In Sydney they've been checking out derelict and sealed World War II tunnels and bunkers in the coastal cliffs and the covered trenches and air-raid shelters built in parks, school playgrounds, pubs, backyards, hospitals and other public buildings for somewhere to hide if the worst happens.

The doomsday movement is excited because late last week a 100-metre-wide asteroid screaming down at 24 kilometres a second passed only 70,000km from earth.

Astronomers had no warning it was headed our way and said it was the biggest rock to come that close for many years.

Swinburne University astronomer Professor Alan Duffy said it would have hit with more than 30 times the energy of the atomic blast at Hiroshima.

It was too close for comfort, he said. So what do we do if one heads our way?

In the 1998 asteroid disaster movie Armageddon, Bruce Willis; character Harry Stamper had the job of blowing up an asteroid with nuclear weapons. That's out of the question.

The Sydney preppers will run for the cliffs but in Orange all our backyard wartime air raid shelters have long been filled in and the trenches dug by the council and covered with timber, corrugated iron and soil to protect residents in the block bordered by Sampson, Kite, Moulder and Woodward streets are also long gone.

So do we head for the covered channel that runs under the CBD, Robertson Park and the library, Cadia mine, Borenore Caves or begin digging in the backyard?

But then if a big rock does hit us, it's probably curtains for everyone.

Former Orange mayor Tim Sullivan always promoted one of the city's greatest benefits for people looking to move here was being able to drive to work in five minutes.

It's still a bonus even though there's now stacks of traffic lights slowing traffic.

But figures just published by a Household, Income and Labour Dynamics survey show commuting times in the big cities have gone through the roof, leading people to consider quitting their jobs.

Sydney fared the worst with an average commuting time of 71 minutes every day to get to and from work. That's 5.9 hours a week in the car.

However, it's not just clogged roads that's the problem. House prices are so expensive they're forcing many workers out into the suburbs to search for affordable homes.

That's not the case in Orange where the median price is around $415,000, affordable for Sydney people.

And workers here can still get into the CBD in five or six minutes. They can go right across Orange from the Greengate intersection to Lone Pine Ave in around 12 minutes if they want to.

That's an average speed for the 4.7km trip of around 22km/h, which isn't real flash, but it's far better than the traffic nightmares in Sydney.

It's surprising how many people you see walking our streets with a garbage bag picking up rubbish.

It's probably just as surprising the number of grubs who chuck mostly takeaway cartons out of their cars.

So our clean streets are mainly due to these caring anonymous people who pick it up on their walks. Goodonya!