onetrack

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/

13 hours ago, red750 said:

The phrase above was "A BRIEF OVERVIEW". Not easy, but you've got to pick the right letters to help guess the answer.

 

O.K. - but that phrase contains only two or three of the letters along the bottom. What was the point of those letters? Just to lead you astray?

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.

What a ripper of an outstanding, clever, and daring attack! As good as some of Britains finest commando efforts during WW2. Now, all it needs is a drone attack on where Putin is sitting or flying, to ensure the head of the Russian snake is fully decapitated

And I'd hazard a guess those names are pronounced something like "Sluffter". The same as the English can pronounce "Cholmondeley" as "Chum-lee", or "Rochester" as "Rosher".

Tonight is the best night for an Aurora Australis sighting, if you're in the Southern latitudes and have a fairly cloudless sky to the South, and minimal light pollution. There's a major solar storm taking place globally, and on a scale rating of 9, it's an 8.

For Australian viewing of the AA, the scale rating for viewing is currently 6, out of 9. There are plenty of FB photos currently being posted of the AA. The best times for viewing are between 10:00PM and 2:00AM.

https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SouthernHemisphereAuroraGroup/

What is worse, is the number of MAGA adherents who believe it's true, and have come out supporting Trumps baseless claim. What a sorry lot!

Is.

Ahhh, I make the Buick 67 yrs old, Nev, I don't know how you got 98 yrs old. He does have quite a number of early 1930's Fords in the factory unit, mostly roadster style, I'm not sure if they were repro's or original bodies. The Americans knock out a huge number of 1930's repro hot rod bodies. He did mention he had a stack of 1957 Chev parts as well.

One of the interesting things he said was, he went to all the car show gatherings with a stall - and people would come up to him and say, "I've got an old car in the shed, would you be interested in buying it?"

He claimed he scored a lot of vintage cars in that manner, and people would sell them to him, whereas they wouldn't sell the vehicle to a casual inquirer - because he was in that line of business.

But I would think people would sell to him because he may have offered more money than a casual inquirer, and sellers would know he had the funds, rather than just being a tyre kicker, or someone scheming out a get-rich-quick scheme by acquiring a vintage car for a low figure.

I used to score a lot of vintage cars for a song by contracting for farmers. I had access to every back paddock on farms once I was there, and found a lot of amazing vehicles. Two that come to mind are a 1932 Model B Ford V8 roadster (genuine original, not cut down into a ute), and a 1930 Model A Ford coupe, an Australian built model.

The Australian-built 1930 Model A Ford coupe was different to the American-built ones as Ford didn't have the big presses here in 1930, that they had in America. The American coupe had an all steel roof and steel doors.

The Australian coupe followed the older style of construction with a fixed roof made from wooden strips overlaid with canvas, that was painted with a bituminous paint. It had wooden-framed doors that were full height.

The 1930 Model A coupe is so rare that the Ford collector bloke I acquired it for, who was in his 60's in the 1970's, said he had only ever seen one in his life, it belonged to a doctor when he was young bloke and it was fairly new. He was over the moon when I bought it for him, he owned 45 Ford cars, all between 1928 and 1935 and he had every body style for every year - except for the 1930 Model A coupe.

I'm spewing now, that I sold the 1932 Ford Model B V8 for $600 about 1983, when I needed some money. I could nearly retire on what they bring today, even unrestored (if there's any left unrestored).

When I was living and working in the W.A. Goldfields in the mid-1970's, there was an old bloke in Kalgoorlie who still drove into and around town in a 1932 Ford Model B roadster, completely original.

I bought a 13.5KVa 3 cyl Lister generator off a bloke in the Northern suburbs. When I went to pick it up, I found he was a hot rod parts specialist, a hot rod builder, a car importer and general wheeler-dealer in anything American and classic design. He said COVID kicked his business in the bum, it started to pick up again, then the shipping costs went ballistic, so he's winding the business down.

He was in a large rented factory/warehouse (I think it was 2 units combined), and he tried to buy it off the old lady that owned it a number of years ago, but she wouldn't sell.

Unbeknowns to him, there was a big family squabble over who was preparing to get what, after she died - so she sold everything and cashed in, and is just going to divvy up her estate in cash inheritances. 

So, the new owner of the factory/warehouse wants to move in, and he has to get out. The bloke says he's built a new factory unit of his own, not too far away, so he's not overly stressed out about the eviction.

But he's having a cleanout as part of the move, and the winding down. One of his cars for sale is this 1958 Buick, a classic piece of American overindulgence. It looks like it's sold, and it was only advertised a couple of days ago.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1313503580780180

But where else could a ruthlessly ambitious person get their start in State or Federal politics, if it wasn't for the cut and thrust, backstabbing, ganging up, nepotism, and pettiness of local councils!?

They actually turned into your chickens. Chickens are ruthless destroyers from above, just ask any crawling bug.