A Country Mile

 Just how far is “a country mile”? 

The thought came to me as I stood by my BMW on a corner just north of Gundaroo.  The road ahead to town had a large “Detour” sign blocking the way, as the bridge was out.  The side road was gravel, graded and rolled for sure, but narrow and slick. 

I flicked open the top box and grabbed the map to help with decision making, only to have it disappear in a cloud of dust as a large articulated truck rolled up on the gravel.   

“Where are you headed” called the bearded road worker from the cab. “Canberra”.

“Then head back this way.”

“How far on the gravel?” I wavered. 

“About five k’s”.  It might as well be a Country Mile I thought.  And so it turned out to be. 

Of course there are times when real measures matter – like the time I was navigating my mate’s yacht across Bass Strait.  Then it s a life and death matter frankly. But other times it really doesn’t matter too much – or does it? 

A “mile” as all baby-boomers will tell you, straight from the back of an old 48 page exercise book, is actually 1760 yards, or 5280 feet or 63,360 inches, but so what? (and how the hell does that translate into metres and kilometers, and why the funny numbers – surely we are talking about 1000 yards in a mile? Nope, that would be just too easy for the English. 

But then there are different types of miles.  The one I’m more used to is the “nautical mile” which is actually a bit further than a “statute mile” or an “English mile”. Practically, it is 800 feet further.  And for those who read far too many Hornblower books, its really about “leagues”, one of which is about three sea miles. But here, there really is some logic in the measurement of a nautical mile because it’s actually one minute of longitude, which is very useful for navigators. Confused now? Well, if you circled the equator you would go through 360 degrees as we all know.  Each degree is broken up into 60 minutes and one of these minutes is equal to one nautical mile! Simple really! (and ok, for the real maths fiends that equates to 21,600 nautical miles around the earth). 

But here is the rub. As the years have passed, we have been able to measure the circumference of the earth a little better.  To be precise, the Americans were not prepared to let the English own the nautical mile, and proclaimed it to be slightly longer (of course) at 6080.20 feet.  Of course it took the French to tell them that they were all wrong and come up with the third measure of the nautical mile at 6076.11594 feet! This is now called the “international nautical mile” - pedants. 

So why is this all relevant? Well if there is such a debate about such an important measurement as the nautical mile, does it really matter to we land lubbers if a land mile is a little more or a little less? 

More importantly, if our BMW bikes measure everything in kilometers, who gives a stuff about miles anyway?  Well some do, so here it is – one mile equals 1.609344 kilometres and 1 kilometre equals 0.6213712 miles – satisfied? You will need to know that when you go riding in the good old US of A. 

Ok, so a mile is longer than a kilometre.  So a country mile, to a person for whom time is not such a big issue and distance really not so important unless they are dying of thirst, or the tractor has run out of petrol, must be a bit further.  To be precise;

“A country mile is a little way further than you would like to walk on a hot day, but not so far that you couldn’t walk it if you really needed to, or that you might walk to a pub if it was your first beer in a month, but definitely longer than a k or a statute mile.  Sometimes it will be a few kilometers and sometimes lots, however many that might be, but always more than you would like when carrying a gerry full of petrol or a flat tyre.” 

So on this day, in the dust north of Gundaroo, a country mile was 5 kilometres off the lip, but 12.1 kilometres by the gauge – just as you would expect! 

But next week when McGrath is bowling at the English captain, and the ball whistles past off-stump, the poms will say “there, missed by a country mile!” and then it will be 2.31109856 inches measured by radar – the perfect “country mile” don’t you think? 

Olaf Moon