Was it Skyhooks with the song “We’re living in the 70s”?.
Yesterday I had to fill up on my way back from Perth. I made the mistake (well I think it was a mistake) of stopping at the Caltex Woolworths outlet in Mandurah. It took me 40 minutes to get to the pump, fill up, pay and leave, all because with the discount voucher you get from shopping at Woolworths the price of the petrol was $1.27, where as everywhere else the price was $1.34. I felt sorry for the poor checkout attendant in the station. As I walked in an eldery customer was abusing him. It wasn’t his fault. People were panicing, rushing to save 7 cents a litre at the pump, and the local papers are predicting petrol will rise to $1.50 a litre….nuts. I can still remember when I first had a car griping when petrol got to 50c a litre. I can still remember filling up for 29.9 cents a litre, and I’m only 30. By the time my son gets to 17 and gets his first car, he’ll probably be paying $50 a litre!.
And then I caught some of the news last night. The Federal Treasurer is saying we are basically entering a similar stage to the fuel crisis of the 70s. Not good, not good….
$1.04 a litre…must have been 3-4 years since I paid that. The problem for many years in Australia was the tax take, I can remember when petrol got to 80c the tax take was something like 50c. They are saying its only about 35% of the price now, which is still a lot higher than the States, but a lot lower than Europe. I can remember relatives probably 4-5 years ago coming back from trips to France and telling me they paid about $2 (AUD) a litre for fuel there then!
As for the conversion: what’s a gallon 🙂 Aside from the odd reason the US never adopted the metric scale (and you work for a defence company, so you’d work in Metric, right? I know Boeing does because the whole world does now except the US), Weight and Liquid imperial measurements are totally foreign to most Australians. I get inches, and I get feet, because my parents generation grew up with this, and I know there is roughly 2.45cm in an Inch (a lot of rulers you buy have both on it), and of course you often see inch measurements online and with things like paper, but the other stuff….no idea :-)Speed and temperature are pretty hard to get around as well. I know 35 miles is about 60km, and I know 100F is about 38C, but that’s the extent of it. I was watching the Government funded ethnic broadcasting channel (SBS) the other night (they show South Park, so they aren’t to bad) and I caught their news, they showed temps in C for the US….I was quite impressed to see NY at 24 for example, given its about that here now in mid Autumn 🙂
thank you for your work