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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: 7 Words That Dogs Can Understand (And 4 That No Dog Can)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 09:30:47 +1300
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On 14/03/2025 11:05 p.m., J. J. Lodder wrote:
> Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 14/03/25 15:28, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>
>>> A little crossroads called Tirau (NZ) has a Big Dog (the tourist
>>> information office) and a couple of Big Sheep (a souvenir shop), all
>>> in corrugated iron. There's also a Shepherd, but he's not to scale,
>>> and not in typical NZ costume. (He's in front of a church.)
>>>
>>> https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/tirau-town.html
>>
>> Nicely done.
>>
>> When I visited Fiji I noticed that corrugated iron is a highly valued
>> construction material. I guess the native wood is unsuitable for
>> building, and maybe the clay is not the right sort for bricks.
> 
> Guess they don't have any.
> You need glaciers for grinding rock to sand and clay.

This can't be right. There is clay suitable for pottery in Fiji and many 
other Pacific islands where there have never been glaciers.

>> Importing timber and bricks would be hellishly expensive, I guess.

They've got timber. Wood and leaves were traditional house-building 
materials, after all. Corrugated-iron houses are built on a timber frame.
Bricks? Really no point. People who can afford a fancier European-style 
house will move up to concrete (with a corrugated-iron roof).

> The bricks were already expensive by themselves.
> Making them takes a lot of work, and a lot of firewood.
> Nevertheless, the Dutch did export bricks.
> The trick was to load the bricks as ballast,
> and to take in rubble for the return voyage.
> The rubble was used as landfill, for enlarging Amsterdam.
> 
>> Anyway, the result is that when any building is demolished, the
>> corrugated iron is grabbed and immediately reused. But there's not
>> enough of it, so the country is full of half-finished buildings.
> 
> Which get blown away with the next cyclone,
> creating new need,
> 
> Jan
>