So, it’s my last few hours in Australia and as I sit at the airport I find myself thinking about my experience here. I’ve had a good time. I’ve met a lot of interesting people, ate some interesting things, and in my little sojourn here I even met one of my goals: I have lived and worked on a new continent, Australia.

I spent the entirety of last night finalizing (finalising for you Aussies) my packing and cleaning the abode. While I was doing this I tried to identify the single most unique thing I’d learned over the last 18 months. Despite all that I’ve learned about Project Management and Australian culture in general, the only bit of information I could recall was some random stuff about double flush toilets. Forget cool facts about the weird animals, strange cuisine and the sometimes difficult dialect - it was double flush toilets on my mind.

Here’s the story:

While at a museum in Sydney that celebrated the technical achievements of Australia the guide highlighted an Aussie-made double flush toilet. I can’t recall if it was an Aussie idea meant to save water, or if this was simply the first model (made in Australia) introduced to help conserve water. I suspect it’s the former but I don’t wish to shift credit away from/ or to a wrong individual, nor am I inclined to look up the information because, quite frankly, I don’t care. Needless to say, it was there and was highlighted in the tour. It is also the only kind of toilet you will find here.

For those not familiar with the double flush toilet, here is a description:

It’s a toilet. And no, it’s not a toilet designed to rid your house of the results of a particularly toxic all bean, protein saturated burrito by conveniently flushing twice for each single push on the water accelerating activation lever. It’s a toilet designed to save water. It does this by providing two levers. One that does a half-flush for those non-bean burrito moments and one that does a full flush for those, theoretically, all bean burrito moments.

It’s important to note that I say theoretically because in theory it’s a sound concept. I’m not sure how much water is used during half-flush/ full-flush cycle, but I suspect it’s something along the lines of 250 mL (roughly two thirds of a 12 oz. Coke) for the half-flush and 500 mL for the full-flush (about a 16 oz. Coke). In case you can’t see where I’m going with this I’ll spell it out more plainly. The problem is that it’s never quite enough to rid the world of those toxic waste dump poos that are known to occur during those post burrito moments. It would be much better if you had a FLUSH mode and 1/10th flush mode (roughly equating to the current half-flush).

I realize (realise) that this would consume copious amounts of water in an already drought stricken continent but there are solutions to not having enough water. Australia could trade one tanker full of oil to the US for one tanker full of fresh water. Ya, there we go!

Having said all that one other fact occurs to me which might help explain why they can get away with a full-flush versus a FULL FLUSH. They don’t eat burritos.

So, at the end of the day - Australia has been one fine adventure. Good food, good people and good times. Good on ya, Aussies. I can’t think of a single negative thing to say about it - outside of one thing - it ain’t Texas. Nobody’s perfect.

Still, everyone ought to visit. It’s like Texas, but with funny animals and odd accents. I’m looking forward to my next visit.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.