Bruce

I like the solar car race but I wish there was a category for more normal cars, by which I mean 2 seats and in principle able to be registered. I would also have an electric car race with solar recharge and more than one battery pack allowed, as an associated event .

tell us more marty

I didn't know about that appeal. I reckon the prosecution and the fine were both obscene and the farmer should be given an apology and refunded every cent and paid for the time he has spent on this awful business.

I agree with not putting the job off. In my case the family history on my father's side was something I was too slow in getting around to and now all the witnesses have died. I don't think your story will be boring Yenn. It will be like a window into Australia as it was when we were younger.

I reckon this Yuendumu killing was tragic for the police as well as the aborigines and the blame lies with those who made a scared young man wear a gun in a situation where the tragedy so caused should have been foreseen .

I was proud of a sister-in-law who was a cop in Darwin when she defused a situation where a guy was stopping 3 lanes of traffic by hopping in front of a car if it tried to move. When the police came, he explained that he was "gunna show that bitch" by getting run over. Cop suggested that getting arrested would also work to show that bitch. The guy considered this and agreed, after which he came quietly.

I would like to hear the stories from guys who post here, like OME and Yenn and pmc etc, with emphasis on the entertaining bits like best and worst memories , and what were your schooldays like, first job, last job etc. I reckon anybody over 60 must have quite a story to tell. I think that many of us grew up in country towns, that alone would be interesting to know.

The battery for the SA grid cost us 40 cents per watt-hour, which is just under half of what you get from hobbyking, but that battery was so big it cost millions. I couldn't find a price for a replacement 64kWh battery for the Kona, but guess it would be about $40,000. This guess leaves the cost of the rest of the car at over $20,000 which is reasonable. This is better than my hobbyking figures, but not by so much that the argument changes.

yep thats it OME. I had a copy myself but lent it out once too often. In the book, they thought the food production capacity of South Australia was unlimited. There is a similar thing happening today with the "infinite growth " official dogma. Those of us who question this are regarded as problem people. My expectation is that the infinite growth nonsense will finish with far worse consequences than the foolish wheat-frontier expansion in the book. We look back and wonder how they could have been so stupid. What will coming generations say about us?

I wish your graph was right Octave. It indicates to me that my 0.1kWhr battery in 2018 should have cost $17.60. Instead I paid over $100. I bet you can't actually buy a 1kWhr for $176 .

I agree OME. That policeman has had his life ruined. The government is in damage control mode and it is all sad. I say again that it would never have happened if the police didn't carry guns, at least at Yuendumu. I bet that they ( the guns ) never were a useful accessory to be worn there. They didn't wear guns in SA until the president of the police union pushed hard for them. That guy was in reality a cop as well as a drug-dealing criminal and he subsequently spent many years in Mount Gambier jail. I hate it that they carry guns.

Here's the problem: there is no cheap battery. My Jabiru uses an 8.4 amp-hour battery at 13.2 volts and cost just over $100. Now 8.4 amps for 1 hour at 13.2 volts is 110 Watt-hours. So I paid about $1 per watt-hour and it was real cheap, most pay 4 times as much. ( they get better control-stuff built into the box though ) SO at $1 per watt-hour, or $1000 per kWh, or $60,000 for 60 kWh, the idea is real expensive. The world is crying out for a battery which will store electricity for a few cents per kWh, I wish I could invent one.

My wife just read of a Qld farmer fined $1 million for making firebreaks wider than allowed! Surely this can't be true.

pmc, there is a great book called "on the margins of the good earth" by Meinig. It is about the expansion of the SA wheat frontier in the days of your story. It was written as a thesis but it was so good it became a bestseller. Have you seen it?

Your feelings of danger do help explain that police person's actions though. I reckon he was scared and he panicked and did the shooting. I feel sorry for him too.

Been there lots nomadpete. First time in the 1950's. The last time about ten years ago to connect their classrooms with optical fiber for computer networking. And I have used Yuendumu from the air as a turnpoint when flying gliders from Bond Springs. I never felt unsafe there, or at any aboriginal settlement. Yuendumu is probably safer than some, since it is a dry community. Once we were stopped at 2 police roadblocks because they were having a football carnival and visitors were expected. The roadblocks were there to stop grog getting in. On my first visit, I was a kid and the locals let me come on a kangaroo-shooting expedition. I remember thinking that by using guns and a flat-top truck they were not being traditional at all, but I kept my mouth shut. That night we all ( mainly aborigines ) sat around the roasting-fire drinking sweet tea. I liked it. It would be a great place to trial a "no guns " policy. There is nothing there worth stealing.

There was a great idea from aboriginal elders at Yuendumu: Ban ALL guns from the place including police guns. Personally, I remember the more civilized days of my youth when the police didn't carry guns. I hate how those guns make them swagger as they walk. I guess I would allow some locked up guns in a safe at the police station, to be released only by high authority. The govt reaction to this idea will show their true feelings on the police shooting in a way that punishing the officer concerned will not.

I reckon the greens really don't understand the latest stuff on nuclear energy, where the radioactive waste and thermal runaway problems have been overcome. I reckon they are stuck in a time-warp due to poor education. They think the old Chernobyl design is what a nuclear power station would be like. And the rest of them are indeed cynically aware that the average voter has no idea either and they might lose votes for their party if they pursue nuclear power. BUT its been blowing a gale here for more than a week. There must be spare wind-electricity around to do some pumped hydro. If pumped hydro is cheaper than nuclear, I for one would be happy to go that way. I know there are guys on this forum who argue that nuclear is just too expensive. Alas, there is nothing on the horizon, either a battery breakthrough or a big pumped hydro project or a new nuclear station.

I thought it was repressed guilt which caused Barnaby to attack the greens. The extreme weather events have been predicted for years, during which Barnaby has been in power. Mind you, I reckon the greens are at fault because they have effectively stopped nuclear energy which they clearly regard as worse than coal. Gosh, both sides of politics are stuck at less than grade 7 in their science understanding.

November snow is unusual Yenn. But as you say, it doesn't prove anything at all about climate change. The average temperature across the planet was not low during this time. I reckon that most of the excess energy is going into melting ice, and we will not see much change till more of the ice is gone. If you put a cup of ice out in the sun, the temperature will stay at zero until all the ice is gone. I reckon your mate is wrong about possums and right about too many humans. We are in plague proportions. There is a crazy Gaia theory that the planet acts like an organism and needs to run a fever in order to kill off this plague.

I believe that some groups are much more lawless than others, and I have a big distrust of government figures which say otherwise. You can test this out yourself. Go to Alice Springs and try to phone in a report of property theft. Unless things have changed a lot, the police on the phone will ask whether indigenous people were involved. If the answer to that is yes, then they will tell you that there is nothing they can do. So a lot of crime is treated as if it never happened. Much later, the claim is made that the statistics prove that indigenous crime is no more than that of any other group.

Bex, what is the situation in China for old folks?

Good onyer Octave. There should be more like you looking after their oldies in those places. My mother went into a government one after suffering a stroke which left her a vegetable. The only thing she could do was continually pull out any tubes until they stopped putting them in her. I think she wanted to die but they wouldn't let her of course.

I reckon the current situation with old folks homes is a great example of people wanting more from governments than they are prepared to pay for. They want to dump their oldies yet have them taken good care of without cost to themselves and their inheritance. It would be easy to fix: increase the charges for those who don't want to do voluntary work. This would take more backbone than is available I fear.

A person who I know very well and who is an intelligent climate-change denier ( goes to meetings and stuff ) lives at Noosa. I have this fantasy in my head that a meeting was cancelled because of the fires. Actually its a bit unfair to use such an episode to "prove" climate change, any more than the November snow in the high country proves the opposite.