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We are off to Sydney today for a week. Haven’t been there for fifteen years. Broome would be better.

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. The last few days have been bitterly cold, full overcast and gloomy, all day, every day. I'm looking forward to Spring and Summer returning. To hasten it, we've booked a fortnights break in Broome, from the end of July to mid-August. That will give us a nice early burst of sunshine and warmth. I always look forward to a Winter break in Broome. The place is overpriced and always full of tourists, but the scenery and Cable Beach can't be beaten. We stay at the Habitat Resort, it's set on 9 acres (3.6Ha), and has 32 individual bungalows and apartments all spread out in a lovely heavily vegetated setting. Each bungalow is self contained, we can cook for ourselves or go up town for a feed. The Broome Golf Course is right next door, and their clubhouse sits on top of a big dune overlooking Roebuck Bay, and they serve good food and drinks. The Port of Broome has had a massive rebuild, the W.A. Govt has spent $200M building a new jetty, and a huge new floating dock, so ships can dock and depart any time, and not be dependent on the tide, as before, at the original dock, which was fixed. This was still being built when we were there last year, so it should all be finished now.

It did it tonight, that's why I posted that short story.

One thing I love about my place is when showers sweep in from the ocean side at night. If they're slow moving and you are out on the verandah, you can hear the noise as they move in across the valley raining down on the canefields. Sometimes you can hear it coming for a full five minutes before it hits the tin roof.

On that subject of Beach Petroleum, this photo is their geothermal / hot rocks project on the eastern side of the Flinders Range. It was taken in 2011, and a bit better quality than than previous instamatic photo. This one was taken with my little Panasonic Lumix compact. Myself and a mate went down there for about five days to do a small job. Just to the left of the well head, you can see the Beverley uranium mine at the foothill of the Flinders, which is where we were accommodated. It's a pity the project fizzled out.

It will be more than just a price rise in prices of premium chips. The world cannot afford to give up Taiwan. At Davos, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: "I would say that the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan," Bessent told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He described a potential blockade or destruction of the island's manufacturing capacity as an "economic apocalypse," emphasizing Washington's efforts to relocate semiconductor production to American soil." A blockade of these chips would send the world into the tech dark ages and we would certainly lose the AI arms race against China. As I understand it, it would take decades to build the ecosystem required to produce these high end chips.

Unfortunately, a house fire destroyed over 90% of my photos in 1982, so I have little to contribute by way of personal photos. But Willies post about the Argo's, and the 3-wheel trailer-mounted drill rig reminds me of the Nickel exploration that was going on in the '69-'73 period around the Goldfields of W.A. - when the nickel price was ballistic, and the Poseidon Nickel shares were going the same way. There was a lot of nickel exploration going on in the area South of Kambalda, around Widgiemooltha, at the time I turned up in the area, after leaving the Army at the finish of my National Service on 1st Oct 1971. The older brother, my business partner, had gone to the Goldfields from the Wheatbelt while I was in the Army, and that was because there was a massive drought in the W.A. Wheatbelt between 1969 and 1972, and he ran out of work. But the Nickel exploration teams were pegging like crazy in the nickel boom, and dozer work was plentiful, so the brother took one of our Cat D6C's up to the Goldfields, and made good money clearing gridlines for the peggers. When I rolled up, we were doing gridlines in the Widgiemooltha area, and the two main Nickel companies operating there were the original (U.S.) Anaconda Mining, and a Belgian company called Union Miniere. The area is full of salt lakes, with Lake Lefroy and Lake Cowan being the biggest, in a string of salt lakes that run from Kambalda to Norseman. There was a lot of drilling to be done on the salt lakes, but getting out on them was a real hassle. They often contained areas of deep mud under the salt, although some areas of the salt lakes were quite firm, and could be driven on. The only way to get to the spots requiring drilling was building elevated roads, like jetties, out across the salt. As you could imagine, this was bloody expensive. But Union Miniere had a neat little beast that could run around on the salt anywhere. I had a photo of it, but its gone. It was called the Cuthbertson Tracked Landrover. This Landrover was used substantially to get around on the lakes, and it was neat to watch. They were built by a Scottish company, who are still in business - but they no longer build tracked conversions. I wasn't aware until I did some research, that Cuthbertson only built about 15 or 20 of these units, before they ceased production of them. I have no idea what happened to Union Miniere's Cuthbertson Landrover, maybe it wore out and was scrapped. https://silodrome.com/tracked-cuthbertson-land-rover/ https://www.lrukforums.com/threads/tracked.256227/

It doesn't matter what WE believe. There is also a Presumption of innocence Unless Proven Guilty in our system. He is required to appear before a Court where the Matter will be dealt with according to the Laws of this Country.. You can comment on things like the Manner of his arrest . Very Publicly and when he was with his Kids I can't see why that was necessary at all. Nev

That's good. 18 is not very old but he's got through some difficult bits by now, no doubt. Nev