The Aussie Humour Thread

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

‘CARPET FITTER WINS 40 GRAND’ - 1988

We are the Mighty.

In 1988, a wealthy Australian decided to celebrate Australia’s bicentennial by holding a 2,000-mile plus camel race through the Australian Outback. Endurance racers from around the world trained for more than a year to finish the charity race and win a $40,000 prize.

It might be the most stereotypically Australian story ever told. The world’s longest animal endurance race won by carpet fitter Gordon O’Connell, and the race wasn’t even close. O’Connell was having a beer at a pub when he learned he’d won.

The Great Australian Camel Race was a six-leg journey that began at Uluru, also known as Ayres Rock, one of the most sacred sites of Australia’s Aboriginal people and end at Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Competitors were timed on how long it took to complete each leg over the course of three months.

The 69 entrants brought with them teams made up of extra camels, support staff, and follow cars, just like any other high-endurance race.

Teams came from elements of the Australian Army, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, and even a handful of Americans. All brought their teams and special gear to survive the grueling race.

Then there was Gordon O’Connell. O’Connell was more than a carpet fitter. He was a man who knew how to train Australia’s farm animal population and often worked in local farms training horses. He even trained his own Camel, named Carla, for the effort.

He and Carla were so fast, in fact, that racers thought he was injured or lost, when in reality he’d already have finished that leg of the journey. They would be flying planes searching for his remains, but in reality, he was at the finish line. He finished more than a full day ahead of his nearest competitors, the Australian special forces.

“I was stopping off at the pub and I still won the fourth leg. I had won the first three legs and was taking it easy as I was already 32 hours ahead of the SASR,” O’Connell said. “I had no idea whatsoever that I’d won it and I didn’t try. And that’s the truth.”

O’Connell had a small team following him, but nothing like what the other competitors had. His win wasn’t totally without hardship, despite his trip to the pub at the end of the race. He was hospitalized with kidney failure from a bacterial infection during the second leg of the race.

O’Connell was a product of his environment. He knew how to survive in the harsh environment. Most importantly, he knew animals and he trained his own just for the race. By the time he retired, he was raising camels of his own. Camel races are still a thing, but it’s not quite as intense as it used to be.

 

 

[Buckshot Bear]

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

This is a blatant rip-off of hillbilly joke but….

 

 

Dear Mum & Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. 

Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the station - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don't hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody horses to get in, no calves to feed, no troughs to clean - nothin'!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there's lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing! 

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or goanna stew like wot Mum makes. You don't get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we've been on a 'route march' - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the bullock paddock!! 

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody dingo's arse and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - it's a piece of piss!! You don't even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don't have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload! 

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and it looks like I'm the best the platoon's got, and I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he's 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I'm only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin' wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer. 

I can't complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,

Susan

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

11 hours ago, Buckshot Bear said:

Ahhh, took a while but I get it now.

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

10 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

Ahhh, took a while but I get it now.

 

 

 

   .......... wanna share ?

[Black Angus McPherson]

4 minutes ago, Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 said:

 

 

 

   .......... wanna share ?

 

W + Anchor = Wanker

 

Does that help?

 

Angus

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

thank you 🙃

[Buckshot Bear]

[sassnetguy50]

https://www.facebook.com/reel/378006281981947
 

[Alpo]

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

On 8/19/2024 at 6:27 PM, Buckshot Bear said:

and they are gonna add pineapple to the pizza 

[Sedalia Dave]

29 minutes ago, Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001 said:

and they are gonna add pineapple to the pizza 

 

[Buckshot Bear]

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

[Sedalia Dave]

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

old habits die hard , eh ? 

 

  CB 

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

[Alpo]

Okay. I had to go see what a Zooper dooper was. It's an otter Pop. Big whoop.

 

But why would they cut their mouth on one? Don't Aussies know about that great English invention - scissors?

 

https://www.pedestrian.tv/bites/zooper-dooper-ranking-flavours/

 

[Sedalia Dave]

5 hours ago, Alpo said:

Okay. I had to go see what a Zooper dooper was. It's an otter Pop. Big whoop.

 

But why would they cut their mouth on one? Don't Aussies know about that great English invention - scissors?

 

https://www.pedestrian.tv/bites/zooper-dooper-ranking-flavours/

 

 

Sometimes the side seams on the packaging are really sharp. Gives the sides of your mouth a cut similar to a paper cut. Superficial but painful. 

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Rip Snorter]

3 minutes ago, Buckshot Bear said:

Jeez Louise, In your country of all places!  Could have been worse, evolution in action.  Burn the PJs.

[Buckshot Bear]

‘THE ABORIGINAL TRACKERS THAT TRACKED NED KELLY’ - 1880

 

Why the only police Ned Kelly really feared during a two-year manhunt involving 200 cops were a group of Aboriginal trackers brought in to capture or kill him.

They were the six young Aboriginal trackers brought down to Victoria from North Queensland to capture or kill the outlaw.

From April 1878 when Kelly first went on the run until February 1879 when his gang took over a New South Wales town for three days, the bushranger was virtually untouchable.

But for the next 16 months with the Queensland trackers on his tail Kelly was so worried about getting caught he was barely seen in public.

The story of these remarkable black bushman has now been told in a new book called The Kelly Hunters by journalist and author Grantlee Kieza.

There had been calls to bring in Queensland trackers since October 1878 when Kelly shot dead three policemen at Stringybark Creek in the Wombat Ranges.

After the murders Kelly could be shot on sight by anyone and took extreme measures to evade capture as he committed crimes to fund his life in hiding.

'When Ned Kelly heard Queensland was sending down Aboriginal trackers he was truly terrified. As tough and fierce as he was he was mortally afraid of them.'

The trackers were aged 16 to 24 and not all could speak English. Most had been riding with O'Connor for the past three years and were from Mackay and Fraser Island.

There was Jack Noble, also known as Wannamutta, who had been pressed into service aged 14 or 15, and his brother, Corporal Sambo.

Sambo - sometimes 'Quambo' - was the oldest and as a younger man had been a 'notorious rascal who had committed every sort of crime, including being a bushranger.'

Johnny, considered by some to be insane, was the best tracker O'Connor had met. A year earlier he had been accused of killing an Aboriginal woman in Charters Towers.

Gary Owens had the tribal name Werannallee but police called him Barney. The final two trackers were known only as Jimmy and Hero.

The trackers were paid three shillings a day, half what their white counterparts earnt.

When the trackers arrived in Benalla on March 10 they got haircuts and went shopping. They were seen playing cricket with local children and quickly became popular.

'They'd give boomerang throwing demonstrations, all that sort of stuff,' Kieza says. 'They were seen as real curiosities.'

They were treated with a measure of respect by the police at the time but often it was very patronising,' Kieza says.

'They'd be given a little bit of money to go and buy lollies and things, like they were small children or even pets.'

The trackers soon got to work and had success in curtailing the Kelly Gang's activities.

'They could pick up their tracks in all sorts of places,' Kieza says. 'Their tracking abilities were incredible.'

The trackers, who could spot a drop of blood on a blade of grass, could tell what sort of horse had gone by - and whether it had a rider - by the imprint of its hoofs.

'They could distinguish even between the sort of boot heels the gang were wearing,' Kieza says.

'There's talk of them having found a sweat smudge from someone who had put their hand on a branch hours before. Uncanny kind of tracking abilities.'

The trackers wore blue uniforms with caps and carried the latest Snider-Enfield rifles.

'They had the best weapons and they knew how to use them as well,' Kieza says. 'Certainly Ned Kelly feared what they could do.

'It's significant that as soon as they arrived he never did another bank robbery. He didn't really show himself publicly anywhere until the siege of Glenrowan.

Kelly, who reportedly called the trackers 'those six little demons' and was 'astounded and terrified of them' was increasingly forced to engage in guerrilla warfare.

Kelly kept largely to the high country in the Strathbogie, Warby and Wombat Ranges because he did not believe the trackers would want to go above the snowline to look for him.

'They really suffered as a result of trying to catch Ned Kelly,' Kieza says. 'They had to camp out in the mountains for sometime weeks at a time in freezing conditions.

'All the police put up with all sorts of privations but it was especially hard on the Aboriginal trackers who weren't used to that sort of weather, they were from sunny Queensland.'

Within weeks of arriving Corporal Sambo was dead and buried at Benalla.

When the Victorians began breaking up O'Connor's trackers to go on separate search parties he resigned and took his troopers to Melbourne.

They were ready to head back to Queensland when on June 26, 1880, Joe Byrne murdered his lifelong friend and police informer, Aaron Sherritt.

O'Connor then agreed to commissioner Standish's plea to stay and accompany his officers on a train which Kelly planned to derail by tearing up the tracks near Glenrowan.

The gang had rounded up the town's residents at gunpoint and held them at the Glenrowan Inn but Kelly allowed school teacher Tom Curnow to leave the hotel and he flagged down the locomotive.

When police including O'Connor and his five trackers arrived the gang donned their suits of armour and stepped out of the pub to face a barrage of gunfire.

During the gun battle a bullet grazed tracker Jimmy's head. 'He's supposed to have jumped up and fired shots at the Glenrowan Inn and said, "Take that, Ned Kelly",' Kieza says.

Byrne, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were killed in the siege and Ned was captured at dawn on June 28 after being shot in his unprotected legs.

Kelly was charged with the murders of the three police at Stringybark Creek and was convicted of murdering one of them. He was hanged in Melbourne Gaol on October 11, 1880, aged 25.

'For the trackers it was a pay day,' Kieza says. 'And perhaps there was also a degree of being coerced and forced into it.

'You can't say that they were slaves but they were often pressed into service and they were doing stuff against their wishes.

'In the case of Ned Kelly, I think part of it with the trackers is that it was a massive hunt for them and they could see some recognition for themselves.'

Most of the trackers were denied their share of the reward because authorities deemed they would not know what to do with all of that money.

 

 

[Alpo]

1 hour ago, Buckshot Bear said:

I figure anybody that stupid deserves to have her foot broken.

 

It's a good thing it didn't happen in this country. Where people camping would routinely have a gun. Husband would have shot her foot instead of hitting it with whatever he hit it with.

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

Australians assisting a wounded American near Ronssoy. Known to be in this photograph is Quartermaster Sergeant J. P.Miller, 38th Battalion.

 

 

[Buckshot Bear]

‘SARBI - THE BOMB SNIFFER’

Sarbi was a remarkably intelligent hound that became a hero for the Australian Special Forces during the war in Afghanistan.

The black lab and Newfoundland-cross was adopted by the Australian Defence Force to become an Explosive Detection Dog (EDD). She had the important task of sniffing out explosives during her several tours of Afghanistan.

Sarbi spent nearly 14 months missing in September 2008 when she disappeared during a nine-hour battle after a Taliban ambush. A gunshot severed the metal clip on Sarbi’s leash, and the wounded and frightened dog limped away from the chaos of bullets and blasted desert sand.

The distraught soldiers searched for her after the battle, but Sarbi was declared missing in action after three weeks.

Happily, 13 months later, Sarbi reappeared in healthy condition in an Afghan village, and she was eventually bargained back into the hands of her handler, David. Sarbi received The Purple Cross in 2011.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

[John Kloehr]

39 minutes ago, Buckshot Bear said:

So are you saying egg on toast is magical enough to overcome Vegemite?

[Buckshot Bear]

5 minutes ago, John Kloehr said:

So are you saying egg on toast is magical enough to overcome Vegemite?

 

 

Nope.....they go together like .......hmm.....pork and apple sauce 

[Alpo]

2 hours ago, Buckshot Bear said:

Australians assisting a wounded American near Ronssoy. Known to be in this photograph is Quartermaster Sergeant J. P.Miller, 38th Battalion.

 

 

That's an interesting picture. The wounded American is wearing a World War I uniform. He's also wearing a wrist watch. While they were available in 1917, I understand they were sort of rare.

[Buckshot Bear]

13 minutes ago, Alpo said:

That's an interesting picture. The wounded American is wearing a World War I uniform. He's also wearing a wrist watch. While they were available in 1917, I understand they were sort of rare.

 

I think WWI was when they started to be worn in earnest.

[Rip Snorter]

In the early years, they were often pocket watches in a specially made leather wrist band / pocket, since the usual carry position would be in the mud.