A few months back, I was in the car with a couple of friends having the kind of idle conversation one tends to have in cars.
"What's the hill you'd die on?" my friend asked in a throwaway kind of way that sent my addled brain into overdrive. As the road-trippers started effortlessly rattling off worthy and serious causes, I quickly found myself falling into a mental pit of existential uncertainty. What hill would I die on?
Maybe it's the years of inevitably soul-jading newspapering that does it to you - maybe it's the particular brand of wicked curiosity about the world (the kind that tends to inspire grandmothers to say things like "the devil makes work for idle hands" just when you're about to explode the carton of eggs in the backyard with the firecracker you managed to pilfer off a mate ... not that I'd know anything about that, Mum) - but I've found, as I get older, my sense of certainty about things is less black-and-white and more 50 blurry shades of something a middle-class paint shop might call "Elephant's Memory".
"I think the new-flavour Pizza Shapes were a superior biscuit," I blurted out, having completely lost track of the conversation and feeling the urgent need to catch up, "the flavour-to-biscuit ratio was objectively better and we only wanted to keep the old, rubbish, chunky-flavoured ones because of brand nostalgia, and I'll die on this hill."
Maybe not my finest moment, but I've asked a few friends since then what Pizza Shapes they prefer and it's astounding how many people don't remember, or just don't seem to care about Shape-gate 2016. But I'm getting off track again.
In any case, I was thinking about that moment this week when I stumbled on a social media post by Lake Macquarie man James Musgrave, which would ultimately send me down an internet blackhole of weirdly specific curiosity.
Opinion: Points of view from the Newcastle Herald's columnists
Mr Musgrave lives at Jewells and often takes his dog for a walk along Nine Mile Beach. It happened that, on a walk a week or two back, he found himself wondering exactly how long Nine Mile Beach was; nine miles ... right? I thought so, too.
But a few seconds tinkering on Google Earth and Mr Musgrave had suddenly opened a can of worms. It's not nine miles. Not even close. At best, Nine Mile Beach from the breakwall at Blacksmiths to the cliff at Redhead is about four kilometres short of nine miles. Four whole kilometres! To quote Mr Musgraves: "that's a little bit off."
Even as his post (which has had hundreds of reactions this week) notes, if it was 8.5 miles rounding up would be forgivable. But we're talking about more than two miles of rounding here; the beach doesn't even crack seven miles.
Now, Mr Musgrave has since conceded though that, if you include Caves Beach and measure to Redhead, we get closer to the Nine Mile mark, but I had to confess I had already tripped down the rabbit hole and started an audit.
Glad you asked! Here are the findings:
THE MILE AUDIT
One Mile Beach at Port Stephens isn't one mile. It's actually closer to 1.62 miles, but it gets a pass because Middle Rock is, in fact, in the middle of the beach (about 0.74 miles, or about 1.1 kilometres, from either end).
The same can't be said for Forster, though. Their One Mile Beach is closer to one kilometre long, and barely cracks 0.7 miles.
Two Mile Lake north of Hawks Nest is only two miles if you measure by the most generous of standards from Korsmans Landing back to the Myall Holiday Park at White Tree Bay.
Three Mile Gully at the back of Metford Public School is only 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometres) from the New England Highway to where it meets Four Mile Creek just the other side of Raymond Terrace Road.
Across the ditch, our New Zealand neighbours have Two Mile Bay at Taupo (0.6 miles), which only cracks two actual miles if you include Three Mile and Four Mile bays from Wharewaka Point to Waipahihi Bay.
Three Mile Island? Only 2.4 miles if you measure with the curve of the landscape. In a straight line, it barely makes 2.3 miles.
Still not convinced? Eight Mile Plains in Queensland is only about 2.1 miles across. Oh, and while we're on the banana-benders, there are about five locations in the state called Six Mile Creek and even if you connect a couple of them from Riverview, down through the Six Mile Creek Reserve, to Rebank Plains, the creek is only 4.41 miles.
So, what do we do with all this nomenclatural uncertainty?
Mr Musgrave - who runs a Facebook page (Dog's Stoopid Classifieds) dedicated to some of his funnier findings and who has also written a book (You call this an Apocalypse?) - has suggested a poll to rethink the name but by popular demand "Sandy McSandface Beach" appears to be in the lead for now which, while creative, lacks a certain je n'est ce pas.
Where does this all leave us? Well, perhaps this is all just one of those quirky things we do that keeps life interesting and keeps the tourists on their toes. Perhaps I can't use Google Earth properly.
Who's to say?
But will I die on this hill? Absolutely. Rounding-up is one thing, and pedantry is another. But you have to admit there's miles between the two.
