onetrack

I'd rather be warm than frozen. Broome is just fine by me, especially with Cable Beach to compensate for the heat. We've had a mild Spring, and probably a little wetter and slightly warmer than normal. Overall, rainfall for the S.W. of W.A. is down for the year. The 7 month drought we had between October 2023 and May 2024 killed quite a few trees (including big ones), and left the soil moisture profile, very very dry. The cropping season looked terrible in April, not a skerrick of moisture in the ground anywhere. But the farmers went ahead and cropped normally anyway, dry-seeding paddocks by the thousand. Then we had reasonably good rains in May (76mm), June was better (118mm, close to average), July was quite wet (170mm, well above average), August was wetter again (138mm, also way above average), Sept was a bit dry (39mm, well below average, with 18 days with no rain), in Oct we got 47mm, above average - and Nov has produced 10mm so far, a little below average. The Northern Wheatbelt and the Pastoral areas further North had stunning Winter rains, thanks to tropical moisture feeding in regularly from the NW, off the Indian Ocean. Kalbarri had 317mm for June, close to its total annual rainfall of 341mm, just in that one month! The Northern Wheatbelt got too wet to spray crops in July, they had to revert to aerial spraying and drones! But the grain coming out of the Northern Wheatbelt harvest now is staggering, some farmers are reporting 4 tonnes to the hectare for wheat (20 bags to the acre in the old money), a mind-blowing performance for country that is normally marginal. Overall, even though rainfall was below average for most of the S.W. of W.A., the crops have done well, with rain coming just in time for many. Some areas went backwards because they missed out on vital rain amounts at the right time - but overall, the total crop tonnage for the State is starting to look like it will make nearly 19M tonnes, which will be the 3rd biggest crop on record. With Summer only a few days away, the projections are for warmer minimums and slightly higher maximums, making for a warm Summer to come. But at present, we've had very little hot weather for Spring, and it's been a quite enjoyable period, weather-wise. It's going to be 34° today, before it drops back to the high 20's and low 30's for the rest of the week, then dropping back to the mid-20's for the weekend, with the chance of a few showers. https://www.giwa.org.au/wa-crop-reports/2024-season/giwa-crop-report-november-2024/

Spacey, didn't you notice the article about decimal clocks in France was dated 1st April?? LOL

Just another unwanted bike that's not a Harley, for the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs to throw on a bonfire!

The rollercoaster of Life.

What, no photos of being bogged to the eyeballs in red mud? 😄 Classic Red Centre photos there, Willie. It's interesting how you get people who love the place and other people who can't cope with the isolation and silence, the dust and the temperature extremes. 50° in the middle of the day and 0° at night. I can remember a story a bloke told me about how they were camped out in the Red Centre and it was a bitterly cold night with an icy South-Easterly wind blowing, typical of mid-July. The mechanic/boilermaker/welder with them took off in a ute and came back half an hour later. He'd recently found an old rubbish tip and he'd scrounged a big old, woven wire-mesh bed frame from it - you know the ones with the wooden perimeter frame and the woven wire mesh tightened between the wooden outer beams. He stood the bed frame up at about a 60° angle, dragged over the long welding leads from the engine-driven welder, hooked the earth lead and electrode holder to it at diagonally opposite corners, then went back to the welder, cranked it up, and adjusted the output so the wire frame just started to glow in the dark! The bloke told me it was the best outdoor heater he'd ever come across! He said it was like standing in front of a giant toaster! It certainly kept the cold at bay!

In the company of thieves.

I think someone's had a lend of you with Photoshop as regards the Glasgow freeway interchange. This is what it actually looks like.

I've got "work clothes" that I don't bother ironing (for when I'm getting down and dirty around machinery and workshop work), but I do iron a range of "good" shirts, for when I want to appear in clean public areas, such as pubs, restaurants, offices, shopping centres, etc. I only wear a suit to Anzac marches, weddings and funerals - but a suit does give you a certain level of pizzazz. SWMBO has a big thing about "smart dressing", i.e., looking your best in public. I think she has a point, if you're smartly dressed, you always garner attention faster, and provide a more impressive appearance to others you wish to interact with - especially those in positions of power or Govt regulation. And she says nothing looks worse than an old person who is scruffy and unkempt in their appearance, it looks like they've given up caring about their appearance and personal hygiene.

Heavy metal.

A handsome devil.

A ghost train.

Todays gripe: I'm thoroughly sick of trying to buy new jeans and pants, and finding the zips are about 75mm long! - and they only reach halfway to the crotch of the strides! What is it about these clothes designers? Do they all think our dicks are located near our navel? Or are they making all mens pants zips the same as womens pants zips? As it is with these jeans and pants, you have to loosen your belt, undo your waist band and drop your strides several cm, to be able to get your old fella out for a wee! The only pants and jeans I've found that have decent 150mm length zips are from Rivers and Country Road - and now it looks like Rivers are going belly-up soon, so I'm going to be stuck with Country Road, which are normally pretty expensive, upmarket strides for good wear. I notice that even Levis and Gazman and Jag are adopting the short zips, so I don't know where all this change in basic good design is going to end up. I reckon the Chinese clothes designers have "dumbed down" a lot of our fashion and clothing now anyway, with good styling in clothes going out the window. Everywhere you look now, you see people dressed sloppily in puffer jackets, trakkie daks, shapeless elastic waist garments galore, and T-shirts now seem like a national icon. Even the collars on shirts today are rubbish, no doubt due to cheap Chinese design. Even good Italian clothes are starting to become a rarity - talk to any Italian, and they moan about how their Italian clothes manufacturing has been taken over by the Chinese in Italy, and dumbed down.

It's a loose cannon.

The day any Musk product is in my possession - or even worse - controlling everything in my house - is the day that will never happen.

Trump admires Musk because he has the MOST money of any person in the world - and he recognises the POWER that comes with that wealth - and he's currently in awe of it. But there'll come a time, probably not too far off, when he starts to see Musk becoming a real threat to HIS power, and then Musk will be cast out of the LOYAL followers.

They'd get really curious and examine everything in detail with puzzled looks, and provide entertainment to the observers. Cats and mirrors are the most comical, especially kittens.

The older engines only need fuel additives if they're working long and hard, full throttle, full load. Most of them on display are only loafing along.

Caught red-handed.

I've always known the saying to be the plural. You wouldn't have just one seat as the best, it's always a group of seats, such as a balcony, or a section of a row of seats.

Best seats in the house?

You're not wrong there, Nev. Never come across a place so cold. What is it about the town that makes it so cold? Alpine winds? The altitude?

I was quite surprised to see "Ballaarat" written multiple times on the Salter Bros website. I've never seen this spelling before, but apparently it was the original spelling of Ballarat, and used right up until recent times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Ballaarat

The original drummer for the Bee Gees, Colin "Smiley" Peterson, has died, aged 78. There's only one of the Gibb brothers left alive now - Barry - he's the last surviving member of the Bee Gees. Colin Petersen was drumming at public performances, as recently as last Saturday. He gained the nickname "Smiley", because he was the child actor of that name in the 1956 film, which also starred Chips Rafferty. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-19/bee-gees-drummer-colin-smiley-petersen-dead-at-78/104618874 Amazingly, Dennis Bryon, who was also a Bee Gees drummer after Petersen left, also died just five days ago, on the 14th November 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/arts/music/bee-gees-drummers-dead.html

A recipe for success.

I never knew that Villiers set up in Ballarat, either - but the website below gives us the entire history of the operation. Villiers moved into Ballarat because the Australian Govt placed tariffs on imported engines to protect local manufacturers. So Frank Farrer, the head of Villiers, decided it was viable to set up in Australia and not only meet the sizeable Australian demand for their products, but to export their products to NZ, the Pacific, and SE Asia. Interestingly, "New Australians" (European refugees from the devastation of WW2) made up a sizeable proportion of the Ballarat workforce. https://salterbros.com.au/villiers-australia/ Stationary engines appear to be their mainstay in the 1950's, it looks like motorbikes were a secondary product. I love the photo of the old semi with 1300 Villiers engines on board, being pulled by the Dodge Power Giant - get a look at the 44 gallon drum for a fuel tank! The old Dodge petrol V8's weren't exactly fuel misers! I owned a '62 Inter R190, it was powered by the (Red Diamond) RD-406 engine. Despite being only a 6 cyl, it did 2mpg empty, and 1mpg loaded, pulling my low-loader and Cat D6C's around! Most trucks of this era had a fuel drum tray behind the cabin - you always carried 2 or 3 drums of super petrol with you! I think the original IH fuel tank was 20 gallons, what were IH engineers thinking?