You have to be feeling fairly strong to travel along an Australian highway and that's just in terms of the huge hoardings up on the bridges. "If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot," they scream.
And as you nod sagely, and think that's probably a good way to express it, you'll come to another bridge which has graffiti on it: "And if you make it home, you're an effing legend."
Then there are the safety in the workplace warnings, a picture of an anguished man in a helmet saying, "I`ll never forget the scream when he fell".
And another picture of a scarred face with the notice: "Label your chemicals or brand your workers."
Very sobering, and they may well work because of their shock value. But what to make of a stark notice saying: "The Elm Leaf Beetle hitch hikes?"
I looked out warily for a bug-eyed monster with a backpack thumbing with one of its antennae. I never saw one, but I did hear later on inquiry that this is a grub that eats elm trees, and people would prefer it to stay where it is, just eating up local elms rather than touring round on people's shoes, and felling the rest of the elm forests of Australia.
"Do people examine their shoes for it?" I asked the man in a petrol station. "No, they don't. Please don't worry about it lady, it's just another device to make people feel guilt-ridden and anxious," he said soothingly.
Brisbane is busy celebrating 100 years of the Queensland Irish Association. Earlier in the year, the President, Mrs McAleese spoke in its city-centre club to a huge audience, and the new library has several pictures of her visit.
The library is busy trying to collect the memoirs and papers of Irish emigrants to Queensland, the kind of work they got when they got out here, and also the lives they left behind. Some of them are very moving, family trees with brothers and sisters left out because they don't know what happened to them, and cuttings from old Irish newspapers.
A lot of these are being bound as memoirs and will provide useful source material for any Queenslanders trying to trace their Irish roots or know something of the social history at the time their grandparents were young.
The Irish Association's president, Pat Brennan, explained earnestly on the lovely warm evening that a lot of Irish Queenslanders found the weather far too hot in January and February, and what they were all looking for was a nice ordinary hotel somewhere in Ireland, where it would rain, and snow and sleet, and they could all sit there, huge groups of them, and thank God not to be in the boiling heat. He said lots of Irish hotels that closed for the winter could well think of this market.
I said that to be utterly honest, I felt it would take a great leap of faith to believe that anyone on Earth would prefer sleet to sun, but they assured me I hadn't known the deep upset that the heat of a Queensland January could cause in anyone of damp Irish genes. So, since they knew and I didn't, I agreed to let hoteliers know of this possible goldmine of tourism dying to get away from the sun.
The Irish Association is at 175 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane, and if you have any relevant books or memories to send their library they'd like those too.
On the plane from Brisbane to Melbourne I had what they call a Senior Moment about my glasses. In other words, I left them behind me. I wasn't aware of this, of course, until I was about to go on a stage and do a reading and couldn't see a word. Without very much hope I rang Qantas. The bright young voice which had never lost anything in its life said it would look in the Found Spectacles Box. To my delight, five other people had also lost their glasses, that morning. I was so pleased that so many other people had dozed off and let their specs slide to the floor, that I felt quite normal again.
Even to the extent of believing that those who remembered every small, trivial detail such as gathering all their personal baggage before leaving the aircraft could well be dull people with nothing else to do in their lives except count their belongings.
Melbourne is gracious and sort of elegant, the people seem to dress as if they were going to an event and the trams work brilliantly. The streets are shaded by all the trees planted down the middle, it's full of art galleries and craft shops and designer shoes boutiques. To me, it's somehow a more ladylike place than Sydney - there is of course huge rivalry between the two.
Sydney people say: "I went to Melbourne recently, but it was closed."
Melbourne people say: "How can you bear all that noise and brashness in Sydney? You're so brave."
We drove down the beautiful Mornington Peninsula with the ocean crashing minutes from the road, stopping for lunch in a wild-west saloon-looking place where people in vests and shorts and holding tinnies of beer were becoming hysterical over some race.
I looked to see what horse was winning and it was actually a Trotting Race, people in sort of wheelbarrows attached to horses.
Far too genteel a sport you'd think to have the whole pub bellowing at them in very ripe and colourful language. But then, what do I know? Then to a marvellous barbecue where the women sat down on canvas chairs and sipped Victoria wine and the men roasted themselves over snags and chook and steak on the flames.
I said that this was all very pleasant. "Only time men ever cook in Australia, make the most of it," said the 86-year-old hostess, looking beadily at her sons and grandsons all dressed in macho pinnies, slaving away.
She is a woman who always has one BGA (Brandy and Ginger Ale) before lunch but nothing to drink with lunch, because 79 years ago she was taught it was rude to eat and sup at the same time, and it sort of stuck.