by Rod_outbak » 24 May 2018, 6:55 am
About 14 years ago, I was driving down the road (hesitate to call it a highway) towards Mundubbera (QLD), and heading South(down through Gympie, to Brisbane).
I was in our old Landcruiser ute, which tended to run out of puff on any of the hills, so ended doing some time behind various cars.
About 80kms North of Mundubbera, I came up behind an army landrover; all painted up in camo, and decked out with all the appropriate army accessories. As it was slightly faster than me on the hills, I ended up following the vehicle for some kms.
I just assumed I'd run into the tail end of an army convoy, so resigned myself to a slow trip until they stopped somewhere..
After a while, my brain started to notice odd things about the army vehicle. It didnt have quite the right roof shape, and the gear on the back was a bit dated for current army issue.
Then, it hit me; That wasnt an army Landrover.
It was an old HJ40(45??) series SWB wagon; decked out in modern army paint scheme.
Throgh the rear windows, you could see there was also camo webbing over the cargo area behind the seats.
The effort taken to make this car look like something it never was, was kinda weird.
I eventually got a section of road where I could overtake.
As I came up beside the driver, I'm pretty sure it was Mr Owen, and he was glaring at me like I'd just raped his best pet cat..
[I'm guessing he was suspicious I'd been following him for 20 minutes so far...]
He's also decked out in army camo, complete with camo cap.
No idea where he was coming from (burying a fresh corpse?), but I coaxed as much power as I could from the old Landcruiser, and made sure I didnt see him again.
Kinda struck me as freaking weird.
I've read a little of his diatribe, and as other people have mentioned, there is a mish-mash of solid points, mixed in with some very questionable stuff.
One thing that I'd point out, is that I dont think the automatic ownership of any minerals under the soil, was ever the case in Australia. He quotes that at one point, that you owned everything to the core of the earth, but I dont think Mother England ever allowed this in Australia.
Yes; rights of freehold landholders has been eroded badly in the past 30 years alone, but I doubt the ownership of anything under the earth has ever defaulted to the landholder.
[Basing that on having read a lot of newspaper articles on the settlement of this area (CW QLD), and discussions of land ownership and rights was a common theme in the 1880's.]
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Sharing the extreme love with cats in Outback QLD