onetrack

Corruption is rife in every State, and it was blatant in earlier decades, but became more hidden as corruption commissions were set up. In W.A., Brian Burke was certainly corrupt and went to jail for it. He was called the "four on the floor" Premier for his mateyness with the scumbags of the "W.A. Inc" era - Alan Bond, Laurie Connell, et al. Former Premier Ray O'Connor was almost certainly as corrupt as they came, but managed to avoid any official scrutiny. Several Police Commissioners in W.A. were almost certainly corrupt, but were "protected" by power groups, possibly Freemasons and others. There was reported to be a "Purple Circle" inside the W.A. Police heirarchy, and at least 2 senior W.A. Police officers are incriminated in unsolved murders - the murder of Shirley Finn, a Madam who was paying Police protection, and the murder of bikie, William "Billy" Grierson at Ora Banda, N of Kalgoorlie.

The Victorian Libs need to stop fighting over who has the steering wheel, and start concentrating on where the car is actually going. While they have major infighting and a lack of policies and direction, they will be forever consigned to the opposition benches as a minor political party with little relevance. The times the Liberals led the country, they had good leaders who sorted out infighting and who knew what the electorate actually wanted, and where their direction was going as regards satisfactory living conditions for the average voter. As a farmer friend said to me many years ago, we need more Statesmen and Stateswomen, not politicians. Statesmen and Stateswomen have a clear vision of what the country needs, and a plan of how to achieve it.

Imagine what we could do if the $380B was kept here, and invested into Australian defence manufacturing. I reckon conventional subs will become obsolete, as tanks have become in this age of drone warfare, and remotely-controlled unmanned mini-subs such as the Huntingdon version will become the norm for underwater stealth activities. They can't get sub crews at the best of times, it's the next best thing to a kamikaze mission during wartime. We have the Australian-designed Ghost Shark mini-sub under development here, the Govt need to wake up and understand that buying war equipment now, for delivery in 20 or 30 years time, is about on a par with ordering a hundred Sopwith Camels in 1919 for use in WW2. We had enough of a problem with obsolete equipment in 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Shark_(submarine) https://www.defensemirror.com/news/33048/Huntington_Ingalls_Unveils_Remus_620_UUV

"Working From Home".

And in the meantime, the U.S. is talking about building a new breed of diesel-powered submarines that are superior to the nuclear ones. Li-ion batteries are providing the impetus to better (and much cheaper) diesel-electric subs.

They're not game to end the NW Shelf gas production, because it's a golden goose for both the W.A. and Federal Govts.

All Americans suffer from some level of paranoia - unreasonable fear of strangers, conspiracy theories, distrust of Govt and Govt-mandated authorities, and distrust in civilian social order without keeping themselves armed to the teeth. I put it down to the amount of lead they've ingested. Lead from IC-engine exhausts, and lead from the copious amounts of armaments they own, and fire off at random. It's well known that lead levels in Americans in general went through the roof in the 1960's and 1970's. Over half of Americans still have unhealthy lead levels in their bodies. So, yes, they are basically insane, and following in the path of the Romans to a decaying and decadent society. https://www.acamh.org/blog/20th-century-lead-exposure-damaged-american-mental-health/

I remember a lot of that section of the M4, from Sept 1988, when I was living with an Auntie in Reading for about a month. I had a little hired Vauxhall, and used to go into London on a lot of days to have a look around. I went straight in via Hammersmith and Earls Court. Vegetation is a bit higher than I recall, and a lot of big new buildings are along the route, that weren't there in 1988! I remember how the traffic flowed smoothly until a few kays out of London, then it all came to a halt with congestion getting into London. The Pommy drivers were pretty courteous, and the road layouts were very well thought out, with turning lanes everywhere, unlike here. I don't know how you do that 160+ miles drive and back on a regular basis, it must take up 6 hrs of your day? I drive 130kms out to my block in the wheatbelt about 3 times a week, it takes me an hour and 20 mins, and no traffic lights once I leave the city, and only one small town on the trip. Road Trains are about the only holdup, there aren't enough passing lanes, further out past the divided carriageway - but most of the Road Trains are doing a pretty good speed, 90-100kmh.

I'd just start a new account. I thought it could be a hacker scam, but it's apparently true that FB is using facial recognition videos. There's no way I'd provide that to a faceless, soulless, ruthless website operator, that only communicates with you when it suits them. https://www.waka.com/2024/11/25/what-the-tech-locked-out-of-your-facebook-account-use-your-face-to-get-back-in/#:~:text=While Meta assures users that,between security and user experience.

What started this off? I give FB bugger-all, and they've never made a demand like that to me. Yet I can log in, post, sell and buy, message and interact with people on there, no problem. I don't even use my real name or even a photo of myself. I trust FB and it's grubby owner, like I trust a cornered black snake.

One of the factors in the Bradfield Scheme that may not have been taken into account, is ensuring reliability of food production and reducing losses to growers by moving food production inland. I don't know how many times we've seen massive production losses and intolerable grower losses when natural weather events on the East side of the GDR have decimated crops and vegetation - cyclones especially in Northern Qld. During WW2, substantial amounts of vegetables and fruit were grown in inland areas, especially along the Stuart Hwy in the N.T. These increased levels of food production were responsible for Australia becoming the primary food supplier to ALL Allied forces, especially the U.S. Forces, during the course of the War. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/015464 https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C34614 https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE149973&mode=browse

Well, it's coming up 60 years since decimal coinage appeared! Just thinking about that frightens me as to how quickly old age has raced up on me. It seem like only yesterday we were all discussing the major drama of changing to a new currency.

Peter's talking about buying fruit when he was a boy.

The fossil fuel Farm Boy is going to get a shock soon. "Twiggy" Forrest has just purchased 360 huge battery-powered dump trucks, 55 battery-powered giant excavators and 60 new battery electric bulldozers from Liebherr, with the intention of being fossil-fuel free on his iron ore mines by 2030. That's really putting your money where your mouth is. Farm Boy is going to end up whingeing (they're good at that) about how he can't compete with his fossil-fuel tractors, when farmers with battery-powered tractors are running rings around him with lower operating costs. https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-strikes-4-billion-deal-for-electric-trucks-and-dozers-to-eliminate-fossil-fuels-at-giant-mines/

The proponents need to re-adjust their ideas of getting water to the Interior from North Qld, and aim for the area East of the Great Dividing Range in Northern NSW as the major supply region. This area suffers so much constant excess water, it seems a crying shame that it all goes out to the Pacific. A few tunnels through the GDR, and hey presto! - there's your water supply system for the Interior sorted.

O.K., I failed to expand the photo to see the letters along the bottom. Ahh, well, at least I tried. I'm stumped on this one.

This International C-1 ute appeared on FB in mid-March 2025, it was located South of Perth at Donnybrook. What an incredible survivor. It sold within about 3 days. I've only ever seen about 3 of them. The 1/2 ton C-1 was only built for three years by IHC, but they still managed to produce 76,820 of them! https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/3985338768364897 https://auto.howstuffworks.com/1937-international-c1-pickup.htm

I tried cherries.

Because of WW1.

Accomplished aviator.

Here's a story about how the Chinese are going all-out on a major onslaught on the major car manufacturers of the world - especially Tesla, but also the big global brands. The Chinese are knocking up their own huge, specialised car-carrying ships to ensure they can flood the market with stocks of new cars, meaning no wait times, and multiple choices for buyers. BYD sold 88,640 cars into overseas markets just in May alone, that puts them on course to sell 1,000,000 cars a year, just in exports. Meantimes, Australia's TOTAL car market (that's ALL manufacturers) is just 1,000,000 cars a year. If you order a car from someone like Toyota, stock is limited and demand is high, so that means you have minimal choices, or you go on a wait list for months and months. The Japanese manufacturers are about to get a rude shock, I cannot believe the number of BYD vehicles I'm seeing on the road now, and that is only going to increase. https://au.news.yahoo.com/byd-photos-show-ev-race-heating-up-as-china-looks-to-topple-tesla-its-insane-012054850.html

The most revealing term the Americans use, is "nickel and dime ya". In other words, in any other country, the price is all-inclusive. In America, there are constant "extras" that keep adding to the cost of the item or service. Tipping is just one of them, small taxes and extra charges for services that are included elsewhere are the American norm. Mind you, we're heading the same way, too. Airlines and accommodation are top of the list, followed by card surcharges. We just bought air tickets for a trip from Perth to Broome next month and there was a total of nearly $100 in additional charges to the base fare. Two lots of security charges, card charges, two lots of GST, etc, etc. One of the interesting parts is you can only see all the charges when the "payment" page is presented to you. Once you pay for the booking, there's no no way to see those individual charges again.

Well, that event was a dead loss for us. Despite all the hype and promise, we drove out 75kms to Mt Observation (West of York W.A.), stumbled around in the dark in the bush for an hour, looking for the best view to the South - and we saw bugger-all. 😞 We even had a nice clear sky, and the Milky Way and star clarity was glorious - but all we could see, was a bit of vague red dimness on the Southern horizon. Very disappointing, after all the hype. Now a big low pressure system is moving in, with associated stormy weather and cloud, and we won't see much sky for the next three days.

I've bought Camrys for SWMBO ever since we bought our first 1990 Camry in 1992. We used to buy low km, around 2 yr old, ex-Govt Camrys at auction for about $17,000. SWMBO had been put in a Datsun 180B by one of her car-selling relatives when I met her, it was a POS. I was always fixing something on it. I got rid of it to a girl who came back later, and claimed that we'd sold her a pup, and it had blown up. The cooling system collapsed and she fried it, apparently - so not our problem. The Camrys have all delivered superb reliability and fuel economy, and most were sold with about 100,000kms on the clock. We kept our 2002 Camry the longest, 17 years and 140,000kms. It had done 20,000 kms when we bought it. I probably should've sold it in 2014 when we bought the replacement 2012 Camry Atara - but it was such a good car, I sort of just hung onto it. We still got $3800 for it at 17 yrs old and 140,000 kms. The only major fault it developed (a common one), was an oil pump leak. The oil pump is mounted externally on the front of the engine under the (plastic) timing cover, and it contains two o-rings, and a lip-type seal, which all go hard and start to leak. The problem is, the leak is hard to find, because the oil leak wicks down the block and along the sump and then drips off the rear of the engine, making it look like the rear main engine seal is gone. But I cleaned the engine up spotlessly, and then started to look for where the leak was coming from. It took a while, but I finally found it was the oil pump. It took less than 2 hrs to remove the pump, reseal it with 2 new o-rings and the lip-type seal, and we were back in business. Most people drive Camrys into the ground with no maintenance. People don't change the oil on them, and because the oil galleries are narrow, they block up, and the engine starves of oil. I think the 2002 Camry cost less than $1000 in maintenance over the 17 years we owned it, just brakes and tyres, a thermostat and a top radiator hose. I'm always anal about keeping the cooling systems and coolant absolutely spot-on with regular coolant changes and regular cooling system flushes. All alloy engines have to be treated with care as regards cooling systems, but fortunately, the genuine Toyota long-life coolant is perfectly tailored to protect all the metals in the engine, and if you use it, rather than any "will-do" coolants, you never have any problems. We've had the Atara for 11 years now, after acquiring it for $19,000 at 13,000kms from a deceased estate. It was a steal, they were bringing $23,000-$24,000 at the time. It's a superb drivers car, it sticks to the road and handles like an F1 race car, and only sips fuel. Quite often I can get it down to 6.5L/100km at 100kmh on long smooth straight lengths of freeway. The problem now is what to replace it with. I can't get enthused about hybrids and I think the current crop of EV's are still in the experimental stage. I've always worked on never being the first to buy any new model, I like to wait and see how the model proves up, whether it's an unreliable POS or provides excellent reliability. The RAV4 is looking a likely buy at this stage, but perhaps we'll buy a full petrol-powered RAV4, which Toyota stopped making last year. They're not hard on fuel, and buying a horribly expensive EV, just to save a couple of grand a year on fuel, doesn't make sense to me. Plus the outlandish technology of the newer models is offputting, I'm hearing a lot of complaints from friends and associates about the dramas with exotic technologies such as automatic braking, and lane-guiding features of the current models. Friends have told me how they struggle to keep control, as the car wants to do something different to what they want to do.