Bruce

I was there (qld) a few weeks ago and I found that the Sunshine coast is a big lie.. it needs to be renamed the "overcast coast".

good onyer old K. Here's my advice... Don't humiliate the old lady at the checkout. She can remove a few items and get through. As with your old mate. But in his case, I would come around with whatever additions to his larder you could pass off. Like beer... I like how you are sensitive to their pride.

I got to know a bunch of brickies quite well when they were bricklaying while I was installing a ducted vacuum in the new house. These brickies used the "f" word just about every second word, except for one guy who used it between syllables. We all became good mates, and I learned a new language.

Sure was, Nev, but the details of its implementation were public service. I saw Peter Costello being amazed at the idea that anyone would have a kid just for the baby bonus. You rich, stupid, coddled idiot, I remember thinking.

They need to do the cashless card with some smarts of course. Loading your trolley with trade goods should trigger some response. Any of us here could come up with some simple rules to minimize this, and the computers would easily implement the rules. Once in Coober Pedy, we were unable to buy more than one bottle of wine. I asked the shop worker if the scheme was succeeding and he said 70%. There certainly were fewer people hanging around the grog-shop, and they looked cleaner too. In the meantime, back in Adelaide, I reckon that , as taxpayers, we are the true buyers of most illegal drugs and gambling products. Mind you, an effective card is asking for smarts from the same bureaucracy that gave us the baby bonus, which meant that aboriginal girls were forced to have babies they didn't want. Gangs of unwanted youths are now hunter-gathering in the suburbs of Alice Springs, born because the family wanted the grog that the daughter's baby bonus funded. .

I bet if aborigines were required to turn up with a clean family to collect their siddown money, they would take this on board very easily. And if 80% of their money was paid with a credit card not suitable for buying drugs, a lot of problems would go away. I repeat, not only aborigines for these measures, and exemptions for all those ( including aborigines ) who don't need the paternalism.

There is a terrible eye disease called trachoma. Bacteria from unwashed skin attacks the eye and causes blindness. Prevention is as simple as washing your face. You are right about our ancestors old K, but I don't think they lived very long lives. Personally, I don't want to help pay for people with self-inflicted diseases, even though I'm by no means perfect myself. Actually, it would help me lose some weight if the deal was that it would cost heaps unless you got below say 85 kg.

Also if you fail to look after yourself with basic hygiene. Just how arid-zone aborigines were expected to learn about washing when their circumstances traditionally made this impossible is a mystery to me. I honestly think the so-called bleeding hearts are secretly nasty racists for failing to recommend financial pressure to get aborigines ( and some whites ) to wash themselves more.

I had a sliver of bamboo skewer in my throat in Alice Springs once. We tried every private place in town, to no avail, and ended in the hospital emergency waiting area at 1pm. The only person who was busy was the chucker-outer bloke, who came by once every half-hour to chuck you out unless you had a good story. Apparently his job was introduced after they found that some patients were in this waiting room for weeks. At about 5pm, I was told that they would take an x-ray. I said it wouldn't show on an x-ray and they would then say there was nothing there so go home. I was told their medical professionals were far better than that. I was about to go into the x-ray place when an aboriginal guy who had come in from Yuendumu by way of the flying doctor took precedence. He had failed to wake up properly that morning from a drunken stupor, but he looked ok at 5pm. I wondered why it took all day to get him in. And how he got like that with Yuendumu being a dry place. At 6pm I got the x-ray taken and I was told there was nothing there so I could go home. Sticking to my guns, I refused to go and at 8pm an Indian-looking Ear-Nose-Throat specialist ( a friendly and competent guy ) fished out the bamboo sliver, so all finished up ok.

It is possible to go backwards on a hospital wait list. They put you back if a more urgent case arrives, so you can go from a 3 hour expectation to a 6 hour at the outpatients. This happened to a guy I was with. We reckoned at this rate he would never be seen and we left.

This mate of mine got an awful brain disease ( CJD) and , through the normal channels ( through his GP ) he would have had a year's wait to see a neurologist. His life-span was then estimated at 6 months. He got told he had to turn up to the hospital in an ambulance, and this worked. Well he got seen by a neurologist, but they have no treatment for what he had. Without government interference, there would be many more GP's and specialists. They would be like vets I reckon.

There was a story about a clinic run by australians planned for opening in PNG. It could offer half-price operations in theory, because it would be free from the australian legal system. Does anybody know more about this?

The way specialists are chosen needs reforming . Hundreds of hungry GP's study hard and "fail" exams until a relative of the in-group appears. Any other trade would prosper if they had the ability to deny entry into their ranks and if they had a government-enforced monopoly. Electricians would be the same as specialists. Their wives would get used to $20,000 a week pocket money. The government did it this way in order to limit their numbers and therefore the payments. I reckon we would be better off without any government interference at all.

I have watched aborigines lunch on sweet biscuits and sugar soft-drink. Then they siddown instead of hunter-gathering. Well they provide work for diabetes nurses. There ws a great video from WA where this nurse took a group of diabetic aborigines on walkabout, hunter-gathering their tucker. Every day she measured their diabetes and every day it was a lot better.

There sure is a distribution problem, with the country being an undesirable place. In the city, a difficult case can be offloaded to specialists whereas in the country, the doctor can be left well out of his comfort zone. That's why I reckon country doctors need protection from the legal system. It is not my experience that anglo specialists are arrogant. Very wealthy and very competent and quite friendly is how I would describe the very few I have met. There was an Indian opthalmologist once who impressed my by saying how I would need reading glasses in a year or 2. He said this after examining my eyes, and I was impressed but he wouldn't say how he knew this. Well a year or so later, I was getting reading glasses and I asked the optician just how this specialist knew. " Not from looking in your eyes but from reading your age in the card you filled out " I was told.

They don't frighten me spacey. I will organize some nukes from Roxby Downs uranium ( Kakadu uranium would be better, but gosh we have to make some sacrifices huh ) and convert Jabirus to nuke-carrying drones . Actually, I don't see how those radicalized youth will get here. My bet is that global warming will wipe them out first.

Ive got a new gripe, caused by the paper saying how there is a great rural GP shortage. Entirely unnecessary, say I. Short-term solution... make Medibank (or whatever the current designation is ) provider numbers geographically based AND provide some reasonable protections for country GP's from the legal system. Long-term solution... remove the restrictions on universities offering medical school places. The longer term solution would be the best, of course, but it would take more than one government term of office to yield results. Years ago, I know first hand that the university of Adelaide had to turn down dozens of straight "A" students from medicine every year at the Commonwealth government's orders.

There are lots of young people now who say "goes like" when they mean "said". As in.. She goes like " that was stupid " so I go like " no it wasn't".

They sometimes sat around the comfort fire but I reckon they were more often inside, probably in the lounge room. One day this guy I knew from school was measuring up for a new lounge room carpet. There was a big pool of dried blood in the old one on account of how they had butchered a kangaroo there. Months later, they moved out. Nobody said why, but I reckon they were too primitive for the housing commission. We didn't get to know any of the men, but the women and kids were friendly. There was an aboriginal emergency service which was staffed by aborigines and they did a great job, for example then the kids were hungry and it was late at night and no adults were around.

In Alice Springs, backyard burning is not allowed for air-pollution reasons EXCEPT if the fire is a " comfort fire " by aborigines. The aboriginal-occupied housing commission house opposite our rebuilding project always had a smouldering fire in the backyard. I think there are quite a few special rules like this, and there are certainly extra payments. There is a word coined for their poor diet.. " affluent malnutrition". It occurs when your poor diet is due to your food choices and not your budget. Mind you, there are some very healthy aborigines and some feral whites, so we should avoid making decisions based on '"race" , whatever that is. So is the rule on comfort fires racist?

There is a photo taken at Hermannsburg in about 1953 of a DeHavilland Dragon Rapide which failed to clear the trees at the end of the runway. My guess is that it was overloaded and the density altitude was too high. In those days, only English aircraft were permitted to Connellan Airways by the anglophile Menzies government. They are designed for a cold and low country. Menzies called the shots on account of paying for the airways with mail subsidies. Last time I saw Hermannsburg airstrip, from a glider some distance away, it looked like there were shrubs growing in it. Don't land there without a careful check. If anybody finds more on the story, please let me know.

Yes, I operate like that too Octave. I'm about the last of the guys I know who still does his own servicing. So the $100 a week might be closer for us than the 300 to 400 a week. But I reckon we are unfashionable old guys. Cheapskate too in my case at least... I can horrify the wife by asking for the cheapest bottle of red in a restaurant.

I just googled up total costs for owning and running a car. The answer is 300 to 400 a week. More than I thought.

What a strange country when owning and operating a car is seen as a basic necessity. My grandparents never had a car their entire lives. But I have to say that I personally regard a car as a necessity, even if it is very expensive. Could I get by without one? Yes I could, especially with the electric bike, but I don't want to try it. How much does the car cost? My guess is $100 a week.

I hope I'm wrong about walking around it . The walking track was close to the base of the rock. I think it has now been moved well away. Personally, I would not like to do the new walk. And Nev, the "abject poverty " is not from lack of money. You could research just how much they get, but it would not be easy as there are several different sources. But it is not unusual for a family to get $5000 a fortnight. There is kid money, royalty money, siddown money and others I am not aware of. The source of this was an Alice Springs bank teller. I don't think they pay rent or tax or medical bills. A corroborating bit of news recently was the overload of Ceduna hospital by people in a serious condition from alcohol. Why? Because they had all just got their royalty payments.