onetrack

What is that? A cane railway drawbridge?

Oh, my jolly goodness!! Built by my cousins in Madras!! Finest product of the sub-continent! Fits a family of four!! 😄

It's a new subdivision in Alkimos, W.A. Developer greed at its finest. No thanks.

It's not hard to lose money on gold mining pursuits - especially if hard rock and underground mining is involved. I've never been deeply involved in underground mining, but I've certainly seen a lot of mining companies come and go, and seen vast sums of money lost. I think I've seen figures that reported only around 30% of mines are profitable. When we were at Higginsville, the old Slav prospector who remained there - Mick Urlich - living in his old prospectors humpy, was a constant source of stories about the exploits of would-be miners in the area. Mick told me he came across a couple of blokes digging a big hole in pure white quartz, on the track between Higginsville and Eundynie, sometime in the 1930's. These blokes had a nice stockpile of broken quartz, which Mick looked at in puzzlement, as it contained no visible gold - nor any signs of the quartz even showing indications of being gold-bearing. It was just pure white, clean quartz. He went over to them and asked if they were onto anything of value. The two prospectors, very obviously greenhorns, stated that they were onto some good gold, as shown by the quartz! Mick went on - "But have you crushed or panned any of the quartz to see if there's actually any gold in it?" The prospectors looked a bit blank. "But it's quartz, it must have gold in it!", one stated. Mick replied, "No, just because it's quartz, doesn't mean it actually has gold in it! Quartz is a good indicator of gold-bearing lodes, but it usually has to have banded iron in it, or even visible gold, which is called specimen stone!" "You can have quartz that is totally barren of any gold, you have to crush a small sample and pan it off, to see if there's any gold in it! This stuff you're digging out here is just barren, pure white quartz!" At that, the pair of greenhorn prospectors developed downcast expressions. "But we got told, all we had to do, was find quartz, and we've found gold!" one replied, now looking in despair at their stockpile of barren quartz. Mick said it rapidly become obvious the pair had exactly zero knowledge of gold prospecting, and had not even studied up on the basics - but they were fully equipped, and full of enthusiasm, and possessed a gung-ho approach to gold prospecting, thinking that gold was everywhere, and you just had to dig a hole to be rewarded. He remarked how often, other prospectors were misled by "old-timers diggings" - with many modern prospectors stating with confidence, "the old timers dug holes and shafts and drives here, there must be gold here!" Mick said that if more of the modern prospectors had any idea of how little, a lot of the "old timers" knew about gold and prospecting, and had just dug holes in enthusiasm, with little gold prospecting knowledge, then those modern prospectors would be sorely disappointed with their confidence that the "old timers" actually knew what they were looking for!

The world is full of entitled idiots who think they can do what they like, without any consideration for anyone else. You could spend a lot of time trying to ensure they get fined.

Venezuelan oil is classed as "heavy sour crude", and is especially good for the likes of asphalt production. It must undergo a lot more treatment to extract the lighter fractions that are used in lubricating oil. Many refineries blend the crude oils from various countries to produce a mixture that is easier and lower cost to refine.

OME, the troy ounce system is used exclusively for precious metals. A standard pound of weight contains 16 avoirdupois ounces, a troy pound weight consists of only 12 troy ounces. Grams are the favoured gold measurement in Australia today, but gold bars are nearly always marked in troy ounces, and troy ounces is the standard for trading in precious metals.

I have never forgotten a quote from a book I read - where the author quoted John Maynard Keynes (the worlds leading economist in the early 20th century), who stated that "gold is a barbarous relic that has no place in a modern monetary system". The author went on to say, "Six leading global economists today, agree with Keynes opinion with regard to gold - they only have to convince six billion people in the world, that they are right, and the six billion people are wrong". 😄

It must be time to start up a "pothole repair" business, as a highly profitable side-hustle, Jerry. "Mr Pothole" here on the Left Coast charges like a wounded bull, and makes substantial profits. https://www.mrpothole.com.au/

A very expensive one, that's for sure. The fact that the price of gold has currently soared to exotic heights is pretty indicative of how low the value of our currencies has become, thanks to political mismanagement and squandering.

A bathtub would make a great steampunk sidecar! 😄 Oh, wait! - the Americans have beaten you! 😄

Trump and the MAGA nutters all claim there's no pollution, and no climate change problems, it's all just made up. Trump believes the Oil Age is going to undergo a renaissance under his leadership. I have news for him, he's flogging a dead horse, and there's no going back to the 1950's when America burnt oil like it was a totally unlimited, almost free, resource.

One would hope it's only a temporary thing and eventually the W.A. Police will go back to not carrying AR-15's. But the unspoken problem is - if those AR-15's were unleashed into a major crowd, what would the "friendly fire casualties" be? The Police assault on the Islamic nutter (Man Haron Monis) in Sydney, resulted in two unnecessary civilian deaths, and that was a close-range assault.

Randomx, sale of a property is best done by professionals, they know what they're about and have plenty of "leads" to buyers. Plus their local knowledge will give you a good idea of what sort of sale price you can achieve. Numbers of people always want "remote" properties, where they can "get away from it all" and set up "off-grid living". But the important part is figuring out where you'd like to move to - and more importantly, what you can afford.

Jerry, one bright spot that's turned the current position better - SWMBO came back from the operation very pleased, because the Doc had avoided a skin graft with a "flap" surgical removal process. This process is used quite commonly now, and many Docs are skilled at it. They make an incision and lift the skin back, then remove the cancerous bit, then pull the flap back and stitch it in place over the area of tumour removal. Done properly, it looks very good when healed. I had the flap procedure done on my face a few years ago, when I had to have a weeping cyst removed from one cheek. It's nearly impossible to see the scars and stitching on my face, so no-one can call me "Scarface"!. SWMBO is home now and resting, no bending over for three days, a need to keep her wound covered in the shower, and back to get the stitches taken out in a week. She's much happier than when she went in this morning.

I was part owner of the Fairplay Gold Mine at Higginsville, W.A. from 1972 to 1990, when the mine was sold to a large gold mining company. The brother, his wife and I mined and produced around 600 ozs of gold in that period, utilising the Norseman State Battery (a 10 head stamp mill, owned by the W.A. Govt). Gold was ignored and only worth around $35 oz when we purchased the mine from two old Slav prospectors. But U.S. President Richard Nixon had taken America off the Gold Standard in August 1971, in a staggering display of non-consultative, "executive" Presidential power. It was called the "Nixon shock", and it rattled the worlds financial markets - and led to a rapid rise in the price of gold, now the gold price was no longer controlled by the U.S. We knew this would happen, and purchased the gold mine accordingly. By 1975 the gold price was $160 oz and by 1980, it was over $800 oz, and there was another gold rush on. At that point, our strategy of utilising an under-utilised and cheap source of ore crushing went to hell in a handbasket, as scores of prospectors turned up at the State Battery to crush parcels of ore. A queueing system for crushing was initiated - but even worse - the Govt imposed a very sharp increase in crushing costs to reduce the State Batteries ever-increasing losses (the State Batteries were always subsidised to encourage local employment, bring in gold revenue, and to assist in prospecting work that might deliver new and profitable mines). At that point, we turned to the large (200,000 tonne) tailings dump on our mine, which still held an average of around 2 grams/tonne of tailings. We took on 3 business partners who had experience in heap leaching and cyanidation of tailings, and between all of us, we developed an improved design of tailings leach vats, which proved very effective and very profitable. The benefit of treating tailings was the ore was already crushed very fine, it just had to be set up with the correct pH levels, be able to contain a cyanide leach solution, and to have a simple circulatory pumping system. The addition of activated carbon in stainless steel tanks finished off the treatment process, and it was a very simple job to set up a small, single-cylinder Lister diesel pump to circulate the solution until the activated carbon was full of gold! Then the tanks would be taken into Kalgoorlie to be stripped of the gold, using a caustic solution, by professional carbon tank strippers. The final product, gold "dore" bars were taken into the Perth Mint, which refined the gold to the Internationally-accepted gold bar standard of 99.999 (%) fine gold. After we had re-treated all our gold tailings on the Fairplay lease, we re-treated many more tens of thousands of tonnes of tailings, from numerous other tailings dumps we had pegged. It was a very profitable period for us in the 1980's. Then, after we ran out of tailings dumps of our own to re-treat, we went on to build tailings vats on contract for other operators that needed to re-treat their tailings. We re-treated tailings and built leach vats for well over 2M tonnes of tailings in the 1980's, from as far East as Ejudina, 150kms E of Kalgoorlie, to Burtville, SE of Laverton, W.A. - right through the W.A. Goldfields, to even Marble Bar! It was a very interesting period, and one that was highly profitable, and not a period I'm likely to see again! The sheer pleasure of holding a large gold bar that you've produced and poured, is something that few people experience.

The Chinese are actually doing their bit, it's reported the air in Beijing is substantially cleaner than it was a few years ago, and it's all largely due to the huge level of Chinese EV sales.

Wow, that's some serious deep corrosion there, Willie! Are you planning on rebuilding it? I use citric acid baths to treat all my corroded restoration items, it works good, and it doesn't damage the base metal, and it's safe to use. I usually leave the item in the acid bath for a week or 10 days, then pull it out and pressure-wash it to see it if needs more treatment. Usually, it does, so it goes back in again for another few days, then back out again for a final pressure wash. Then I make up a mixture of about 10% Ranex (phosphoric acid) solution, put in a spray bottle, and spray it on the cleaned item to prevent further rusting.

It must be all in the stars. Yesterday, I went to mow my 95 yr old neighbours lawn, and his Briggs & Stratton powered Scott Bonnar reel mower refused point blank to start. This is a good used mower I purchased for him about 6 mths ago, and I went over it, and gave it a "birthday" on maintenance, as soon as I bought it. It has run well for that 6 mths. B&S engines rarely fail to run, but nonetheless this one refused. No spark, dead as a Dodo. Took the cowling off, checked all the electrics, decided the coil was RS. Went and tested it - yep, open circuit. Went to no less than THREE mower crowds, before I actually found a crowd with one in stock! FFS, this is a B&S coil, there are millions of B&S engines out there. What's even worse, they ripped me off mercilessly to the tune of $95 for it!! You can buy them from China for $10!! The one I was sold, is made in Argentina! They probably bought it cheaper than a Chinese one! I haven't fitted it yet, because I went to have an annual hearing test just after lunch yesterday, and even though the audiologist told me there was little deterioration in my hearing in the last year, she revised my hearing aid settings, and hooked the hearing aids (via wi-fi) to her computer to do the reset. All good. Went to walk out the door, the RHS hearing aid went dead. Went back in and told her, she looked puzzled and hooked them up again, and reset them. Went home, walked in the door, the RHS hearing aid went dead again. Went back to the audiologist (luckily, she's only 10 mins away, the advantages of city living), and she checked it out again, and declared it totally US, and in need of major repair. I'm annoyed because these hearing aids are only 12 mths old! They were a brand new build in Jan 2025. I'm getting a bit sick of the reliability of this Oticon stuff, they seem to pack up regularly. And when they need repair, they need to be sent to the East Coast to do the repairs!! It takes 2 weeks to get them back. FFS!! I live in a major city with a population of 2.3M people! - why can't Oticon have a hearing aid repair centre here in Perth? Then, it gets worse. The hearing aids I have, are a matched pair of "in-the-ear" hearing aids. They "talk" to each other, the button on the RHS one sets the programmes (there are 3 programmes in them), and adjusts the volume up, while the button on the LHS one adjusts the volume down, and also changes the programmes. As soon as you lose the RHS hearing aid, you lose the ability to raise the volume up. So they lend me a "loan" hearing aid. But the loan hearing aid is a "behind the ear" type of hearing aid. It's not anywhere near as powerful as my originals, and it has no compatibility with the LHS in-the-ear hearing aid. So it's like driving a car with 14" highway tyres on one side, and 18" off-road tyres on the other side, it makes life quite difficult! Meantimes, SWMBO has had to go in for a skin cancer op this morning. She's not happy, the doc insists on cutting a big chunk off the top of her ear and has to do a skin graft to repair it. She hates being cut up at the best of times, and the Skin Check WA doc (a woman) is a tiger on cutting bits out of you at every opportunity. So now she's got a fortnight of restricted activity and recovery, while her ear heals up. Hopefully, this afternoon, things will start looking up, when I fit the new coil to Barneys mower and get that operational again. Meantimes, my Chamberlain tractor engine repair is a struggle, I'm having serious levels of trouble getting the Perkins 6 cyl engine apart for reconditioning, it's really dragging out. The engine was full of water, and the pistons were all rusted into the cylinders. I soaked the bores in a 50-50 mixture of diesel and ATF for over a month, a highly recommended cure for engine corrosion, and it has worked to a certain degree. But every piston is fighting all the way to be removed from those cylinders. I've got 4 out so far, and 2 more to go. What is making it harder is, I can't turn the crankshaft, so I'm going to have to pull the crankshaft out now, so I can get proper access to the underside of the two remaining pistons, to drive them out. And I found the crankshaft has already been ground .030" undersize, and I'm not sure if .040" undersize bearings are available. I hope I don't have to go looking for another crankshaft. One upside is, I found a bloke from Parkes, NSW, on FB, who had two NOS Perkins 6 cyl engine overhaul kits for sale, for $900 each. He delivered one to Perth for me in that price, so that is a big saving on buying a new engine O/H kit, they are close on $1500 to buy new, now. Jerry, I trust your bad luck run ends soon, and you find a top-condition used car for a bargain price. I love deceased estates, the relatives nearly always sell off a mint-condition car that the deceased person bought not long before they died, and you usually acquire a bargain in a private sale. I got SWMBO's Camry that way in 2014, the owner was a WW2 tail-gunner in a Halifax, he lived to 91, and bought the car new when he was 88! Accordingly, it had seen little use (13,000kms), and his son was wealthy, and just wanted to quit it. We got it for $19K, when it was listed everywhere as being worth $23K. What was worse, after we bought it, SWMBO spotted a handwritten note the son had, where he'd listed $18K as the likely car sale price! But he was a really nice bloke, so we didn't mind paying him the extra $1K! 😄

He's got good reason to look a bit ragged, he's 89!

Pretti was obviously a bit feral, and obsessed with attacking ICE agents. He was carrying a (legally obtained and legally allowed) firearm at all times, but was never seen to withdraw it from its holster. You'd have to be a bit demented to carry a firearm when attacking Federal agents, anyway - let alone just attacking them physically. Once you start attacking people during a protest, it weakens your protest case. But in the final washup, shooting a protester simply because he's being abusive and attacking you, is not warranted - and I hope the case goes to court, with the ICE agent charged with manslaughter at the very least. But I'll wager it'll never happen.

It's interesting to see, that if that US$38 trillion is a correct figure, then that is 143% of America's GDP.

Interestingly, the levels of Govt debt are excessive in many developed countries (as well as the well-known undeveloped ones). America's debt level, measured by debt-to-GDP ratio is 125%. The U.K. stands at 115%, while France stands at 101%. However, Japans debt-to-GDP ratio is 230% It is the most indebted country in the world. But .... drilling down into the figures, the debt owed by America, the U.K. and France, is to many and varied global lenders - including other countries. However, the largest proportion of Japans debt is to its own banks. They don't owe a huge amount to overseas investors. So the problem is, when global investors start withdrawing support for your country and your Govt, by moving their funds elsewhere, the amount of overseas debt your country owes is going to be the major item affecting whether your countrys economy goes into a slump - or into the sh****r. Japan can conveniently ignore a lot of its debt because their lenders are their own people and institutions. At worst, in Japan, when debt repayments fail to be made, the worst that can happen is few Japanese banks go bust, or are forced to amalgamate - and their economy slows down. That's what happened in the 1997 Japanese/Asian recession, which was largely caused by excessive property price increases - a property bubble - however poor Japanese Govt decisions also led to the economic collapse.

Major global investors are fleeing from investing in the U.S. dollar, thanks to Trumps erratic and inflation-causing trade policies. Those major global investors are countries as well as financial institutions. They are all concerned that Trumps policies will lead to the U.S. dollar losing its place as the premium financial investment choice. Trump is doing nothing to address America's constantly-ballooning Govt debt level - as with all U.S. Presidents and senators, they continue to keep kicking the can down the road. Sooner, rather than later, they will run out of road to kick the can down.

It is good that NO2 have decreased, and EV's are certainly playing their part. However, constantly tightening emissions regulations for IC engines must also be adding to the effect. Electric trains and electric buses and a huge upsurge in solar panel and wind turbine power generation can also be added to the picture, all of which are eliminating NO2 emissions. There has been a substantial decrease in the demand for fossil fuels, which is making the oil producers scramble for market share. This will place downwards pressure on oil prices and slow down the uptake of EV's.