Colleen and Doug’s Excellent Outback Adventure: Postscript

Do toilets in Australia flush the other way?

We’ve all heard it before. Is it fact or fiction? Evidence of the Earth’s rotation, or urban legend? The so-called Coriolis force definitely makes hurricanes, tornadoes, and waterspouts spin clockwise in the south and counterclockwise in the north (and don't occur at all at the equator). But is this force strong enough to affect the average crapper?

I decided to investigate. Before I left, I took this footage of a toilet in my office, clearly flushing counterclockwise:

Click HERE to see the AMERICAN toilet in action!



It was hard to find a similar toilet in Australia, because they have all kinds of crazy pots that don't flush in a traditional way. But I finally found one in Port Campbell National Park (on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria), and it very clearly flushed in a clockwise direction:

Click HERE to see the AUSTRALIAN toilet in action!



So as you can see, my own randomized, multicenter study proves that toilets really do flush the other way Down Under. But Web sites such as Discovery.com and Snopes.com claim otherwise. So you'll have to judge for yourself.

The mysteries of life continue...