Originally Posted by
87County
You might have better roads in the shakey isles and a slightly reduced amount of hard mallee roots to cope with there Dougal :)
More seriously, the small amount of tubed tyres in existence here now mean that
(1) tyre fitters have little expertise in fitting them (so tubes can be damaged on installation),
(2) the inside surfaces of tubeless tyres (usually the only type of tyre available) can roughly manufacttured/finished and thus will be abrasive for tubes,
(3) the tyre fitters make no effort during tyre replacement to remove rust from the inner surfaces of rims (they need to be taken back home and treated/painted before the new tyre is fitted) , and (4) the quality of readily available tubes can be quite poor (a bit of a lucky dip really)