I know you meant to put “eighth” but someone might not…
I once saw a comparison of our metrication and decimalisation strategy and the latter was held up as having all the key features metrication didn’t bother with. Especially a known chop date, and a provisional end of the campaign 6 months later, although it was said that it was basically all done and dusted within about 2 months. I suspect Australian metrication policy was much more well defined and with targeted dates for various changes.
(snip)
As I remember, there was a strategy to have metrication applied early and hard in horse racing - out went miles and furlongs and in came metres very quickly, and at all venues. My memory that this was done to get 'the ordinary people' used to things and comfortable with the concept. There's still some references every now and then to some of the feature races, like The Melbourne Cup, in the old terms - two miles - but that's done for nostalgic purposes rather than being an act of resistance, and means SFA to anyone under 40.
It took quite a while for road-signpost distance signs to be changed especially in regional and rural places, and for a time the old signs with miles references remained, with little yellow attachments with the kilometres distance subsequently added. There were all sorts of accessories for car-owners to have their speedo and odometer now read in kms rather than miles - speed signs were rapidly changed all over the place in what must have been a complex job to organise. But I think the change was done well here, and with none of the cultural baggage that seems to have infected parts of the UK. And I suppose because the nation was heavily in favour of post-war immigration, as the bulk of newcomers outwith the UK came from countries fully conversant already with the metric system, by the mid 1970s it wasn't such a jump to take on.
We've never had the cultural aspects of metrication being something imposed on us by a suspicious outside organisation - the blasted EU, for some UKers; or the Commies, for some of our Yank friends - so it's been free of those entanglements thankfully.