Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to Some Australian Nostalgia.." video.
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The area between Melbourne and Geelong was not a very popular living segement due to being an ancient lava flow plain, dry, poor soils very rocky, wind swept, and most beaches over a large part of that section of Port Philip Bay are rather muddy flats. The Werribee area also had Melbournes largest sewage processing plant, with windblown odour issues. The land remained more a farming of livestock use, sheep, goats, some cows and limited grain crop planting. Compared to the eastern side of the bay with excellent soils infact until modern time much started as market garden and farming, the eastern side also has best beaches had many creeks and forested areas and more rolling not so flat terrain.
In modern times, there is by necessity of Melbourne population growth, maybe soon more than Sydney, the western sude has many community developments taking place from both Melbourne and Geelong ends. Much though is still the poorer cheaper places. Most homes must truck in good soil to establish nice gardens and lawns.
In reality that lack of development is now becoming distant past, though there is still plenty open grassy, roccky flat land remaining.
Also those western regions have a greater snake problem than the eastern areas, which being longer heavily populsted maybe have eliminated most of the snakes. In my south-easter area, we have had no snake issues for several decades. Yes they exist but very rare. Some western side places have significant Tiger Snake problems.
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Still such a shoe wipe/scrape mat at my front door steps to the house. They are still around, though most people use the woven brush like door mats in preference as they do finer job of brushing the shoe soles clean.
They most certainly remove more larger lumpy stuff than the brush types, including leaves, gravel, mud lumps on shoes, and one nasty smelly thing that is fortunately less common now, dog doo-doo that someone has stepped into. These days there are far fewer roaming dogs, so less such mess in the streets and footpath/nature strip ( we typicaly have a strip of grass between path and road kerb) Also council laws require people walking pets, to cleanup after their pet very severe fines apply, and where in dispute even genetic test on offending sample may be used in evidence of proving the "guilty" animal and owner involved. Required to carry plastic bags and ideally a scoop, or one may need to hand pickup using an inverted plastic bag. Really nasty task be assured so still many avoid this obligation, till fined a sizable penalty, maybe abandon the pet or walking the pet.
Our area, back many years ago, had many Greyhounds being led on walks twice daily, and we had many owners in the area, as just down the street is a Greyhound race circuit where weekly racing and betting takes place. So we had say twice a day more than a dozen people walking between 6 and 10 greyhounds past our houses. Some relieved themselves and plenty little piles were VERY common. Now the pickup laws make it impractical to walk these bunches of greyhounds along public streets, the pickup work is hard enough with one ir two dogs, but 6 to 10 is excessive burden, so exercising these dogs is now done by other means.
Someone visiting and getting out of their car on the way to homes, typically too often, stepped into the mess on regular basis. Lots then wiped shoes on the kerb or grass nature strip but regularly still carried some on shoes. That scrapper mat helped, but you also were vigilant and offered spare slippers so people could remove their shoes on entering.
Sadly unlike for example Japan, and many European homes, we do not always practice removing street wear shoes on entering homes. Really taboo in Japan to keep on shoes worn in the outside walking around.
In majority our scrapper mat accumulates sand, gravel, leaves over months and gets cleaned out typically as part of garden work, like lawn mowing, or watering as the hose is a good way to clear accumulated deposits between the strips.
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