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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The Alice is 1,500km (say +1,000 miles) from the nearest capital city, Darwin, which is a hop and a skip from the Timor Sea.
Since no one has taken stalesy to task for this one I guess it's up to me. The Alice might be 1000 miles from the Timor Sea but it's only about 600 from the Great Australian Bight.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
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Spot on Faldage and - "whoa, busted".
I knew Darwin was the closest capital city and I knew it was on the coast....
Reading between the lines, I think you're suggesting I should've looked at a map.....
stales
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You're forgiven, stales. It should, perhaps, be noted at this point that not many people know that the Great Australian Bight is so named because it looks like some giant creature has taken a great bight out of the southern edge of Australia.
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old hand
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old hand
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having never been, and with no desire to go, sort of takes it out of my thinking.. :)
Whaaa? C'mon, dontcha wanna see tundra and whales and polar bears? They have specially desgined vehicles in Churchill, Manitoba (on Hudson Bay) to take tourists out to see polar bears, so that if the polar bear gets it into his head that he wants to attack the vehicle he won't be able to harm it. And the reason you had trouble with roads, jo, is that there aren't any to Churchill. You have to take the train, or a plane. And for a community on James Bay, try Moosonee, Ontario (according to my 1985 MacMillan School Atlas).
There used to be a fact sheet on Canadian superlatives which I suspect would have listed the farthest place in Canada from any ocean. But I can't find it right now.
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old hand
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And here's the rest of the story...(courtesy of http://www.ea.gov.au/coasts/mpa/gab/#what - with edits. The continental shelf in the Great Australian Bight is very wide, in some places extending well over 200 NM. It has the longest ice-free east-west extent of coastline in the Southern Hemisphere Edit: OMG!!! Really - wow!!! and is adjacent to the only circumpolar ocean in the world - the Southern Ocean. The waters are treacherous and the region experiences some of the world's highest and most persistent waves.
The Great Australian Bight region is an area of great conservation significance. It provides important calving habitat for the endangered southern right whale and colonies of Australia's only endemic (that is, occurs nowhere else in the world) pinniped - the Australian sea lion - are found there. It supports some of the highest levels of marine diversity and endemism found anywhere in Australia, particularly among red algae (sea weed), ascidians (sea squirts), bryozoans, molluscs (shellfish) and echinoderms (sea urchins and sea stars).
The abundant wildlife in this region exists due to the unique environmental conditions arising from its location in a transitional zone between the warm tropical waters from Western Australia carried to the Great Australian Bight via the Leeuwin current, and the cold waters from other areas around South Australia. The seasonal influence of the Leeuwin current and the localised periodic cold, nutrient-rich up-wellings in the eastern part of the region provide ideal conditions in which biodiversity can prosper.
There are no major land-based watercourses that flow into the Bight. The arid climate of the Nullabor and the flat terrain of the coastline has meant that very little land-based sediment has been washed into the wide continental shelf. This lack of fluvial or land-based deposits has been a major factor in preserving a comprehensive record of global climate and oceanographic changes in the sediments along the southern temperate Australian coastline.stales
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Speaking of the Hudson Bay, Lets go Next week-- it's the 400 and something birthday of the Hudson Bay Trading Company, the oldest commercial establishment in North America...(May 2nd)-- i don't think we need to add to the birthday list.. i just happened to know it..
they have great birthday sales, and what with exchange rates, we could save a bundle..
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old hand
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old hand
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So, tsuwm... I'm at 32nd & Excelsior. If it's down to us, which one of us is it gonna be?  BTW, I've been to a monument in Rugby(?), ND, whose sole purpose as a community seems to be touting their position as geographical center of North America. FWIW...
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old hand
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old hand
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is adjacent to the only circumpolar ocean in the world - the Southern Ocean.
Poppycock! Since when is there a "Southern Ocean"? All that down there is the combination of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic. The only circumpolar "ocean" is the Arctic. not that the oceans are really made of anything different anyway . . .
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Carpal Tunnel
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