Avalook at Australia News

Issue Number 10, 16 March 2000

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ISSN 1443-0797

Editors: Eric Lindsay and Jean Weber
info@avalook.com.au

In this issue...

Travels, cyclones and floods
Places: Our trip to Mount Morgan and Biloela, November 1999
Not the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (NOCOG)
Royal Flying Doctor Service
What if you need medical assistance?
Australian Caravan Touring: Planning for caravan, campervan and motorhome travel
Highway Wanderers Chapter of the Campervan and Motorhome Club of Australia (CMCA)
Subscription information

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Travels, cyclones and floods

Apologies for the lateness of this issue of the newsletter. We dashed off to the USA in mid-February without loading the relevant files on the computer -- not that we had much time to do any website work while we was there!

Meanwhile, soon after we left Australia, a cyclone caused major flooding in Queensland and other parts of Australia. According to news reports, the Thomson River at Longreach peaked at 5.6 metres, not quite reaching the record set in 1974 flood. Other places mentioned were Cairns, Townsville, Broken Hill, and many other areas. Lake Eyre in South Australia, normally dry, is now full of water! We're still catching up on the news reports.

We're now glad that our original travel plans were delayed, because we would otherwise have been right in the flood zone.

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Places: Our trip to Mount Morgan and Biloela, November 1999

We've written a report of our trip to Mount Morgan and Biloela (Central Queensland) in November 1999, to inspect the motorhome we later purchased, and to do a bit of sightseeing. You can read about the trip (and see a few photographs) here:
http://www.avalook.com.au/qldcentral/biloela/index.htm

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Not the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (NOCOG)

The website for NOCOG (Not the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games) was a good introduction to some typical Australian bush humour, especially in response to an annoying situation. Unfortunately, their website is no longer on the Web.

This idea started when Cooktown and the rest of Cape York Peninsula learned that the Olympic Torch route would not include any of their part of Australia -- an area about the size of the state of Victoria (though with far fewer people).

NOCOG are planning to stage their own torch run through Cape York, visiting many remote communities and towns and ending in Cooktown. The run will be followed by the "complete relaxation games" featuring such events as beach strolling, waterfall watching, synchronised beer drinking, and relay napping. Sounds like my kind of sports!

The whole thing was be used as a fund raising project for the benefit of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which is of great importance to the residents of Cape York. They got a lot of publicity from some of the established media, too.

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Royal Flying Doctor Service

While we're on the subject, you might like to visit the Flying Doctor Service's website:
http://www.rfds.org.au/default.htm

As well as a history of the Service and other information, the site includes several pages of good information for anyone thinking of travelling away from the built-up areas of the country, and particularly into off-road areas.
http://www.rfds.org.au/obtravel-info.htm

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What if you need medical assistance?

Before you visit Australia, you need to consider whether you need medical insurance, or find out if your existing insurance will cover you while you are here.

The Australian national medical scheme, Medicare, covers some but NOT all visitors to Australia. Should you need treatment, you can go to any doctor or public hospital, but you will need to pay if you don't have a Medicare card.

Even with a Medicare card, most people without ambulance insurance must pay for any use of an ambulance. Although the costs of ambulance service and medical treatment is generally much less than the cost of similar services in the USA, it can still add up quickly.

If you don't have medical insurance that will cover you in Australia, you may be able to take out travel insurance that includes coverage for medical costs. Another possibility is to get "visitors' insurance" from one of the Australian health insurance companies.

The International MEdical Assistance Network (IMAN) site has a good summary of the situation:
http://www.iman.com.au

Here are the websites for some of the major insurers:
Medibank Private http://www.medibank.com.au/
Hospital Contribution Fund http://www.hcf.com.au
NIB Health Funds http://www.nib.com.au Website has no information about insurance for overseas visitors; you'll need to send e-mail to them. nib@nib.com.au

I could not find websites for these funds (if they're on the web, they're well hidden):
MBF (Medical Benefits Fund)
National Mutual Health Insurance Manchester Unity Health Fund

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Australian Caravan Touring: Planning for caravan, campervan and motorhome travel

This section has been moved to our page on motorhome and campervan rentals.

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Highway Wanderers Chapter of the Campervan and Motorhome Club of Australia (CMCA)

The Highway Wanderers are people who live in a motorhome and travel most of the time. Their website provides information about the group's activities and an insight into life on the road: the lifestyle, practicalities and advice.
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~hiway/

The main CMCA site is:
http://www.cmca.net.au/

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© Copyright 2000 Eric Lindsay and Jean Weber. All rights reserved.

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