onetrack

While it is the Channel 7 news site, this article does give you some good ideas on how to plan for a successful retirement. https://7news.com.au/business/retirement-expert-reveals-how-australians-can-retire-early-and-live-their-dream-life-c-21650614 I came across a bloke the other day who retired at age 38. He didn't say how he did it, but I would expect an element of luck as well as good planning and good earnings went into it. He was retired, on 600 acres (242Ha) in the North Eastern wheatbelt, about 300kms NE of Perth. He was in his late 60's, and he told me he'd actually gone back to work in his 50's because he wanted to put more into his super. He wasn't short of money, and he'd just bought an 80's Unimog, and put a caravan on the back of it, and his pet retirement occupation was exploring the woodlands and goldfields areas further to the NE from his block. It's not something I'd choose to do - living out there is costly, fuel and food are much higher cost than the city, and small country towns offer little by way of retirement company, simply due to the small numbers of population. If you like sports, most small country towns have clubs and golf and football, which some people seem to get right into. I can't be bothered with sport, never have had any interest in it. I like fixing things. A mate (aged 77) has retired to a shed his brother built in the deep South of W.A., on an 8 acre patch of land that is rented on a long term basis from friends. Their lease extends for quite a few years yet - but if/when he moves out, the shed goes to the landowners, as part of the deal. He's about 10kms from a reasonable-size country town. The problem is, my mates brother has recently been diagnosed with dementia at age 78 - so instead of my mate sharing his retirement years with his brother, he's spending it alone in his shed, while his brother is in aged care in a country town nearby. I don't think it's good to live alone, and especially when you become aged. But my mate split with his useless Indian wife (she started shagging one of his partners) over 25 years ago, and he has no time for women now. She left him virtually penniless, and he's never recovered from it, mostly because he's not a good money manager. So he survives on a single aged pension, plus a few side jobs he gets, doing machining work. He owns nothing, apart from an old (2005) 4WD Rodeo and a 2003 BF XR6 Falcon ute, which is high kms, so he's pretty dependent on Govt largesse to survive. There's a lot of people like him - I'm amazed at the number of people living in small caravan parks in small country towns, on a permanent basis, because they can afford nothing else. It's just existing, that's all.

On the grain season side in W.A., the farming community has just produced the biggest-ever grain crop to come out of W.A. It was truly a bumper season - 27.35M tonnes of grains in total, surpassing the former record-breaking 25M tonnes in 2022. That's 4 out of the last 5 years that have been bumper grain seasons for W.A. farmers. The taxman will be rubbing his hands! Surprisingly to me, barley was the biggest crop winner this season just gone. A far bigger area cropped to barley than normal, and high yields for the 2025/26 season, made barley the standout for this years grains. https://www.giwa.org.au/wa-crop-reports/2025-season/giwa-crop-report-february-2026/

if you don't want to keep working when you get to 50, you'll need a lot of money behind you to see you into an average length of old age. The problem with not working is you're not accumulating super - and super is usually necessary in old age, unless you own a sizeable amount of property which you can convert into cash in retirement. The only other way you can stop working early, is if you receive a large inheritance.

I spent 6 weeks living in the U.K. (based at Reading), and toured Scotland as well, from mid-August to the end of September 1988. The weather was remarkably pleasant all the time that I was there - days around 16°C to 18°C maximum, and minimums around 10°C to 12°C - and virtually no rain! It was nothing like I expected.

Here's a bloke who specialises in "oil" lamps, which description seems to cover any type of lamp or lantern that is fossil-fuel-powered. https://www.oillamps.com.au/

Well, Willie's got a new nickname now - the Lantern King! I have zero knowledge of these style of lanterns, I thought they were all junk and pretty useless for light output. But I do have some knowledge of the pressurised petrol/kero lanterns such as the Aladdin - we had no mains power on the farm when I was a child, and all we had for light was Aladdin lanterns - and they were very good lanterns. But they don't stand much of a knock, or the mantle falls to pieces!

It never ceases to amaze me, the number of people who produce memes, who can't spell or proofread. Or maybe the meme-maker simply just doesn't know the difference between "off" and "of".

One of the most amusing bumpers stickers I've seen, was on the rear bumper of an old Kombi - and it read, "QUIT HONKING! I'M PEDALLING AS FAST AS I CAN!" 😄

Willie, the Australian gold price has been over AU$7,000 for quite some time. The price was above US$5,000 for the whole of the last week in January, and again for the last week.

It all depends on how much money you've got, what your dream is, and how much determination you've got, to achieve that dream. One of the most amazing restorations I've seen is a split window Kombi, salvaged from the Higginsville Pumping station - where the entire front of it had been cut off, the body stood on its front, a huge chunk cut out of the side of it, and then it was used as a dunny!! But a bloke set his heart on having a fully restored split window Kombi, and he recovered every part of that "dunny Kombi" and restored it to superb driving condition!! It reportedly cost him $100,000! Why anyone would do this, to end up driving a gutless old pile of VW crap, is beyond me! But that's just my opinion! This is the Kombi when it was used as a dunny, I can't find photos of it when restored, I did see them on Instagram, but can't find them now.

It's raining on the Rock! Central Australia has received some very substantial falls of rain, resulting not only in waterfalls on Uluru, but also making the Todd River flow quite heavily. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-10/nt-wet-weather-rain-on-uluru-and-daly-river-flooding-peaks/106326436

It wasn't actually sold, it was a 99 yr lease. A pretty cunning way of getting around FIRB examination. But an undesirable deal, regardless, and basically a bloody outright stupid deal.

He pays them by rewarding them with good-paying Govt contracts, or with prime positions as lackeys to him, within the Govt.

I was always under the impression, anytime you printed a lot of notes without the necessary asset or productivity backing, you would only end up with a bad dose of inflation.

Now, all we need, is to get Nomadpete to do proofreading on his posts! 😄