rgmwa

Same here. We had quite a bit of rain and some very heavy downpours and high winds, but could have been worse. I'm not far from Mundaring and our area had a pretty widespread power blackout overnight but it was restored again by midday. We've had a lot more damage in the past.

Yes, that led to the much more widespread use of stainless steel brick ties in coastal areas. This is a map of the earthquake hazard areas in Australia. The closer contours highlight the more earthquake prone areas. By and large Australia is a pretty stable landmass compared to many overseas places, but we still have a number of significant hot spots.

Nev, the Newcastle earthquake was a lot more severe than quite a mild tremor. It was a magnitude 5.6 event. Meckering in WA was 6.5 and Australia's strongest ever recorded earthquake was 6.6 at Tennant Creek. Granted that on a log scale, 5.6 represents a lot less energy than 6.6, but Newcastle was a significant event and Australia's most costly in terms of property damage. It killed 13 people, hospitalised 160 and damaged over 35,000 homes, 147 schools and 3000 commercial buildings and cost about $4b. It also led to the Earthquake Design Code being substantially overhauled to make buildings more resilient. Unlike other types of loads such as wind (including cyclones), and live load where the aim is to prevent any significant damage in a worst case event, the aim in earthquake design is to prevent loss of life, not to prevent damage to the structure. The aim is to have the structure fail in a predicable way but hold together long enough to allow people to get out. The structure may well be uninhabitable after the event and need to be demolished.

That was true for wartime submarines that were basically surface ships that would only submerge when necessary. I think the Collins subs can do closer to 25 kts than 20 when submerged. My niece’s husband was chief engineer on one.

10 kts surfaced, 20+ kts submerged.

Three subs, whether used or not, don't seem enough to provide an effective defence, even if we eventually get them. You could barely maintain one consistently on station. I assume we're hoping the US will locate some of theirs here once we've built the necessary facilities. On the other hand the AUKUS design, if it ever gets built, is massive and will take years to get all the bugs ironed out of it. We'll probably be the ones stuck with doing most of the testing. Being designed jointly between Australia, the UK and the US it will probably not suit anyone. Reminds me of an old joke about what a camel is - a horse designed by a committee.

He's probably also mindful that his cancer diagnosis might curtail his time in charge.

You can probably add rare earths to that list as well. The point is their motivation for defending us would be their military and commercial interests here, while our interests in defending them in places like Vietnam and Iraq were mainly about staying in their good books.

The US will only defend us if it's in their own interests. They probably would if Australia was attacked but mainly to protect their intelligence assets and forward bases, not us.

Worse than that. It was meant to be a text message.

Wondered where that went. The perils of technology and senility.

But it’s their three legged system of government that allows a corrupt president to accumulate so much power. It would be very difficult if not impossible for a prime minister of this country to do what Trump is doing.

Trump has demonstrated how weak the US Constitution and their system of government is if you want to exploit or ignore it.

Good thing you got there early.

Could be and it looks pretty wet as well which suggests water had something to do with it too, especially being so close to a canal. Those units further along are probably going for a good price now.