Outside the People’s Republic


We recently crossed into NSW for a family thing and what struck me most about life outside the walls was that despite the broad adoption of masking and QR kabuki, there was no wide-eyed fervour like there is in Vic.

Sure, some places were stricter than others on QR and green tick-ish-ness but nonetheless we ate a counter meal (country chicken parmi and the salad even had the signature twist of orange on top) without actually flashing a pox-pass

Similarly, we had a private sit-down luncheon at a friend’s restaurant, and nobody asked for a tick.

Maybe because we fit in with the locals, we got some slack? Dunno, but the whole experience was that it was much more laid back.

I have a loose theory that NSW and maybe QLD, are really just a confederacy of country towns whereas Victoria is more like one big Melbourne that stretches from Warragul to Geelong and as far north as maybe Seymour or further. You gotta go nearly 100km from the CBD to stop feeling the influence.

Country places such as regional towns are naturally socially conforming, and everybody pretty much knows everybody else’s business. Though, the breadth of ‘acceptable’ is vast. Crackheads might live in the same street as the town mayor for instance, so you need to be pretty tolerant. Generally, there’s a deep trust and an understanding of responsibility and accountability and limits. So, people are fairly accepting and not so quick to judge. Well, not publicly anyway.

Big Melbourne though, that’s a different story. Somewhere, everywhere there’s a strong and courageous sheila with blue hair policing you. From Officeworks to Bunnings, like so many NKVD Blue Caps. Or there’s a snivelling lad with a smirk risking sunburn at a desk outside Mitre10 to check your compliance.

Don’t use the wrong entrance or they’ll all point and shriek at the same time. Body Snatchers.

This little junket outside the Victorian Soviet has kind of firmed my belief that it’s time to get the hell outta the place and go regional. Yeah, it’s the same but nah, it’s completely different. Might sell up and start a distillery on the river in some dodgy Riverina town.

Anybody else travel outside the walls?

Or anybody come to Melbourne from regional and do a prison tour?

Welcome your thoughts.


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Boxcar
Boxcar
January 14, 2022 10:54 am

“Parmi”. WTF??
Mate you’ve been bought and sold. It’s a parma

Bar Beach Swimmer
January 14, 2022 11:01 am

MT, pleased to hear that you and yours have had a little respite from the constant barrage of control that permeates Melbourne and it’s environs.

But, unfortunately, I have to say that NSW is no different to Viccy apart from the fact that our state premier returned to the people that which was unrightfully taken: the freedom of everyone to go about their own business.

The old saying that a fish rots from the head could not be more apt in Australia today. Viccy had one of the most contemptible premiers any state in the Commonwealth has ever produced. OTOH NSW has a premier who is not a megalomaniac. Yet, still, for two months this state deliberately “othered” some of its residents for not showing vaccination status in order to force people to take an experimental medical intervention.

Thankfully, we are no longer pariahs. But elsewhere, and if General Frewin were to get his way, it would be much different here.

I’ve been uninvited to Xmas parties, exercise classes and the local watering hole. My “friends” are seemingly thinning out.

Having said all that, I’ve always thought Viccy to be a police state, even without any “pandemic.” Cross the river when you can, mostly we’re a welcoming lot!

bemused
bemused
January 14, 2022 11:10 am

I live roughly 200km from Melbourne and it is like living in a different world, in many ways, and most people are far more relaxed about the virus.

John Brumble
John Brumble
January 14, 2022 11:15 am

“Parma”?? And a Rotti is a “Rottw”, because the next letter is a “w” and a “schnitti” is a “schnittz” because the next letter is a “z”?

Get out of here.

Angus Black
Angus Black
January 14, 2022 11:31 am

Much the same here in rural Tasmania…unless you cross the iron curtain into the public service reaches of the Channel and the Greenie elite waterside suburbs of Hobart.

You meet one or two plague hysterics everywhere – and their abject fear is heartrending (or it would be if they weren’t so bloody offensive about it) – but, generally, life’s much as it always was.

Roger W
Roger W
January 14, 2022 11:40 am

What is it about some middle aged women – menopause or something?
Anyway, just escape from Victoria while you can. Being overwhelmed by Mexicans here on the Gold Coast at the moment but you can’t refuse fellow Australians when they flee oppression, even if they are driving up rents and house prices!

A reader
A reader
January 14, 2022 11:43 am

Most people in South West Sydney don’t care any more. Masks groaned about and worn with the contempt the useless bits of paper or fabric deserve. People pretending to QR scan but not actually even unlocking their phones. There are definitely some neurotics (I work with them) but mostly we’ve decided we’re living and that Dom outranks the health Hazzard so he can be safely ignored

Diogenes
Diogenes
January 14, 2022 11:46 am

We visited the SiL in Stanthorpe, 3 hours from Brissie, seriously the covid Nazis were worse than on the Sunshine Coast

duncanm
duncanm
January 14, 2022 11:50 am

I think 90% of the population is cognisant of the Kabuki in NSW. Really just pretending so we can get on with our lives.

There is, however, a mysteriously high number of people who almost want to punish the unvaccinated. This extends beyond the Karens’ (who can be laughed at), and I’ve found it in some people I’d least expect it.

They’re best ignored, or ridiculed if they persist.

Dot
Dot
January 14, 2022 11:52 am

Perrottet may be good value but he needs a list of people whose time in government is up.

Chant
Hazzard
Elliot
Speakman

He may be able to govern with good and solid conservative/classical liberal values if these state worshipping fruitcakes are punted like a tray of rotten oysters.

The damage these four twits have done in 22 months is extraordinary.

duncanm
duncanm
January 14, 2022 11:53 am

btw – passed through Melbournistan recently (Tas via. ferry to NSW). I avoided stopping anywhere except some rello’s down in Werribee.

They’re elderly, but militant in their Dan hatred. I suspect they’d be first out in the streets with the rope and tumbril.

Mak Siccar
Mak Siccar
January 14, 2022 12:08 pm

Matrix,

Our house in a large regional city in Victoriastan is up for sale.

132andBush
132andBush
January 14, 2022 12:43 pm

So potentially a new distillery?
Excellent!

shatterzzz
January 14, 2022 1:14 pm

A readersays:
January 14, 2022 at 11:43 am

Fact check: TRUE .. out here in Fairfield the masks are mainly being worn for compliance when entering shops .. ‘cos fines NOT health …! very little pretence of QR anymore …

shatterzzz
January 14, 2022 1:16 pm

Perrottet may be good value but he needs a list of people whose time in government is up.

A Photios scapegoat .. happy to take the payrise …

Buccaneer
Buccaneer
January 14, 2022 3:01 pm

Perrottet is doing a good job but it will take some time to dismantle the dismal offering that was there previously. Stop undermining solid politicians by tarring them with the same brush as the numpties. Heaven help victoriastan. Heaven help us all if the man who stands up for rubntug rights gets into the lodge.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
January 14, 2022 3:11 pm

I think 90% of the population is cognisant of the Kabuki in NSW. Really just pretending so we can get on with our lives.

I get the impression that the glove on the iron fist is a bit more velvety in NSW. The bars are sticklers – I believe they are singled out and if they don’t demand with a clipped Prussian accent that you QR Code and you go in they can be reamed.

Mind you, I went into a small bar in Cremorne where the barmaid asked if I had QR’ed in and I told her my phone is so old it does not have the resolution to capture the code and she would have to do it for me. She just said, “Don’t worry about it.” Anything more that saying you have to QR in was the limit of how much she could give a f*ck. No one else there even batted an eyelid.

A lot of people are wearing masks in shopping centres, are even still QR coding in. But they seem uninterested in whether other people do.

Forest Stylist
Forest Stylist
January 14, 2022 3:26 pm

My observations on those succumbing to covid mass psychosis:
Urbanites more than rural folk,
women more than men ,
government dependents more than independents,
ABC luvvies more than ABC haters and
SA more than NSW (not been to other states lately)

Katzenjammer
Katzenjammer
January 14, 2022 3:57 pm

Just returned home to inner west Sydney from a three weeks camping roam in National Parks, free stays and caravan parks, a circuit around the upper Hunter and west to near Forbes. People wanted to chat, and without anyone asking vaccination status, and no-one bothered putting on a mask. A few broached the virus subject to advise me it’s not really a problem (I know). It was so refreshing compared to the ambience of paranoia within inner Sydney in an electorate that votes very green. Masks were regularly on inside shops and petrol stations, but not many in view anywhere else.

shatterzzz
January 14, 2022 4:23 pm

I get the impression that the glove on the iron fist is a bit more velvety in NSW. The bars are sticklers – I believe they are singled out and if they don’t demand with a clipped Prussian accent that you QR Code and you go in they can be reamed.

I took two of the grandees (under 12s) to lunch in a pub in Parramatta CBD last weekend .. no masking, never QR-ed, whole place behaving like it was 2019 .. excellent 2 hours without a BAT FLU thought …. even got the KENO back .. pencils & tix .. tho luck is also still 2019-ish .. zip, zero, nuttin’ .. LOL!

Bar Beach Swimmer
January 14, 2022 4:36 pm

Deni?

Bar Beach Swimmer
January 14, 2022 4:52 pm

I thought so but just wanted to check. Yamba is nice!

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
January 14, 2022 4:53 pm

whole place behaving like it was 2019

Prince’s ‘Party Like It’s 1999’ is a nostalgia piece now.

calli
calli
January 14, 2022 5:07 pm

Yamba is beautiful! Good picking.

calli
calli
January 14, 2022 5:48 pm

Batemans is full of retired Canberrans.

Be warned.

calli
calli
January 14, 2022 6:04 pm

Try Narooma. On the inlet. Good fishing too.

Tom
Tom
January 14, 2022 6:08 pm

The government of Victoria are Year Zero communists hellbent on changing human behaviour. Whether it’s the insurance monopoly, the Transport Accident Commission, or the legion of agencies that aim to give political power to unpopular minorities (blackfellas, etc), the state government floods TV and radio with paid advertising that aims to change human behaviour into perfection on earth where there’s no room for fancy concepts like sin, fallibility or a creator above the almighty expression of human supremacy, the government.

It doesn’t matter where in it you live: Victoria is a fascist shithole. And the Liberal Party is its greatest supporter because it loves Big Government.

Rabz
January 14, 2022 6:10 pm

Got my second haircut in eight months this morning. Turned up (10:40am?), no face nappie, seated immediately.

Braindead FTA commercial TV on, the hideously ugly gargoyle* bloviating. Sounds like it’s lecturing a bunch of five year olds (i.e. j’ismists), which of course, it is.

HUG: “What we’ve noticed is that there are thousands of people in the hospital system in intensive care, most of whom are unvaxxed”

Me: “Lies, f#cking lies”

Girl cutting my hair – nodding and laughing and still keeping a steady hand, thank goodness

Me: “They just can’t help themselves!”

Gcmh: “yep.”

Cue that vile li’l cuck, Parrothead, at which point I had to tune out for my own safety. 😕

*Trigger warning – monstrously uglee ol’ slag …

Fat Tony
Fat Tony
January 14, 2022 6:29 pm

I might get time to go fishishing

MT – you never know, you might wind up catchatching something…

John A
John A
January 14, 2022 7:47 pm

Roger W says: January 14, 2022 at 11:40 am

What is it about some middle aged women – menopause or something?
Anyway, just escape from Victoria while you can. Being overwhelmed by Mexicans here on the Gold Coast at the moment but you can’t refuse fellow Australians when they flee oppression, even if they are driving up rents and house prices!

NO!! I am a lot older than Dan but I refuse to let him take the field by default.

I remain unvaxxed, I remain a QR-luddite and I remain a Victorian.

I will out-stay the rotten sod.

jupes
jupes
January 14, 2022 8:49 pm

Anybody else travel outside the walls?

Walls? They’re not walls. They’re boundary ropes. Walls are what we have in WA.

Took me over four weeks to break back in once I got back to Australia. That was after being denied entry from France to Perth for three months. Next time I leave I will be emigrating. Probably in a few months once I’ve sorted myself out here.

WA is a public health run tyranny overseen by that fascist imbecile McClown.

Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
January 14, 2022 11:20 pm

LOL, Deni. Know the place well or used to. Attended Ute Muster, Deni G&D Ball and the Conargo B&S ball multiple times when I was younger. Got cut off in the Central Hotel near closing one night which was a feat for the times. Good times, good times.

Cop at Mathoura used to be a pain in the bum but I guess he has moved on by now.

sfw
sfw
January 15, 2022 8:31 am

Up to a few years ago you could still get a ‘doer upperer’ in our area for $150/200k (NE Vic). However the cheapest house now is $500k. My younger brother has always worked hard and though he struggles to read and write has always done well for himself through hard work and a desire to please customers. However after giving two houses away to two seperate wives and he is still supporting an oyygen thief of a 25yo son he hasn’t much left. He’s early 60’s in good health but just lost his last and pretty good job as he refused to get vaxxed, said he would try the novavax when it gets approved. So he’s looking to move to Urana NSW, small town, you can pickup a not bad house for $150+. He lives a quite life but the Victoria he knew is dead and gone. He’d prefer a town with a swimming pool, any suggestions?

bemused
bemused
January 15, 2022 9:14 am

This perhaps should have gone in this thread than the other. I’m not sure Queensland is any better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKJhTR3JbCc

calli
calli
January 15, 2022 9:24 am

All that area is lovely, sfw. Also look at Narrandera. You have the benefit of all the services in Wagga nearby.

PeterW
PeterW
January 15, 2022 10:01 am

As an “inlander”, I reckon that the coast is over-priced and over-rated.
Anyone looking at NE Vic or just across the border would probably do better focussing on west of the Hume Highway.
Prices get steeper as you get closer to the hills, the snow resorts and the “bush”.
Prices also get steeper if you are withing 45 minutes of any of the regional centres – Albury, Wagga etc. Yeah the facilities are good, but if you focus on the benefits that living in the country actually bring, plan on not having to go to the shops every day and doing most of your own cooking…. being that distance out is not a bother. The small towns still have most of the necessities, and the localities are nicer.

The Axeman
The Axeman
January 15, 2022 11:25 am

sfwsays:
January 15, 2022 at 8:31 am
“…He’d prefer a town with a swimming pool, any suggestions?”

sfw – we are moving to Jindera (not far from Urana) within the next 18 months. It is my wife’s hometown. It is beautiful country, we have family there and it is only 2o minutes from Albury. It has a truly excellent public pool that is open from Oct to April with a very cheap yearly subscription. We spend a lot of time in Jindera and love visiting the pool in Summer.

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