. They transported not only passengers around the state, but also prisoners, VIPs, and the mail. Their services to the goldfields were particularly popular. A fare to Castlemaine cost five pounds, to Bendigo seven pounds and to Maryborough, 124 miles away, seven pounds, ten shillings. In 1897, poet Henry Lawson described the coach-towns and experiences of the drivers in the poem The lights of Cobb and Co.: ‘Five miles this side the gold-field, a loud, triumphant shout: Five hundred cheering diggers have snatched the horses out: With ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in chorus through roaring camps they go— That cheer for her, and cheer for Home, and cheer for Cobb and Co.’ In May 1856 Freeman Cobb sold up and returned to the United States. He eventually settled in South Africa where he established another Cobb and Co., providing transport between Port Elizabeth and the diamond mines of the Kimberley. In Australia Cobb and Co. was purchased by American James Rutherford. He expanded business to New South Wales and Queensland. The final Cobb and Co. coach journey took place in South West Queensland on 14 August 1924. The coach which made the run was bought by the Federal Treasury for £100 and eventually placed in the National Museum.

Stumbled upon this whilst Googling, anyone shed any light on this? ted