I’ve owned custard.net.au for many years. It’s named after my (perhaps poorly thought-up) business name. Indeed, net.au and com.au names have to be attached to a registered business name.

It used to be that generic .com.au names weren’t generally available, so custard.net.au couldn’t be bought — though sausage.com.au somehow got through the net. When they opened them up, some bakery grabbed custard.com.au, then completely failed to use it.

I forgot all about this until today, when the good folk at Melbourne IT, Australia’s longest running registrar, gave me a ring to let me know it had lapsed, and asked if I’d like to buy it.

The lady on the phone made one fatal mistake: she tried to sell it as part of a package, with some kind of pre-built placeholder whiz-bang web site attached to it, for the grand total of A$595. It should have been obvious from looking at my existing site that not only do I know how to put a web site up, but also that I’m not exactly doing stellar things with the site I do have, so it’s not exactly compelling for me to own the .com.au. And therefore if I wanted to buy the domain, it would be for as little dosh as possible. She really should have pitched it at the budget level.

I declined. Though of course, depending on how quickly I move, I could buy it anyway, though them or anybody else.

But I don’t think I will. It’s a business name I haven’t been entirely comfortable with recently, and it’s only maintained because I have to have a shelf-company to do contracting work through (well, and because breaking my existing email addresses and web pages hosted on it is against my religion).