Trivia and other useless but interesting items

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Originally Posted by ramblingboy42

ahhh I think we called those "catheads" , 3 corner jacks, they hurt like hell when stepped on one and drove us mad as kids repairing punctures on our bikes.

I grew up in far western NSW , the things were everywhere.

btw , Orange, Parkes, Bathurst , Dubbo are not western NSW, they are central NSW. not directed at you JD , just a bugbear of mine

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When you tread on the first one the brain automatically believes it is the only one right? Wrong.[bigsad]

Then you find that you have stepped into a WW2 North Sea Minefield so you keep running like buggery hoping the last one was the last one.

But no, you have got yourself right in the middle of the patch by this time so how do you get your daft mate who already has a flat tyre on his treadly to ride into the rescue & donkey you out?

You just do, reminding him of the many times you have done the same for him at great expense. Next stop is the Bike Shop to buy a couple of new tubes. Bloody Caltrop!

ahhh South Australians , croweaters , called it a donkey.

We , just a few km east, called it a dink.

We call them Goats Heads or Bulls Heads.
The house we recently bought in Cloncurry the yard is full of them.
When we first went down there 4 of the 5 kids had decided they didn't need shoes, they learnt that they did.

Re dog poo, in Doomadgee we just water the yard regularly & the Dung Beetles get rid of any dog poo in a couple of hours.
Easy.
Jonesfam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ramblingboy42

ahhh I think we called those "catheads" , 3 corner jacks, they hurt like hell when stepped on one and drove us mad as kids repairing punctures on our bikes.

I grew up in far western NSW , the things were everywhere.

btw , Orange, Parkes, Bathurst , Dubbo are not western NSW, they are central NSW. not directed at you JD , just a bugbear of mine

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My wife was in a wheelchair for the last year of her life. They also use bicycle tyres ........

Their spread seems to have been a side effect of motor transport - my father told me that they were not a problem when he was growing up in the Orange area before the (first) war. He never owned shoes until highschool. Hooves are much less efficient at spreading them than are tyres.

The change to rubber tyred tractors in the thirties and forties probably helped spread them from roadsides to paddocks as well.

They're in Melbourne too. Know someone who got a puncture from one down there last month. Nasty.

Meant to say in my earlier post. We found a way to reduce the frequency of bike tyre punctures, & maybe it was a well known method for all I know.
It was one of those things that someone came up with using a bit of nouse.

A, say, 18"length ( cut & shape to suit your application). of heavy gauge fencing wire bent in the middle like a horse shoe which attached to the front fork stem so the U bend laid over the tyre in front & was loosely fitted both ends so it would ride over the tread (if you were Posh [happycry]) as the wheel rotated it tended to brush the thorns off by hooking under the thorns. The rear wheel was also fitted with a wire loop from a possie under the seat to react in the same manner. Not much chop in reverse though.


Wasn't 100% perfect, but it did go a long way to reducing punctures. The heavier gauge wire the better it seemed as it didn't catch in the L-R tread pattern. If the first rotation of the wheel didn't puncture you after the thorn commenced to enter then it was a safe bet that you would be ok as successive rotations would remove the thorn.



Now if we only could have adapted it for bare feet?[bigrolf]

We have them on the property,you just learn to live with them.
They are only around certain times of the year,depending on rainfall.

The dogs hate them.

At a clearing sale a few years ago I acquired a bike that has the ultimate solution - solid tyres.

[smilebigeye] As did my aforementioned 3 wheeler trike. Were yours white Sidewalls?[biggrin]

No, they just look like standard black tyres until you have a closer look.